CHARLES BUKOWSKI

THE ROOMINGHOUSE MADRIGALS

EARLY SELECTED POEMS 1946-1966

Table of Contents

Foreword

22,000 Dollars in 3 Months

On Seeing an Old Civil War Painting…

What to Do with Contributor’s Copies?

Brave Bull

It’s Not Who Lived Here

O, We Are the Outcasts

Poem for My 43rd Birthday

The Genius of the Crowd

4:30 A.M.

The Simplicity of Everything in Viet Nam

The Night They Took Whitey

The Japanese Wife

Sundays Kill More Men Than Bombs

The Loser

On a Night You Don’t Sleep

An Empire of Coins

All I Know

On Going Back to the Street…

Anthony

Layover

The Dogs of Egypt

Old Man, Dead in a Room

Love Is a Piece of Paper Torn to Bits

Big Bastard with a Sword

About My Very Tortured Friend, Peter

Not Quite So Soon

Counsel

I Wait in the White Rain

Breakout

I Cannot Stand Tears

Horse on Fire

Mother and Son

The Day I Kicked Away a Bankroll

The Dogs

Imbecile Night

A Kind of Lecture…

The Gift

Object Lesson

Goldfish

Sleep

Hello, Willie Shoemaker

The Literary Life

Countryside

Death Wants More Death

Eat

10 Lions and the End of the World

The Blackbirds Are Rough Today

A Word on the Quick and Modern Poem-Makers

Seahorse

I Have Lived in England

Farewell, Foolish Objects

A Report Upon the Consumption of Myself

Fleg

Interviewed by a Guggenheim Recipient

Very

The Look:

One Night Stand

Poem to a Most Affectionate Lady

Parts of an Opera, Parts of a Guitar…

Letter from the North

The Best Way to Get Famous Is to Run Away

The Kings Are Gone

Reprieve and Admixture

The Swans Walk My Brain…

The End

A Farewell Thing While Breathing

Sad-Eyed Mules of Men

Dear Friend

A Conversation on Morality…

Soirée

Notations from a Muddled Indolence

Nothing Subtle

I Don’t Need a Bedsheet with Slits for Eyes…

86’d

The Ants

Suicide

3:30 A.M. Conversation

Cows in Art Class

Practice

I Kneel

Freedom: The Unmolested Eagle of Myself

Singing is Fire

The Sun Wields Mercy

On the Failure of a Poet

The Beast

A Rat Rises

Pansies

The Man with the Hot Nose

Hangover and Sick Leave

Mercy, Wherever You Are…

It’s Nothing to Laugh About

35 Seconds

Regard Me

With Vengeance Like a Tiger Crawls

Itch, Come and Gone

This

2 Outside, As Bones Break in My Kitchen

Saying Goodbye to Love

You Smoke a Cigarette

Friendly Advice to a Lot of Young Men

Everything

…American Express, Athens, Greece

One Hundred and Ninety-Nine Pounds…

I Write This Upon the Last Drink’s Hammer

Poem for Liz

A Nice Place

Insomnia

Wrong Number

When the Berry Bush Dies…

Face While Shaving

9 Rings

Somebody Always Breaking My Dainty Solitude…

Thank God for Alleys

The Millionaire

Dow Jones: Down

As I Lay Dying

A Minor Impulse to Complain

Buffalo Bill

Experience

I Am Visited by an Editor and a Poet

The Mexican Girls

The New Place

Conversation in a Cheap Room

I Was Born to Hustle Roses Down the Avenues of the Dead

Winter Comes to a Lot of Places in August

Bring Down the Beams

Reunion

Fragile!

I Am with the Roots of Flowers

Monday Beach, Cold Day

The High-Rise of the New World

The Gypsies Near Del Mar

6 A.M.

A Trick to Dull Our Bleeding

Rose, Rose

Spain Sits Like a Hidden Flower in My Coffeepot

Thermometer

Eaten by Butterflies

Destroying Beauty

About the Author

Other Books by Charles Bukowski

Cover

Copyright

About the Publisher

Foreword

A question put to me quite often is, “Why do your out-of-print books cost so much?” Well, they cost so much because that’s what booksellers can get for them from collectors.

