CHARLES BUKOWSKI
What Matters Most Is How Well You Walk Through the Fire.
for Marina Louise Bukowski
Contents
Dedication
Part 1
my father and the bum
legs, hips and behind
igloo
the mice
my garden
legs and white thighs
Mademoiselle from Armentières
my father’s big-time fling
the bakers of 1935
the people
the pretty girl who rented rooms
too soon
canned heat?
Pershing Square, Los Angeles, 1939
scene from 1940:
my big moment
daylight saving time
the railroad yard
horseshit
man’s best friend
the sensitive, young poet
hunger
the first one
the night I saw George Raft in Vegas
no title
too many blacks
white dog
blue beads and bones
ax and blade
some notes on Bach and Haydn
born to lose
Phillipe’s 1950
in the lobby
he knows us all
victory!
more argument
wind the clock
what?
she comes from somewhere
lifedance
the bells
full moon
everywhere, everywhere
about a trip to Spain
Van Gogh
Vallejo
when the violets roar at the sun
the professionals
the 8 count concerto
an afternoon in February
crickets
the angel who pushed his wheelchair
the circus of death
the man?
Christmas poem to a man in jail
snake eyes?
my friends down at the corner:
smiling, shining, singing
Bruckner
this moment
one more good one
Part 2
you do it while you’re killing flies
the 12 hour night
plants which easily winter kills
the last poetry reading
probably so
assault
raw with love
wide and moving
demise
the pact
75 million dollars
butterflies
4 Christs
$180 gone
blue head of death
young men
the meaning of it all
guess who?
I want a mermaid
an unusual place
in this city now—
Captain Goodwine
morning love
an old jockey
hard times on Carlton Way
we needed him
Nana
poor Mimi
a boy and his dog
the dangerous ladies
sloppy love
winter: 44th year
Hollywood Ranch Market
rape
gone away
note left on the dresser by a lady friend:
legs
the artist
revolt in the ranks
life of the king
the silver mirror
hunchback
me and Capote
the savior: 1970
la femme finie
beast
artistic selfishness
my literary fly
memory
Carlton Way off Western Ave.
at the zoo
coke blues
nobody home
woman in the supermarket
fast track
hanging there on the wall
the hookers, the madmen and the doomed
looking for Jack
apprentices
38,000-to-one
a touch of steel
brown and solemn
time
nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen
the way it works
bright lights and serpents
mean and stingy
$100
this particular war
German bar
floor job
the icecream people
like a cherry seed in the throat
Part 3
the ordinary café of the world
on shaving
school days
neither a borrower nor a lender be
sometimes even putting a nickel into a parking meter feels good—
Mahler
fellow countryman
the young man on the bus stop bench
computer class
image
the crunch (2)
I’ll send you a postcard
bravo!
downtown
the blue pigeon
combat primer
thanks for that
they arrived in time
odd
an interlude
anonymity
what’s it all mean?
one-to-five
insanity
farewell my lovely
comments upon my last book of poesy:
a correction to a lady of poesy:
Beethoven conducted his last symphony while totally deaf
on the sidewalk and in the sun
what do they want?
I hear all the latest hit tunes
am I the only one who suffers thus?
on lighting a cigar
the cigarette of the sun
to lean back into it
dog fight 1990
I used to feel sorry for Henry Miller
locked in
wasted
Sunday lunch at the Holy Mission
slaughter
a vote for the gentle light
be alone
I inherit
another day
tabby cat
the gamblers
the crowd
trouble in the night
3 old men at separate tables
the singer
stuck with it
action on the corner
no guru
in this cage some songs are born
my movie
a new war
roll the dice
About the Author
Other Books by Charles Bukowski
Copyright
About the Publisher
1
blue beads and bones
my father and the bum
my father believed in work.
he was proud to have a
job.
sometimes he didn’t have a
job and then he was very
ashamed.
he’d be so ashamed that he’d
leave the house in the morning
and then come back in the evening
so the neighbors wouldn’t
know.
me,
I liked the man next door:
he just sat in a chair in
his back yard and threw darts
at some circles he had painted
on the side of his garage.
in Los Angeles in 1930
he had a wisdom that
Goethe, Hegel, Kierkegaard,
Nietzsche, Freud,
Jaspers, Heidegger and
Toynbee would find hard
to deny.
