and the shrimp are still
tough.
he’ll go away eventually,
I think
and sure enough he does after
shaking my hand one more
time.
my wife looks at me and says,
“you’re drunk.”
not drunk enough, I think.
I look around at the
other tables and notice
that they are all
peopled by the dead.
my wife stares at a plant near
our table.
“this plant is going to die,” she
says
I nod.
a man at the table next to
us waves his hand as he talks
and knocks over his glass of
wine.
he leaps up from his chair
and stands there
bent over with his
back to us
and all I can see is his big fat
butt.
enough is enough.
I wave the waiter over for
the bill.
A MUSICAL DIFFERENCE
I’ve done much listening and some
thinking
and it seems to me
that our contemporary composers
(at least those here in the U.S.A.)
are mostly university-sponsored
and comfortable
and their work lacks that
old world desperate
romanticism and
gamble.
consider the old boys
during the last 2 centuries in Europe.
it’s true that many of them were
sponsored by the so-called
Nobility
but there was a whole
pack of them who
starved
went mad or
suicided—
their lives became the ultimate sacrifice to
their art—
and
pragmatically speaking
this might seem
foolish
but I feel that
it was pretty damned brave
and that
that terrible final sacrifice
can be heard
in what they left
behind.
a man tends to lie
less
when he is starving and
trembling at the edge of
madness—
that is, most of the
time.
YOU TELL ME WHAT IT MEANS
after decades and decades of poverty
as I now approach the lip of the
grave,
suddenly I have a home, a new car, a
spa, a swimming pool, a computer.
will this destroy me?
well, something was going to destroy
me sooner or later
anyway.
the boys in the jails, the slaughterhouses,
the factories, the park benches, the
post offices, the bars
would never believe this
now.
I have a problem believing it myself.
I am no different now
than I was in the tiny rooms of
starvation and madness.
the only difference
is that I am
older
and I eat better
food,
drink better
liquor.
all the rest is
nonsense,
the luck of the
draw.
a life can change in a tenth of
a second
or sometimes it can take
70
years.
DEAR READER:
before I came up here to
write poems
tonight
I was downstairs with my
wife
and on tv
was the beginning of a
documentary.
the narrator said,
“after Ken Kesey wrote
his first novel
he didn’t write another for
25 years.”
then Mr. Kesey came on the
screen and said,
“I wanted to live my life,
not just write about it.”
I left then, went upstairs
to my electric
IBM,
sat down,
slipped in a sheet of
paper and
thought about what Mr.
Kesey had said:
“I wanted to live my life,
not just write about it.”
well, each person has the
right of choice
but if the choosing was
mine,
I’d rather have both:
the living and the
writing,
because I find them both
inseparable.
NOT MUCH SINGING
I have it, looking to my left, the cars of this
night coming down the freeway toward
me, they never stop, it’s a consistency
which is rather miraculous, and now a
night bird unseen in a tree outside
sings to me, he’s up late and I am too.
my mother, poor thing, used to say,
“Henry, you’re a night owl!”
little did she know, poor poor thing,
that I would close 3,000 bars
waiting for the cry,
“LAST CALL!”
now I drink alone on a second floor,
watching freeway headlights,
listening to crazy night birds.
I get lucky after midnight, the gods
talk to me then.
they don’t say very much but they
do say enough to take some of the
edge off of the day.
the mail has been bad, dozens of
letters, most of them asserting
“I know you won’t answer this but …”
and they’re right: the answers for myself
must come first as
I have suffered and still suffer many
of the things they complain
of.
there’s only one cure for life but
I don’t know what it is.
but I still have my freeway
headlights
and these hands
these same hands
receiving thoughts from my somewhat
damaged brain.
the pleasure of unseen
company
climbs these walls,
this night of gentle quiet and
a not very good poem
about it.
THE SHADOWS
now the territory is taken,
the sacrificial lambs have met their end,
as the shadows get ready to fall,
as history is scratched again on sallow walls,
as the bankers scurry to collect loans overdue,
as young girls paint their hungry lips,
as dogs sleep again in temporary peace,
as the oceans gobble the poisons of man,
as heaven and hell dance in the anteroom,
it all begins again:
we bake the apple,
buy the car,
mow the lawn,
pay the tax,
hang the wallpaper,
clip the nails,
listen to crickets,
blow up balloons,
drink orange juice,
forget the past,
pass the mustard,
pull down the shades,
take the pills,
check the temperature,
lace on the gloves,
the bell is ringing,
the pearl is in the oyster,
the rai
n falls
as the shadows get ready to fall again.
A PAUSE BEFORE THE COUNTER ATTACK
it’s a damned drag when your
brain and your legs get
weary and you stumble
about.
time to select your tombstone,
kid?
or maybe you’ll piss everybody off
and go on for another
twenty years?
(you could pick up some new
critics that way.)
but meanwhile, I believe I’ll take a
late dip in my spa in the
moonlight.
it’s been a great fight and, I think, a
worthy one,
so now I’ll follow my belly
down the stairway and into the
yard and into the bubbling
water.
this precious thing isn’t over yet, my
friend,
it could be that I’m just warming up to the
battle
with you, with me, with life, with death
itself.
I warned you long ago that I’d
always be here to disturb your fondest
dreams!
and now it’s into the foaming spa as
new poems
begin to
swirl and build
within.
PICTURE THIS
I have caged the world away
from me.
I am an old eagle
smoking this fine Italian cigar.
think of it:
an old eagle
smoking a fine Italian cigar!
it has become pleasant
again
just like you
just for a time there
I thought I wasn’t going to
make
it.
9 BAD BOYS
Céline will bat
lead-off,
Shostakovich is in the
second
spot,
Dostoevsky should hit
3rd,
Beethoven will definitely bat
clean-up,
Jeffers is in the 5th
spot,
Dreiser can hit
6th
and batting 7th
let’s have
Boccaccio
and 8th the
catcher:
Hemingway.
the pitcher?
hell, give me the
fucking
ball.
ONE MORE DAY
the quicksilver sun of my youth is
gone
and the mad girls belong to others
as I drive my car to the wash
and watch the boys polish it to a hearty
shine.
standing there and watching
I realize that
too much time
has slipped through my hands,
many years have vanished and now
my time left here is short.
I walk to my car,
tip the gentleman a dollar,
get in,
the quicksilver sun of my youth
gone.
I drive off,
turn left
turn right.
I am going somewhere.
my hands are on the wheel.
I nervously check the rearview mirror.
I am old game now for the young
hunters.
I stop at a red light.
it’s a lovely day for the
young and strong
and I have been living here now for
such a very long
time.
then the green light flashes
and I continue
on.
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
Version 1.0
Epub ISBN 9781448114429
www.randomhouse.co.uk
These poems are part of an archive of unpublished work that Charles Bukowski left to be published after his death.
Grateful acknowledgement is made to John Martin, who edited these poems.
This edition first published in 2004 by
Virgin Books Ltd
Thames Wharf Studios
Rainville Road
London
W6 9HA
First published in the United States of America in 2004 by Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollins, as The Flash of Lightning behind the Mountain
Copyright © Linda Lee Bukowski 2004
The right of Charles Bukowski to be identified as the Author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 0 7535 0898 2