“I want to read your early poems but…”

I don’t even have some of my early books. Most of them were stolen by people I drank with. When I’d go to the bathroom, they did their shit. It only reinforced my general opinion of humanity. And caused me to drink with fewer people.

At first, I made efforts to replace these books, and did, but when they were stolen all over again I stopped the replacement process and more and more drank alone.

Anyhow, what follows are what we consider to be the best of the early poems. Some are taken from the first few books; others were not in books but have been taken from obscure magazines of long ago.

The early poems are more lyrical than where I am at now. I like these poems but I disagree with some who claim, “Bukowski’s early work was much better.” Some have made these claims in critical reviews, others in parlors of gossip.

Now the reader can make his own judgment, first hand.

In my present poetry, I go at matters more directly, land on them and then get out. I don’t believe that my early methods and my late methods are either inferior or superior to one another. They are different, that’s all.

Yet, re-reading these, there remains a certain fondness for that time. Coming in from the factory or warehouse, tired enough, there seemed little use for the night except to eat, sleep and then return to the menial job. But there was the typewriter waiting for me in those many old rooms with torn shades and worn rugs, the tub and toilet down the hall, and the feeling in the air of all the losers who had preceded me. Sometimes the typewriter was there when the job wasn’t and the food wasn’t and the rent wasn’t. Sometimes the typer was in hock. Sometimes there was only the park bench. But at the best of times there was the small room and the machine and the bottle. The sound of the keys, on and on, and shouts: “HEY! KNOCK IT OFF, FOR CHRIST’S SAKE! WE’RE WORKING PEOPLE HERE AND WE’VE GOT TO GET UP IN THE MORNING!” With broomsticks knocking on the floor, pounding coming from the ceiling, I would work in a last few lines….

I was not Hamsun eating his own flesh in order to continue writing but I had a fair amount of travail. The poems were sent out as written on first impulse, no line or word changes. I never revised or retyped. To eliminate an error, I would simply go over it thus: #########, and go on with the line. One magazine editor printed a group of my poems with all the ########s intact.

At any rate, here are many of the poems from that wondrous and crazy time, from those distant hours. The room steamed with smoke, dizzied with fumes, we gambled. I hope they work for you. And if they don’t, well, #### ## ###.

Charles Bukowski
San Pedro, 10-31-87

22,000 Dollars in 3 Months

night has come like something crawling

up the bannister, sticking out its tongue

of fire, and I remember the

missionaries up to their knees in muck

retreating across the beautiful blue river

and the machine gun slugs flicking spots of

fountain and Jones drunk on the shore

saying shit shit these Indians

where’d they get the fire power?

and I went in to see Maria

and she said, do you think they’ll attack,

do you think they’ll come across the river?

afraid to die? I asked her, and she said

who isn’t?

and I went to the medicine cabinet

and poured a tall glassful, and I said

we’ve made 22,000 dollars in 3 months building roads

for Jones and you have to die a little

to make it that fast…Do you think the communists

started this? she asked, do you think it’s the communists?

and I said, will you stop being a neurotic bitch.

these small countries rise because they are getting

their pockets filled from both sides…and she

looked at me with that beautiful schoolgirl idiocy

and she walked out, it was getting dark but I let her go,

you’ve got to know when to let a woman go if you want to
keep her,

and if you don’t want to keep her you let her go anyhow,

so it’s always a process of letting go, one way or the other,

so I sat there and put the drink down and made another

and I thought, whoever thought an engineering course at Old Miss

would bring you where the lamps swing slowly

in the green of some far night?

and Jones came in with his arm around her blue waist

and she had been drinking too, and I walked up and said,

man and wife? and that made her angry for if a woman can’t

get you by the nuts and squeeze, she’s done,

and I poured another tall one, and

I said, you 2 may not realize it

but we’re not going to get out of here alive.

we drank the rest of the night.

