with a drink in your hand
humming the latest tune
and smiling at me in your red tight dress
extraordinary…
have you ever kissed a panther?
this woman thinks she’s a panther
and sometimes when we are making love
she’ll snarl and spit
and her hair comes down
and she looks out from the strands
and shows me her fangs
but I kiss her anyhow and continue to love.
have you ever kissed a panther?
have you ever seen a female panther enjoying
the act of love?
you haven’t loved, friend.
you with your squirrels and chipmunks
and elephants and sheep.
you ought to sleep with a panther
you’ll never again want
squirrels, chipmunks, elephants, sheep, fox,
wolverines,
never anything but the female panther
the female panther walking across the room
the female panther walking across your soul,
all other love songs are lies
when that black smooth fur moves against you
and the sky falls down against your back,
the female panther is the dream arrived real
and there’s no going back
or wanting to—
the fur up against you,
the search over
and you are locked against the eyes of a panther.
2 carnations
my love brought me 2 carnations
my love brought me red
my love brought me her
my love told me not to worry
my love told me not to die
my love is 2 carnations on a table
while listening to Schoenberg
on an evening darkening into night
my love is young
the carnations burn in the dark;
she is gone leaving the taste of almonds
her body tastes like almonds
2 carnations burning red
as she sits far away
now dreaming of china dogs
tinkling through her fingers
my love is ten thousand carnations burning
my love is a hummingbird sitting that quiet moment
on the bough
as the cat
crouches.
man and woman in bed at 10 p.m.
I feel like a can of sardines, she said.
I feel like a band-aid, I said,
I feel like a tuna fish sandwich, she said.
I feel like a sliced tomato, I said.
I feel like it’s gonna rain, she said.
I feel like the clock has stopped, I said.
I feel like the door’s unlocked, she said.
I feel like an elephant’s gonna walk in, I said.
I feel like we ought to pay the rent, she said.
I feel like we oughta get a job, I said.
I feel like you oughta get a job, she said.
I don’t feel like working, I said.
I feel like you don’t care for me, she said.
I feel like we oughta make love, I said.
I feel like we’ve been making too much love, she said.
I feel like we oughta make more love, I said.
I feel like you oughta get a job, she said.
I feel like you oughta get a job, I said.
I feel like a drink, she said.
I feel like a 5th of whiskey, I said.
I feel like we’re going to end up on wine, she said.
I feel like you’re right, I said.
I feel like giving up, she said.
I feel like I need a bath, I said.
I feel like you need a bath too, she said.
I feel like you ought to bathe my back, I said.
I feel like you don’t love me, she said.
I feel like I do love you, I said.
I feel that thing in me now, she said.
I feel that thing in you now too, I said.
I feel like I love you now, she said.
I feel like I love you more than you do me, I said.
I feel wonderful, she said, I feel like screaming.
I feel like going on forever, I said.
I feel like you can, she said.
I feel, I said.
the answer
she runs into the front room from outside
laughing,
well, you always wanted a CRAZY woman,
didn’t you?
hahahaha, ha.
you’ve always been fascinated with CRAZY women,
haven’t you?
hahahaha, ha.
sit down, I say, I have the coffee water
on.
we sit by the kitchen window on a Los Angeles
Sunday,
and I say,
see that man walking by?
yes, she says.
know what he’s thinking?
I ask.
what’s he thinking?
she asks.
he’s thinking, I say, he’s thinking
that he wants a loaf of bread for
breakfast.
a loaf of bread for breakfast?
yes, can you imagine some crazy son of a bitch
wanting a loaf of bread for
breakfast?
I can’t imagine it.
I get up and pour the coffees. then
we look at each
other. something has gone wrong the
night before and we want to find out
if it was her upset stomach
or my diarrhea
or something worse.
we lift our coffees, touch them in toast,
our eyes spark the question
and we sit by a kitchen window on a Los Angeles
Sunday,
waiting.
a split
death, he said, let it come,
it was after the races,
zipper on pants broken,
$80 winner
out one woman
he drove through stop signs and
red lights
at 70 m.p.h. on a side street
and then he heard the noise—
he was smashing through a barricade of
street obstructions
boards and lights flying
things jumping on the hood,
the car was thrown against the curbing
and he straightened it just in time
to miss a parked car,
he was drunk but it was the first time in
35 years he had hit anything,
and he ran up a dead end street,
turned, came on out,
took two rights
and 5 minutes later he was inside his
apartment. He got on the phone
and an hour later there were 14 people
drinking with him,
all but the right one,
and the next day he was sick
and she was there
and she said she had lost her purse out of
town ($55 and all her i.d.), 100 miles out of town,
she had gotten tired of waiting for him to phone
or not to phone;
she said, let’s not have any more splits, I can’t
bear them,
and he vomited, and she said,
all you want to do is kill yourself.
he said, all right, no more splits,
but he knew it would happen again and again
right down to the last split,
and he got up and cleaned his mouth and washed
and got back into bed with her
and she held him like a baby,
and he thought, hell, what kind of man am I?
and then he didn’t care
and they kissed
and i
t was all right until
next time.
power failure
was all set to write an immortal poem,
it was 9:30 p.m.,
had taken me all day to get the juices
properly aligned,
I sat down to the typewriter
reached for the keys and then
all the lights in the neighborhood went out.
she was working on her novel.
well, she said, we might as well go to
bed.
we went to bed.
since we had fucked 5 times in 2 nights
we decided it might be a better time to
tell eerie stories.
