disclaimer
Publisher’s Note
Rendering poetry in a digital format presents several challenges, just as its many forms continue to challenge the conventions of print. In print, however, a poem takes place within the static confines of a page, hewing as close as possible to the poet’s intent, whether it’s Walt Whitman’s lines stretching to the margin like Route 66, or Robert Creeley’s lines descending the page like a string tie. The printed poem has a physical shape, one defined by the negative space that surrounds it—a space that is crafted by the broken lines of the poem. The line, as vital a formal and critical component of the form of a poem as metaphor, creates rhythm, timing, proportion, drama, meaning, tension, and so on.
Reading poetry on a small device will not always deliver line breaks as the poet intended—with the pressure the horizontal line brings to a poem, rather than the completion of the grammatical unit. The line, intended as a formal and critical component of the form of the poem, has been corrupted by breaking it where it was not meant to break, interrupting a number of important elements of the poetic structure—rhythm, timing, proportion, drama, meaning, and so on. A little like a tightrope walker running out of rope before reaching the other side.
There are limits to what can be done with long lines on digital screens. At some point, a line must break. If it has to break more than once or twice, it is no longer a poetic line, with the integrity that lineation demands. On smaller devices with enlarged type, a line break may not appear where its author intended, interrupting the unit of the line and its importance in the poem’s structure.
We attempt to accommodate long lines with a hanging indent—similar in fashion to the way Whitman’s lines were treated in books whose margins could not honor his discursive length. On your screen, a long line will break according to the space available, with the remainder of the line wrapping at an indent. This allows readers to retain control over the appearance of text on any device, while also indicating where the author intended the line to break.
This may not be a perfect solution, as some readers initially may be confused. We have to accept, however, that we are creating poetry e-books in a world that is imperfect for them—and we understand that to some degree the line may be compromised. Despite this, we’ve attempted to protect the integrity of the line, thus allowing readers of poetry to travel fully stocked with the poetry that needs to be with them.
—Dan Halpern, Publisher
Contents
cover
title page
disclaimer
caught again at some impossible pass
in this—
why are all your poems personal?
prayer for broken-handed lovers
fast pace
I think of Hemingway
I was shit
corrections of self, mostly after Whitman:
the bumblebee
warble in
a trainride in hell
same old thing, Shakespeare through Mailer—
the rope of glass
tough luck
sometimes when I feel blue I listen to Mahler
men’s crapper
like a flyswatter
take me out to the ball game
I thought I was going to get some
charity ward
like that
phone call from my 5-year-old daughter in Garden Grove
the solar mass: soul: genesis and geotropism:
hooked on horse
fuck
2 immortal poems
T.H.I.A.L.H.
the lesbian
a poem to myself
fact
blues song
fat upon the land
love song
poem for Dante
the conditions
29 chilled grapes
burning in water, drowning in flame
a cop-out to a possible immortality:
well, now that Ezra has died . . .
warts
my new parents
something about the action:
55 beds in the same direction
b
finger
the thing
Bob Dylan
“Texsun”
warm water bubbles
a corny poem
the ladies of the afternoon
tongue-cut
Venice, Calif., nov. 1977:
mirror
head jobs
chili and beans
go to your grave cleanly—
kuv stuff mox out
a long hot day at the track
the letters of John Steinbeck
and the trivial lives of royalty never excited me either . . .
letter to a friend with a domestic problem:
agnostic
clones
gnawed by dull crisis
I been working on the railroad . . .
the way it goes
alone in a time of armies
going modern
it doesn’t always work
I have this room
a man for the centuries
dear old dad
peace and love
the world of valets
I live to write and now I’m dying
rip it
Henry Miller and Burroughs
family tree
being here
the only life
stomping at the Savoy
the glory days
congrats, Chinaski
he went for the windmills, yes
all my friends
a reader writes
ow said the cow to the fence that linked
my America, 1936
1/2/93 8:43 PM
musings
storm for the living and the dead
cover charge
good stuff
now
quit before the sun
#1
song for this softly-sweeping sorrow . . .
