delicious.
war is perfect,
the solid way drips and leaks,
Schopenhauer laughed for 72 years,
and I was told by a very small man in a New York City
pawnshop
one afternoon:
“Christ got more attention than I did
but I went further on less…”
well, the distance between 5 points is the same as the
distance between 3 points is the same as the distance
between one point:
it is all as cordial as a bonbon:
all this that we are wrapped
in:
eunuchs are more exact than sleep
the postage stamp is mad, Indiana is ridiculous
the chameleon is the last walking flower.
funhouse
I drive to the beach at night
in the winter
and sit and look at the burned-down amusement pier
wonder why they just let it sit there
in the water.
I want it out of there,
blown-up,
vanished,
erased;
that pier should no longer sit there
with madmen sleeping inside
the burned-out guts of the funhouse…
it’s awful, I say, blow the damn thing up,
get it out of my eyes,
that tombstone in the sea.
the madmen can find other holes
to crawl into.
I used to walk that pier when I was 8
years old.
another academy
how can they go on, you see them
sitting in old doorways
with dirty stained caps and thick clothes and
no place to go;
heads bent down, arms on
knees they wait.
or they stand in front of the Mission
700 of them
quiet as oxen
waiting to be let into the chapel
where they will sleep upright on the hard benches
leaning against each other
snoring and
dreaming;
men
without.
in New York City
where it gets colder
and they are hunted by their own
kind, these men often crawl under car radiators,
drink the anti-freeze,
get warm and grateful for some minutes, then
die.
but that is an older
culture and a wiser
one;
here they scratch and
wait,
while on Sunset Boulevard the
hippies and yippies
hitchhike in
$50
boots.
out in front of the Mission I heard one guy say to
another:
“John Wayne won it.”
“Won what?” said the other guy
tossing the last of his rolled cigarette into the
street.
I thought that was
rather good.
a day at the oak tree meet
Filet’s Rule, the 12 horse around 12 to one,
that was the first race, they had a different
janitor in the men’s room, and I didn’t have the
2nd race either, Bold Courage, around 19 to one,
my Kentucky Lark got a dead ride from the boy
who stood up in the saddle all the way, which is
hardly a way to ride a 2 to one shot, and I
got a roast beef sandwich for $1.10, if you’re going
to go broke you might as well eat well, and in the
3rd Grandby had to pull up to avoid Factional who
came over on him, the stewards argued for 15
minutes before allowing it to stand, and there I was
52 dollars down and the mountains were dry,
life was hardly worthwhile, and in the 4th, Aberion
Bob I think was the play but I went to Misty Repose
who got locked in the one hole at 6 furlongs and had
nothing left when he swung out. A. Bob won handily and
I was 67 dollars down, the coffee was a quarter and
the coffee girl looked like an x-prostitute, which
she probably wasn’t, and then in the 5th, Christie’s
Star took it at thirteen to one and I was 3rd, I think
with Bold Street, I can’t beat those maiden races, and
I was 77 dollars down and bought a hot dog which cost
50 cents and was gone in 2 bites, and then I had to
go 20 win on Nearbrook, which won by 6 or 7 lengths
but at 4 to 5, so I am still 65 dollars down and the
mountains are still dry, but nobody is talking to me
or bothering me, there’s a chance. I put 15 win on
Moving Express and 5 win on Choctaw Charlie and C.C.
comes in at eight to one, and then I am only 37 dollars
down, and we have the 8th race, Manta at 3 to 5
was a rather obvious bet, I looked for something to beat
her and came up with Hollywood Gossip. Manta went
on by, but I had been afraid of that and had only gone
5 win, I was 42 dollars down with one race to go, and
I put 20 win on Vesperal and ten win on Cedar Cross,
and Cedar Cross ran dead and Vesperal went wire to
wire, so that was 72 down before the race, and
you take the 84 dollar pay off and you’ve got 12 dollars
profit. There you go: behind for 8 races, winner in
the 9th. Nothing big, but bankroll intact. This comes,
my friends, out of years of training. There are thorough-
bred horses and thoroughbred bettors. What you do is
stay with your plays and let them come to you. Loving
a woman is the same way, or loving life. You’ve
got to work a bit for it. In a day or 2 I’ll go again
and get off better. You’ll see me that night having a
quiet drink at the track bar as the losers run for the
parking lot. Don’t talk to me or bother me and I won’t
bother you. All right?
rain
a symphony orchestra.
there is a thunderstorm,
they are playing a Wagner overture
and the people leave their seats under the trees
and run inside to the pavilion
the women giggling, the men pretending calm,
wet cigarettes being thrown away,
Wagner plays on, and then they are all under the
pavilion. the birds even come in from the trees
and enter the pavilion and then it is the Hungarian
Rhapsody #2 by Lizst, and it still rains, but look,
one man sits alone in the rain
listening. the audience notices him. they turn
and look. the orchestra goes about its
business. the man sits in the night in the rain,
listening. there is something wrong with him,
isn’t there?
he came to hear the
music.
the colored birds
it is a highrise apt. next door
and he beats her at night and she screams and nobody stops it
and I see her the next day
standing in the driveway with curlers in her hair
and she has her huge buttocks jammed into black
slacks and she says, standing in the sun,
“god damn it, 24 hours a day in this place, I never go anywhere!”
then he comes out, proud, the little matador,
a pail of shit, his belly hanging over his bathing trunks—
he might have been a handsome man once, might have,
now they both stand there and he says,
“I think I’m
goin’ for a swim.”
she doesn’t answer and he goes to the pool and
jumps into the fishless, sandless water, the peroxide-codein water,
and I stand by the kitchen window drinking coffee
trying to unboil the fuzzy, stinking picture—
after all, you can’t live elbow to elbow to people without wanting to
draw a number on them.
every time my toilet flushes they can hear it. every time they
go to bed I can hear them.
soon she goes inside and then comes out with 2 colored birds
in a cage. I don’t know what they are. they don’t talk. they
just move a little, seeming to twitch their tail-feathers and
shit. that’s all they do.
she stands there looking at them.
he comes out: the little tuna, the little matador, out of the pool,
a dripping unbeautiful white, the cloth of his wet suit gripping.