legs, hips and behind
we liked the priest because once we saw him buy
an icecream cone
we were 9 years old then and when I went to
my best friend’s house his mother was usually
drinking with his father
they left the screen door open and listened
to music on the radio
his mother sometimes had her dress pulled
high and her legs excited me
made me nervous and afraid but excited
somehow
by those black polished shoes and those nylons—
even though she had buck teeth and a
very plain face.
when we were ten his father shot and
killed himself with a bullet through
the head
but my best friend and his mother went on
living in that house
and I used to see his mother going
up the hill to the market with her
shopping bag and I’d walk along beside
her
quite conscious of her legs and her
hips and her behind
the way they all moved together
and she always spoke nicely to me
and her son and I went to church and
confession together
and the priest lived in a cottage
behind the church
and a fat kind lady was always there
with him
when we went to visit
and everything seemed warm and
comfortable then in
1930
because I didn’t know
that there was a worldwide
depression
and that madness and sorrow and fear were
almost everywhere.
igloo
his name was Eddie and he had a
big white dog
with a curly tail
a huskie
like one of those that pulled sleighs
up near the north pole
Igloo he called him
and Eddie had a bow and arrow
and every week or two
he’d send an arrow
into the dog’s side
then run into his mother’s house
through the yelping
saying that Igloo had fallen on
the arrow.
that dog took quite a few arrows and
managed to
survive
but I saw what really happened and didn’t
like Eddie very much.
so when I broke Eddie’s leg
in a sandlot football game
that was my way of getting even
for Igloo.
his parents threatened to sue my
parents
claiming I did it on purpose because
that’s what Eddie
told them.
well, nobody had any money anyhow
and when Eddie’s father got a job
in San Diego
they moved away and left the
dog.
we took him in.
Igloo turned out to be rather dumb
did not respond to very much
had no life or joy in him
just stuck out his tongue
panted
slept most of the time
when he wasn’t eating
and although he wiped his ass
up and down the lawn after
defecating
brown
under his tail
when he was run over by an
icecream truck
3 or 4 months later
and died in a stream of scarlet
I didn’t feel more than the
usual amount of grief
and loss
and I was still glad that I
had managed to
break Eddie’s leg.
the mice
my father caught the baby mice
they were still alive and he
flung them into the flaming
incinerator
one by one.
the flames leaped out
and I wanted to throw my father
in there
but my being 10 years old
made that
impossible.
“o.k., they’re dead,” he told me,
“I killed the bastards!”
“you didn’t have to do that,”
I said.
“do you want them running
all over the house?
they leave droppings, they
bring disease!
what would you do with
them?”
“I’d make pets out of
them.”
“pets!
what the hell’s wrong with
you anyhow?”
the flame in the incinerator
was dying down.
it was all too late.
it was over.
my father had won
again.
my garden
in the sun and in the rain
and in the day and in the night
pain is a flower
pain is flowers
blooming all the time.
legs and white thighs
the 3 of us were somewhere
between 9 and 10 years old
and we would gather in the bushes
alongside the driveway about 9:30
p.m. and look under the shade
and through the curtains at Mrs. Curson’s
crossed legs—always
one foot wiggling, such a fine
thin ankle!
and she usually had her skirt
above the knee
(actually above the knee!)
and then above the garter that
held the hose sometimes we could see
a glimpse of her white thigh.
how we looked and breathed and
dreamed about those perfect
white thighs!
suddenly Mr. Curson would
get up from his chair to
let the dog out and
we’d start running through strange yards
climbing 5 foot lattice fences,
falling, getting up, running for
blocks
finally getting brave again and
stopping at some hamburger stand
for a coke.
I’m sure that Mrs. Curson never
realized what her legs and white
thighs did for us
then.
Mademoiselle from Armentières
if you gotta have wars
I suppose World War One was the best.
really, you know, both sides were much more enthusiastic,
they really had something to fight for,
they really thought they had something to fight for,
it was bloody and wrong but it was Romantic,
those dirty Germans with babies stuck on the ends of their
bayonets, and so forth, and
there were lots of patriotic songs, and the women loved both the soldiers
and their money.
the Mexican war and those other wars hardly ever happened.
and the Civil War, that was just a movie.
the wars come too fast now
even the pro-war boys grow weary,
World War Two did them in,
and then Korea, that Korea,
that was dirty, nobody won
except the black marketeers,
and BAM!—then came Vietnam,