sources
acknowledgments
about the authors
also by charles bukowski
credits
copyright
about the publisher
caught again at some impossible pass
and the one with big feet, stupid, would not move
when I passed thro the aisle; that night at the barn
dance Elmer Whitefield lost a tooth fighting big
Eddie Green;
we’ll get his radio and we’ll get his watch, they said,
pointing at me, damn Yankee; but they didn’t know
I was an insane poet and I leaned there drinking wine
and loving all their women
with my eyes, and they were frightened and cowed
as any small town cattle
trying to figure out how to kill me
but first
foolishly
needing a reason; I could have told them
how not so long ago
I had almost killed for lack of reason;
instead, I took the 8:15 bus
to Memphis.
in this—
in this, grows the word of arrow;
we ache all through with simple terror
while walking down a simple street
and see where the tanks have piled it up:
faces run through, apples live with worms
to a squeeze of love; or out there—
where the sailors drowned, and the sea
washed it up, and your dog sniffed
and ran as if his hinds had been bitten
by the devil.
in this, say that Dylan wept
or Ezra craw
led with Muss
through thin Italian hours
as my fine brown dog
forgot the devil
or cathedrals shaking in sunlight’s gunfire,
and found love easily
upon the street outside.
in this, it’s true: that which makes iron
makes roses makes saints makes rapists
makes the decay of a tooth and a nation.
in this, a poem could be absence of word.
the smoke that once came up to push ten tons of steel
now lies flat and silent in an engineer’s hand.
in this, I see Brazil in the bottom of my glass.
I see hummingbirds—like flies, dozens of them—
stuck in a golden net. HELL!!—I have died in Words
like a man on a narcotic of thinning nectar!
in this, like blue through blue without bacchanalia dreams
where the tanks have piled it up, big boys shoot pool,
elf-eyes through smoke and waiting:
A CRACK AND BALLS, THAT’S ALL, ISN’T IT?
and courses in definitive literature.
why are all your poems personal?
why are all your poems personal? she
said, no wonder she hated you . . .
which one? I said. you know
which one . . . and don’t ever leave
water in your sink again, and you
can’t broil a roast; my landlady said
you’re very handsome and she wanted to
know why we didn’t get together
again . . .
did you tell her?
could I tell her you’re conceited
and alcoholic? could I tell her about
the time I had to pick you up
off your back
when you had that fight?
could I tell her
you play with yourself?
could I tell her
you think
you’re Mr. Vanbilderass?
I’ve always loved you, you know
I’ve always loved you!
good. some day I’ll write a poem about
it. a very personal
poem.
prayer for broken-handed lovers
in dwarfed and towering rage, in ambulances of hate,
stamping out the ants, stamping out the sleepless ants
forevermore . . . pray for my horses, do not pray for me;
pray for the fenders of my car, pray for the carbon on
the filaments of my brain . . . exactly, and listen,
I do not need any more love, any more wet stockings
like legs of death crawling my face in a midnight’s
bathroom . . . make me sightless of blood and wisdom and
despair, don’t let me see the drying carnation
pinking-out against my time, buttonholed and rootless
as the tombs of memory;
well, I’ve been bombed out of
better places than this, I’ve had the sherry shaken
out of my hand, I’ve seen the teeth of the piano move
filled with explosions of rot; I’ve seen the rats in
the fireplace
leaping like rockets through the flames;
pray for Germany, pray for France, pray for Russia,
do not pray for me . . . and yet . . . and yet I can see again
the crossing of the lovely legs, of more sherry and more
disappointment, more bombs—surging seas of bombs,
my paintings flying like birds amongst the earrings
and bottles, amongst the red lips, amongst the love letters
and the last piano, I will cry that I was right: we
never should have been.
fast pace
I came in awful tired with a finger sliced off and frost
on my feet and the lightning coming down the wallpaper;
they hung three men in the streets and the mayor was drunk
on candy, and they sunk the friggin’ fleet and the vultures
were smoking Havana cigars; o.k., I see where some bathing
beauty sliced her left wrist an’ they found her in a comatose
state in her bedroom—probably pining her heart out for
me, but I’ve got to move out of town: I thought I was a
no-sweat kid, a rock, but I just found a
grey hair above my
left ear.