she told me one about the 2 sisters lost in the woods
who came upon the madman’s house, but it was
cold and dark and he was nowhere about
so they decided to go in, and one sister slept in
one bed and the other slept in the other,
and later in the night one sister was awakened by
this squeeking sound
and she looked up and here was the madman
rocking back and forth in this rocker
with her sister’s head in his lap,
and I told one
about how these two bums were in a skidrow room
and one bum sat on the floor and stuck his hand in his
mouth and ate his hand and then his arm and then ate the
other hand and soon ate himself up while the other bum
watched, and then the other bum sat on the floor and did
the same thing, and the story ends with this neon sign
blinking color off and on across the vacant floor…
well, we went to sleep
and then we were awakened when all the lights came on
plus the radio and the t.v.,
and I said, oh god, life is back again,
and she said, well, we might as well sleep now,
and so I got up and turned everything off
and we closed our eyes
and she thought, there goes my immortal novel,
and I thought, there goes my immortal poem,
everything depends upon some type of electricity,
the street lights kept me awake for 30 minutes,
then I dreamed that I ate matchsticks and lightbulbs
for a living and I was the best in my trade.
snake in the watermelon
we french kissed in the bathtub
then got up and rode the merrygoround
I fell over backwards in the chair
then we ate 2 cheese sandwiches
watered the plants and
read the New York Times.
the essence is in the action
the action is the essence,
between the moon and the sea and the ring
in the bathtub
the tame rats become more beautiful
than long red hair,
my father’s hands cut steak again
I roller skate before pygmies with green eyes,
the snake in the watermelon shakes the shopping cart,
we entered between the sheets which were as
delicious as miracles and walks in the park,
the hawk smiled daylight and nighttime,
we rode past frogs and elephants
past mines in mountains
past cripples working ouija boards,
she had toes on her feet
I had toes on my feet
we rode up and down and away
around,
it was sensible and pliable and holy
and felt very good
very very good,
the red lights blinked
the zepplin flew away
the war ended,
we stretched out then
and looked at the ceiling
a calm sea of a ceiling,
it was all right,
then we got back in the bathtub together
and french kissed
some more.
style
style is the answer to everything—
a fresh way to approach a dull or a
dangerous thing.
to do a dull thing with style
is preferable to doing a dangerous thing
without it.
Joan of Arc had style
John the Baptist
Christ
Socrates
Caesar,
Garcia Lorca.
style is the difference,
a way of doing,
a way of being done.
6 herons standing quietly in a pool of water
or you walking out of the bathroom naked
without seeing
me.
the shower
we like to shower afterwards
(I like the water hotter than she)
and her face is always soft and peaceful
and she’ll wash me first
spread the soap over my balls
lift the balls
squeeze them,
then wash the cock:
“hey, this thing is still hard!”
then get all the hair down there,—
the belly, the back, the neck, the legs,
I grin grin grin,
and then I wash her…
first the cunt, I
stand behind her, my cock in the cheeks of her ass
I gently soap up the cunt hairs,
wash there with a soothing motion,
I linger perhaps longer than necessary,
then I get the backs of the legs, the ass,
the back, the neck, I turn her, kiss her,
soap up the breasts, get them and the belly, the neck,
the fronts of the legs, the ankles, the feet,
and then the cunt, once more, for luck…
another kiss, and she gets out first,
toweling, sometimes singing while I stay in
turn the water on hotter
feeling the good times of love’s miracle
I then get out…
it is usually mid-afternoon and quiet,
and getting dressed we talk about what else
there might be to do,
but being together solves most of it,
in fact, solves all of it
for as long as those things stay solved
in the history of woman and
man, it’s different for each
better and worse for each—
for me, it’s splendid enough to remember
past the marching of armies
and the horses that walk the streets outside
past the memories of pain and defeat and unhappiness:
Linda, you brought it to me,
when you take it away
do it slowly and easily
make it as if I were dying in my sleep instead of in
my life, amen.
if we take—
if we take what we can see—
the engines driving us mad,
lovers finally hating;
this fish in the market
staring upward into our minds;
flowers rotting, flies web-caught;
riots, roars of caged lions,
clowns in love with dollar bills,
nations moving people like pawns;
daylight thieves with beautiful
nighttime wives and wines;
the crowded jails,
the commonplace unemployed,
dying grass, 2-bit fires;
men old enough to love the grave.
These things, and others, in content
show life swinging on a rotten axis.
But they’ve left us a bit of music
and a spiked show in the corner,
a jigger of scotch, a blue necktie,
a small volume of poems by Rimbaud,
a horse running as if the devil were
twisting his tail
over bluegrass and screaming, and then,
love again
like a streetcar turning the corner
on time,
the city waiting,
the wine and the flowers,
the water walking across the lake
and summer and winter and summer and summer
and winter again.
About the Author
CHARLES BUKOWSKI is one of America’s best-known contemporary writers of poetry and prose, and, many would claim, its most influential and imitated poet. He was born in Andernach, Germany, to an American soldier father and a German mother in 1920, and brought to the United States at the age of three. He was raised in Los Angeles and lived there for fifty years. He published his first story in 1944 when he was twenty-four and began writing poetry at the age of thirty-five. He died in San Pedro, California, on March 9, 1994, at the age of seventy-three, shortly after completing his last novel, Pulp (1994).
During his lifetime he published more than forty-five books of poetry and prose, including the novels Post Office (1971), Factotum (1975), Women (1978), Ham on Rye (1982), and Hollywood (1989). Among his most recent books are the posthumous editions of What Matters Most Is How Well You Walk Through the Fire (1999), Open All Night: New Poems (2000), Beerspit Night and Cursing: The Correspondence of Charles Bukowski and Sheri Martinelli 1960—1967 (2001), and The Night Torn Mad with Footsteps: New Poems (2001).