caught
transfixed,
the hours, the years,
this minute,
mutilated.
another comeback
climbing back up out of the ooze, out of
the thick black tar,
rising up again, a modern
Lazarus.
you’re amazed at your good
fortune.
somehow you’ve had more
than your share of second
chances.
hell, accept it.
what you have, you have.
you walk and look in the bathroom
mirror
at an idiot’s smile.
you know your luck.
some go down and never climb back up.
something is being kind to you.
you turn from the mirror and walk into the
world.
you find a chair, sit down, light a cigar.
back from a thousand wars
you look out from an open door into the silent
night.
Sibelius plays on the radio.
nothing has been lost or destroyed.
you blow smoke into the night,
tug at your right
ear.
baby, right now, you’ve got it
all.
two nights before my 72nd birthday
sitting here on a boiling hot night while
drinking a bottle of cabernet sauvignon
after winning $232 at the track.
there’s not much I can tell you except
if it weren’t for my bad right leg
I don’t feel much different than I did
30 or 40 years ago (except that
now I have more money and should be able
to afford a decent
burial). also,
I drive better automobiles and have
stopped carrying a
switchblade.
I am still looking for a hero, a role model,
but can’t find one.
I am no more tolerant of Humanity
than I ever was.
I am not bored with myself and find
that I am the only one I can
turn to in time of
crisis.
I’ve been ready to die for decades and
I’ve been practicing, polishing up
for that end
but it’s very
hot tonight
and I can think of little but
this fine cabernet,
that’s gift enough for me.
sometimes I can’t
believe I’ve come this far,
this has to be some kind of goddamned
miracle!
just another old guy
blinking at the forces,
smiling a little,
as the cities tremble and the left
hand rises,
clutching
something
real.
have we come to this?
Lord, boys,
it’s been a long time since we
sang a happy tune from
deep in the lungs.
somehow we’ve allowed them
to shut off our air, our water, our
electricity, our joy.
we’ve become like them: stilted, exact,
graven,
secretly bitter, smitten by
what’s small.
Lord, boys,
we’ve not been kind enough to hippies and
harpies, to sots and slatterns,
to our brothers and
sisters.
Lord, boys,
where has the heroic self
gone?
it’s gone into hiding, a scattered cat
in a hailstorm!
have we come to this?
have we really come to
this?
as I open my mouth
to sing
a happy tune from
deep in the lungs
a black fly
circles and swoops
in.
Lord!
old poem
what an old poem this is
from an old guy.
you’ve heard it many times
before:
me sitting here
sotted
again.
ashtray full.
bottles about.
poems scattered on the
as night creeps toward dawn
I make
more and more typing
errors and
the bars closed long
ago.
even the crickets are
asleep.
Li Po must have
experienced all these things
too.
hello, Li Po, you
juicehead, the world is still
full of
rancor and
regret.
you knew what to do
about that:
set fire to the
poems and then
sail them down the river
as the Emperor wept at such
waste
(but you and I
know that waste is a
natural part of the
way).
and the way is
now
and
fortunately
I have one drink
left
there on the floor
among the
poems
as
out of smokes
I poke into the
ashtray
light a butt
burn my nose
singe my
eyebrows
then tap out
another line of
boozy poesy
as I hear a voice
rising from the
neighborhood:
“FUCK YOU AND THAT
MACHINE!”
ah, they’ve been very
patient: it’s 3:45
a.m.
I will now stop
typing and I will
savor this last
drink
because while
I have defeated death
at least
10,000 times
the L.A. police department
is another
matter.
older
I’m older but I don’t mind,
yet.
I feel like a tank
rolling over and through all
the accumulated
crap.
more and more of it
piles up
as time passes,
physical and spiritual
crap.
we’ve even polluted
the stratosphere with
space junk,
with crap,
it floats around up
there.
I remember my grandmother.
she was old.
a mound of useless flesh
with dead eyes,
and a mind stuffed with,
well, crap.
it made me tired and
discouraged to look
at her.
me, I’m still rare meat,
I’ll make a good meal,
the black dogs of death trail me,
nip at my heels.
tiresome hounds, they never
quit.
when they bring me down
they’ll have something
worthy
of their efforts.
young maidens in far-off
countries will
weep,
and rightfully so.
and hell for me will be something interesting and
new.
closing time
around 2 a.m.
in my small room
after turning off the poem
machine
for now
I continue to light
cigarettes and listen to
Beethoven on the
radio.
I listen with a
strange and lazy
aplomb,
knowing there’s still a poem
or two left to write, and
I feel damn
fine, at long
last,
as once again I
admire the verve and gamble
of this composer
now dead for over 100
years,
who’s younger and wilder
than you are
than I am.
the centuries are sprinkled
with rare magic
with divine creatures
who help us get past the common
and
extraordinary ills
that beset us.
