Category: Noir Poets

“When a man straggles on the short death-walk from his cell through the little green door, into the room where stands the supreme throne, does he, along with his incredulous apprehension, along with trying to believe that this so-living and eternal-seeming center and purpose of the universe, himself — this solid body with its hard biceps, its curiously throbbing heart that ever since his mother’s first worry has in its agonies been so absorbing, this red-brown skin that has glowed after the salt sea at Coney Island and has turned a sullen brick after wild drinking — the astonishment that this image of God and Eternity will in five minutes be still and stiff and muck — is he at that long slow moment nonetheless conscious of a mosquito bite, of a toothache, of the smugness of the messages from Almighty God which the chaplain gives him, of the dampness of the slimy stone corridor and the echo of their solemn march? Is he more conscious of these little abrasions than of the great mystery?”

Sinclair Lewis, ‘Dodsworth’ (1929)

I had forgotten Doris for a moment,
And then I was glad she was there, waiting.
She was someone to talk to.
We walked down Wall Street to trinity church,
And she kept watching me,
Wondering what had happened there in that office of mine.
I think she had made up her mind
To fall in love with me.
And I wouldn’t have minded at another time.
It would have been a change from the kind of women I knew.
She wanted me to talk to tell her, to convince her
That I didn’t realize what I was doing,
That I didn’t understand the business I was in,
But I enjoyed the idea of convincing her that I did.

When was it, Mr. Morse, that Tucker walked in?

I’ll tell you.
I’ll tell you, Doris,
how the boom was on,
And I could feel money
Spread all over the city
like air,
Like perfume from those
flowers I gave you.
the smell of money.

And was that when Tucker walked in?

Yes. And I’m a man.
What have I got to do
with Tucker?
But he opened his pocket,
and I jumped in headfirst.
I sat there
and measured my strength.
I had so much, Doris-
That’s the way I figured-
So much strength,
And it all worked out
this way.
I didn’t have enough strength
to resist corruption,
But I was strong enough
to fight for a piece of it.

And now you want to get out. Is that what your trouble is?

My trouble is, Miss Lowry,
that I feel like midnight,
And I don’t know
what the morning will be,
Except, for a little while,
I felt pretty easy here,
Talking to you,
liking you.
You’re the only one
I ever talk to, Doris.
You’re the only one
I ever talk to,
And I don’t know why,
Except that
you caught me tonight
When I would have talked
to the devil.

But I… thank you.

It’s the truth, Doris.
A man doesn’t tell lies
at midnight,
But now I talk to you
because you’re Doris.
You see how lovely
that makes you?

What are you now?

Someone to say,
To fool himself
or me, that…

that you love me?

Not so soon.
I won’t tell you that,
But it would be such
a comfort to me
To kiss you.
Is that strange?

No. No, that isn’t strange.

The Force of Evil (1948)
Direction and Screenplay by Abraham Polonsky. Based on Ira Wolfert’s novel Tucker’s People.

Crime begins with God. It will end with man, when he finds God again. Crime is everywhere, in all the fibres and roots of our being. Every minute of the day adds fresh crimes to the calendar, both those which are detected and punished, and those which are not. The criminal hunts down the criminal. The judge condemns the judger. The innocent torture the innocent…  Can you hold the mirror to iniquity when it is close at hand? Have you looked into the labyrinth of your own despicable heart? Have you sometimes envied the thug for his forthrightness? The study of crime begins with the knowledge of oneself. All that you despise, all that you loathe, all that you reject, all that you condemn and seek to convert by punishment springs from you. The source of it is God whom you place outside, above and beyond. Crime is identification, first with God, then with your own image. Crime is all that lies outside the pack and which is envied, coveted, lusted after. Crime flashes a million brilliant knife blades every minute of the day, and in the night too when waking gives way to dream. Crime is such a tough, such an immense tar­paulin, stretching from infinity to infinity. Where are the monsters who know not crime? What realms do they inhabit? What prevents them from snuffing out the universe?

– Henry Miller, ‘The Air-Conditioned Nightmare’ (New Directions, NY, 1945)  pp 86-87

“And suddenly Roy didn’t give a damn about Velma, or about Pa and Ma. He realized that they had never been real people to him at all, but figments out of a dream of the past. He began vaguely to understand that ever since the prison gate clanged shut behind him he’d been trying to return to his boyhood, where it was always summer and in the evenings the lightning-bugs flashed under the big branches of the sycamore trees and he swung on the farm gate with the yellow-haired girl from across the road while the Victrola on the porch played Dardanella. . . . Pa and Ma were replicas of his own folks merely, and Velma wasn’t really Velma, a slim, ordinary little blonde, but the ghost of Roma Stover, the yellow-haired girl swinging on the gate. . . .”

W. R. Burnett – High Sierra (1940)