Martinized version of "Living" (1 Viewer)

[David]

Looks like we have evidence that Martin tampered with a very fine non-posthumously published poem: "living" from Avalanche 3 which reads:

I got up and sat in a chair and watched them
coming in. they didn't look so good.
even the young girls didn't look as good as when they
left. hardly so. I guessed that their panties were not so
crisp now, a little sweaty, somebody had made them do some dull
hard work that had nothing to do with their being young
ladies.

Changed in Burning in Water to:

I got up and sat in a chair and watched them
come in. they didn't look so good.
even the young girls didn't look so good as when they
left.

Four lines ripped out, I suppose because of their offensive references to what happens to
girls' panties. Also the ungrammatical "so good as when they/left" mangles the correct original "as when they/left"
Anyone have Terror Street? I'm curious whether it was changed there also.

 

[hank solo]

The version in At Terror Street is almost the same as per Burning.

I got up and sat in a chair and watched them
coming in. they didn't look so good.
even the young girls didn't look so good as when they
left.

A couple of other small changes of lay to lie and layed to lay and awakened to woke up. Oh and in At Terror its needles head not needles eye.

At Terror Street:

living

I mean, I just slept
I awoke with a fly on my elbow and
I named the fly "Benny"
then I killed him
and then I got up and looked in the
mailbox
and there was some kind of warning from the
govt.
but since there wasn't anybody standing in the bushes with
a bayonet
I tore it up
and went back to bed and looked up at the ceiling
and I thought, I really like this,
I'm just going to lay here for another ten
minutes
and I layed there for another ten minutes
and I thought,
it doesn't make sense, I've got so many things to
do but I'm going to lay here another
half hour,
and I stretched

stretched​

and I watched the sun through the small leaves of a tree
outside, and I didn't have any wonderful thoughts,
I didn't have any immortal thoughts,
and that was the best
part.
and it got a little hot
and I threw the blankets off and slept again"”
but a damned dream:
I was on the train again
on that same 5 hour round-trip to the track,
sitting by the window,
past the same sad ocean, China out there mouthing
peculiarities in the back of my
brain, and then somebody sat next to me
and talked about horses
mothballs of talk that ripped me apart like
death, and then I was there
again: the horses running like something shown on a
screen and the jockeys very white in the face
and it didn't matter who finally
won and everybody knew
it. the ride back in the dream was the same as the ride
back in reality:
black tons of night around
the same mountains ashamed of being
there, the sea again, again,
the train heading like a cock through a needle's
head
and I had to get up and go to the urinal
and I hated to get up and go to the urinal
because somebody had thrown paper, some loser had thrown paper
into the toilet again and it wouldn't
flush, and when I came back out
everybody had nothing to do but look at my
face
and I am so tired
that they know when they see my face
that I hate
them
and then they hate me
and want to
kill me
but don't.

I awakened but since there wasn't anybody​

over my bed​

to tell me I was doing​

wrong​

I slept some​

more.​

when I awakened this time
it was almost
evening. people were corning in from work.
I got up and sat in a chair and watched them
coming in. they didn't look so good.
even the young girls didn't look so good as when they
left.
and the men came in : hatchet men, killers, thieves, con-men,
the whole bunch, and their faces were more horrible than any
halloween masks ever devised.

I found a blue spider in the corner and killed him with a
broom.

I looked at the people a while more and then I got tired and
stopped looking and fried myself a couple of eggs and sat down
and had some tea and bread with it.

I felt fine.

then I took a bath and went back to
bed.

 

[David]

Thanks.

 

[number6horse]

Thank you Hank Solo.