I light the next to last
cigarette
remember all the 2 a.m.’s
of my past,
put out of the bars
at closing time,
put out on the streets
(a ragged band of
solitary lonely
humans
we were)
each walking home
alone.
this is much better: living
where I now
live
and listening to
the reassurance
the kindness
of this unexpected
SYMPHONY OF TRIUMPH:
a new life.
no leaders, please
invent yourself and then reinvent yourself,
don’t swim in the same slough.
invent yourself and then reinvent yourself
and
stay out of the clutches of mediocrity.
invent yourself and then reinvent yourself,
change your tone and shape so often that they can
never
categorize you.
reinvigorate yourself and
accept what is
but only on the terms that you have invented
and reinvented.
be self-taught.
and reinvent your life because you must;
it is your life and
its history
and the present
belong only to
you.
everything hurts
when you get as old as I am you can’t help thinking
about death; you know it’s getting closer with every tick of
your watch: an old fart like me can go in a second,
have a stroke, or cancer, or
etc.
etc.
while the young think about locating a piece of ass
the old think about … death.
still,
age makes you appreciate small things:
like, say, you look at a grapefruit like you never
quite looked at one before, or at a bridge, or at a dog or even
just at the sidewalk, you realize you’ve never really seen them clearly
before.
and all the other things around you suddenly seem … new.
the world is now a flower, though sometimes an ugly
one.
and driving the boulevards, you watch people in their
cars and you think: each of them must finally
die.
it’s strange, isn’t it, that each of them must finally die?
then (I often get lucky) I will forget about death. I will
forget that I am … old.
I will feel 45 again. (I’ve always felt 45, even when
I was 16.)
as somewhere somebody waters a small potted plant,
as a plane crashes with a fierce explosion into a mountain,
as deep in the sea strange creatures move,
the poet remains manacled to his helpless
self.
husk
now I watch other men fight
for money and glory
on television
while I sit on an old couch
in the night
a wife and 5 or 6 cats
nearby.
now I sit and watch other men fight
for money and glory.
hell,
I never fought for money.
maybe I should have
but I was never that good
at it—
only sometimes
brave.
is it too late for a comeback?
a comeback from where?
now I sit and watch other men fight
for money and glory.
I sit with a soda and 3 fig bars
as the world curls and goes up in
flame around
me.
my song
ample
consternation,
plentiful
pain
restless days
and
sleepless
nights
always fighting
with all your
heart and soul
so as not
to fail at
living.
who could ask
for anything
more?
cancer
half-past nowhere
alone
in the crumbling
tower of myself
stumbling in this the
darkest
hour
the last gamble has been
lost
as I
reach
for
bone
silence.
blue
blue fish, the blue night, a blue knife—
everything is blue.
and my cats are blue: blue fur, blue claws,
blue whiskers, blue eyes.
my bed lamp shines
blue.
inside, my blue heart pumps blue blood.
my fingernails, my toenails are
blue
and around my bed floats a
blue ghost.
even the taste inside my mouth is
blue.
and I am alone and dying and
blue.
twilight musings
the drifting of the mind.
the slow loss, the leaking away.
one’s demise is not very interesting.
from my bed I watch 3 birds through the east window:
one coal black, one dark brown, the
other yellow.
as night falls I watch the red lights on the bridge blink on and off.
I am stretched out in bed with the covers up to my chin.
I have no idea who won at the racetrack today.
I must go back into the hospital tomorrow.
why me?
why not?
mind and heart
unaccountably we are alone
forever alone
and it was meant to be
that way,
it was never meant
to be any other way—
and when the death struggle
begins
the last thing I wish to see
is
a ring of human faces
hovering over me—
better just my old friends,
the wall
s of my self,
let only them be there.
I have been alone but seldom
lonely.
I have satisfied my thirst
at the well
of my self
and that wine was good,
the best I ever had,
and tonight
sitting
staring into the dark
I now finally understand
the dark and the
light and everything
in between.
peace of mind and heart
arrives
when we accept what
is:
having been
born into this
strange life
we must accept
the wasted gamble of our
days
and take some satisfaction in
the pleasure of
leaving it all
behind.
cry not for me.
grieve not for me.
read
what I’ve written
then
forget it
all.
drink from the well
of your self
and begin
again.
EXTRACT
FROM CHARLES BUKOWSKI’S
HOLLYWOOD
ALSO AVAILABLE FROM CANONGATE
Bukowski’s alter ego, Henry Chinaski, returns, revelling in his eternal penchant for booze, women and horse-racing as he makes the precarious journey from poet to screenwriter. Based on Bukowski’s experiences when working on the film Barfly, Hollywood is an irreverent roman à clef serving up the beating heart of La-la land with razor-sharp humour.