I think of Hemingway
I think of Hemingway sitting
in a chair, he had a typewriter
and now he no longer touches
his typewriter, he has no more
to say.
and now Belmonte has no more
bulls to kill, sometimes I think
I have no more poems to write,
no more women to love.
I think of the form of the poem
but my feet hurt, there is dirt
on the windows.
the bulls sleep nights in the
fields, they sleep good without
Belmonte.
Belmonte sleeps good without
Belmonte but I do not sleep
so well.
I have neither created nor
loved for some time, I swat
at a fly and miss, I am an
old grey dog growing tooth-
less.
I have a typewriter and now
my typewriter no longer has
anything to say.
I will drink until morning
finds me in bed with the
biggest whore of them all:
myself.
Belmonte & Poppa, I under-
stand, this is the way it
goes, truly.
I have watched them bring
the dirt down all morning
to fill the holes in the
streets. I have watched
them put new wires on
the poles, it rained
last night, a very
dry rain, it was
not a bombing, only the
world is ending and I am
unable to write
about it.
I was shit
grief, the walls are bloody with grief and who cares?
a sparrow, a princess, a whore, a bloodhound?
by god, dirt cares, dirt, and dirt I shall be,
I’ll score a hero’s blast where heroes are all the same:
Ezra packed next to gopher just as I,
o by god, the noble intentions, the lives, the sewers,
the tables in Paris
flaunting and floating in our swine memories,
Havana, Cuba, Hemingway
falling to the floor
blood splashing all exits.
if Hemingway kills himself
what am I?
if Cummings dies across his typewriter,
if Faulkner clutches his heart and goes,
what am I?
what am I? what was I
when Jeffers died in his tomb,
his stone cocoon?
I was shit, shit, shit, shit.
I now fall to the floor and raise the last of myself
what’s left of myself
I promise grails filled with words as well as wine,
and the green, and the shade flapping,
all this is nothing,
God shaving in my bathroom,
rent due,
lightning breaking the backs of ants,
I must close in upon myself,
I must stop playing tricks for
deep inside
somewhere
above the nuts or
below or in that head
not yet crushed
eyes looking out like damned and impossible fires,
I see the gap I must leap, and I will be strong
and I will be kind, I have always been kind,
animals love me as if I were a child crayoning
the edges of the world,
sparrows walk right by, flies crawl under my eyelids,
I cannot hurt anything
but myself,
I cannot even in the bloody grief
scream;
this is more than a scripture inside my brain—
I am tossed along the avenues of trail and trial
like dice
the gods mouthing their fires of strength
and I
must not die,
yet.
corrections of self, mostly after Whitman:
I would break the boulevards like straws
and put old rattled poets who sip milk
and lift weights
into the drunk tanks from Iowa
to San Diego;
I would announce my own firm intention to immortality
quietly
since nobody would listen anyway,
and I would break the Victrola
I would break the soul of Caruso
on a warm night full of flies;
I would go hymie-ass
shifting it up the boulevards
on an old Italian racing bike,
glancing backwards
always knowing
like goodnights in Germany
or gloves thrown down,
it happens.
I would cry for the armies of Spain,
I would cry for Indians gone to wine,
I would cry, even, for Gable dead
if I could find a tear;
I would write introductions to books of poetry
of young men gone half-daft
with the word;
I would kill an elephant with a bowie knife
to see his trunk fall
like an empty stocking.
I would find things in sand and things
under my bed: teeth-marks, arm-marks, signs,
tips, paint-stains, love-stains, scratchings
of Swinburne . . .
I would break the mountains for their olive pits,
I would keen dead-nosed divers
with ways to go,
and as it happens
I would swat and kill one more fly
or write
one more useless poem.
the bumblebee
she dressed like a bumblebee,
black stripes on yellow,
and clish clish slitch went
the gun, the gun was always there,