“get those birds in the house!”
“but the birds need sun!”
“I said, get those birds in the house!”
“the birds are gonna die!”
“you listen to me, I said, GET THOSE BIRDS IN THE HOUSE!”
she bends and lifts them, her huge buttocks in the black slacks
looking so sad.
he slams the door behind them. then I hear it.
BAM!
she screams
BAM! BAM!
she screams
then: BAM!
and she screams.
I pour another coffee and decide that that’s a new
one: he usually only beats her at
night. it takes a man to beat his wife night and
day. although he doesn’t look like much
he’s one of the few real men around
here.
another lousy 10 percenter
I have read your stuff with
sharp inter…
he said,
falling forward
and knocking over his wine.
get that bum
OUTA here! screamed my old
lady.
but ma, I said, he’s my
agent! got a joint in
Plaza Square!
well, kiss my bubs, she said.
(she poured wine
all around,
the bat.)
I’ve represented, he said,
raisen his head, somerset mawn, ben heck
and tomas carylillie.
an’ as you might ’ave surmised, ’e said,
mah cut, daddy-o, is ten percent!
’is haid fell
forshafts.
Ma? I asked. who’s
forshafts?
Somerset Maun! she answered,
yo hashole!
making it
ignore all possible concepts and possibilities—
ignore Beethoven, the spider, the damnation of Faust—
just make it, babe, make it:
a house a car a belly full of beans
pay your taxes
fuck
and if you can’t fuck
copulate.
make money but don’t work too
hard—make somebody else pay to
make it—and
don’t smoke too much but drink enough to
relax, and
stay off the streets
wipe your ass real good
use a lot of toilet paper
it’s bad manners to let people know you shit or
could smell like it
if you weren’t
careful.
drunk ol’ bukowski drunk
I hold to the edge of the table
with my belly dangling over my
belt
and I glare at the lampshade
the smoke clearing
over
North Hollywood
the boys put their muskets down
lift high their fish-green beer
as I fall forward off the couch
kiss rug hairs like cunt
hairs
close as I’ve been in a
long time.
the poetry reading
at high noon
at a small college near the beach
sober
the sweat running down my arms
a spot of sweat on the table
I flatten it with my finger
blood money blood money
my god they must think I love this like the others
but it’s for bread and beer and rent
blood money
I’m tense lousy feel bad
poor people I’m failing I’m failing
a woman gets up
walks out
slams the door
a dirty poem
somebody told me not to read dirty poems
here
it’s too late.
my eyes can’t see some lines
I read it
out—
desperate trembling
lousy
they can’t hear my voice
and I say,
finished.
and later in my room
there’s scotch and beer:
the blood of a coward.
this then
will be my destiny:
scrabbling for pennies in dark tiny halls
reading poems I have long since become tired
of.
and I used to think
that men who drove busses
or cleaned out latrines
or murdered men in alleys were
fools.
slim killers
there are 4 guys at the door
all 6 feet four
and checking in at
around 210 pounds,
slim killers.
come in, I say,
and they walk in with their drinks
and circle the old man—
so you’re Bukowski, eh?
yeh, you fucking killers, what do you
want?
well, we don’t have a car
and Lee needs a ride to this nightspot
in Hollywood.
let’s go, I say.
we get into my car
all of us drunk, and
somebody in back says,
we’ve been reading your poetry a long time,
Bukowski, and I say,
I’ve been writing it a long time,
kid. we dump Lee at the nightspot
then stop off for enough beer and cigars
to demolish the
stratosphere.
back at my place I sit with the killers and
we drink and smoke.
it is somehow enjoyable.
I find I can outdrink and outsmoke them
but I realize that in areas such as fights on
the front lawn
my day is done.
the motherfuckers are just getting too young and
too big.
after they pass out
I give each of them a pillow and a blanket
and make sure all the cigars are
out.
in the morning they were just 3 big kids
untrapped, a couple of them
heaving in the bathroom.
an hour later
they were gone.
readers of my poems
I can’t say that
I disliked them.
the last days of the suicide kid
I can see myself now
after all these suicide days and nights,
being wheeled out of one of those sterile rest homes
(of course, this is only if I get famous and lucky)
by a subnormal and bored nurse…
there I am sitting upright in my wheelchair…
almost blind, eyes rolling backward into the dark part of my
skull
looking
for the mercy of death…
“Isn’t it a lovely day, Mr. Bukowski?”
“O, yeah, yeah…”
the children walk past and I don’t even exist
and lovely women walk by
with big hot hips
and warm buttocks and tight hot everything
praying to be loved
and I don’t even
exist…
“It’s the first sunlight we’ve had in 3 days,
Mr. Bukowski.”
“Oh, yeah, yeah.”
there I am sitting upright in my wheelchair,
myself whiter than this sheet of paper,
bloodless,
brain gone, gamble gone, me, Bukowski,
gone…
“Isn’t it a lovely day, Mr. Bukowski?”
“O, yeah, yeah…” pissing in my pajamas, slop drooling out of
my mouth.
2 young schoolboys run by—
“Hey, did you see that old guy?”
“Christ, yes, he made me sick!”