you could hear, if you were real still,

the water coming down between the god trees,

and the roads we had built

you could hear animals crossing them

and the Indians, savage fools with some savage cross to bear.

and finally there was the last look in the mirror

as the drunken lovers hugged

and I walked out and lifted a piece of straw

from the roof of the hut

then snapped the lighter, and I

watched the flames crawl, like hungry mice

up the thin brown stalks, it was slow but it was

real, and then not real, something like an opera,

and then I walked down toward the machine gun sounds,

the same river, and the moon looked across at me

and in the path I saw a small snake, just a small one,

looked like a rattler, but it couldn’t be a rattler,

and it was scared seeing me, and I grabbed it behind the neck

before it could coil and I held it then

its little body curled around my wrist

like a finger of love and all the trees looked with eyes

and I put my mouth to its mouth

and love was lightning and remembrance,

dead communists, dead fascists, dead democrats, dead gods and

back in what was left of the hut Jones

had his dead black arm around her dead blue waist.

On Seeing an Old Civil War Painting with My Love

I

the cannoneer is dead,

and all the troops;

the conceited drummer boy

dumber than the tombs

lies in a net of red;

and under leaves, bugs twitch antennae

deciding which way to move

under the cool umbrella of decay;

the wind rills down like thin water

and searches under clothing,

sifting and sorry;

…clothing anchored with heavy bones

in noonday sleep

like men gone down on ladders, resting;

yet an hour ago

tree-shadow and man-shadow

showed their outline against the sun—

yet now, not a man amongst them

can single out the reason

that moved them down toward nothing;

and I think mostly of some woman far off

arranging important jars on some second shelf

and humming a dry, sun-lit tune.

II

outside, the quick storm turns the night slowly

backwards

and sends it shifting to old shores,

and everywhere are bones…rib bones and light,

and grass, grass leaning left;

and we hump our backs against the wet like living things,

and this one with me now

holds my yearning like a packet

slips it into her purse with her powders and potions

pulls up a sheer stocking, chatters, touches her hair:

it’s raining, oh damn it all, it’s raining!

and on the battlefield the rocks are wet and cool,

the fine grains of rock glint moon-fire,

and she curses under a small green hat

like a crown

and walks like a gawky marionette

into the strings of rain.

What to Do with Contributor’s Copies?

(Dear Sir: Although we realize it is

insufficient payment for your poems,

you will receive 4 contributor’s copies,

which we will mail directly to you or to

anyone you wish.—Note from the Editor.)

well, ya better mail one to M.S. or she’ll prob.

put her pisser in the oven, she thinks she is hot

stuff, and mabe she is, I sure as hell wd’t

know

then there is C.W. who does not answer his mail

but is very busy teaching young boys how to write

and I know he is going places, and since he is,

ya better mail ’m one…

then there’s my old aunt in

Palm Springs nothing but money and I have

everything but money…talent, a good singing voice,

a left hook deep to the gut…send her a copy,

she hung up on me, last time I phoned her drunk,

giving evidence of need, she hung up

on me…

then there’s this girl in Sacramento who

writes me these little letters…very depressed

bitch, mixed and beaten like some waffle, making

gentle intellectual overtures which I ignore,

but send her a magazine

in lieu of a hot poker.

that makes 4?

I hope to send you some more poems

soon because I figure that

people who print my poems are a little

mad, but that’s all right. I am also

that way. anyhow—

I hope

meanwhile

you do not fold up

before

I

do.

c.b.

Brave Bull

I did not know

that the Mexicans

did this:

the bull

had been brave

and now

they dragged him

dead

around the ring

by his

tail,

a brave bull

dead,

but not just another bull,

this was a special

bull,

and to me

a special

lesson…

and although Brahms

stole his First from Beethoven’s

9th.

and although

the bull

was dead

his head and his horns and

his insides dead,

he had been better than

Brahms,

as good as

Beethoven,

and

as we walked out

the sound and meaning

of him

kept crawling up my arms

and although people bumped me and

stepped on my toes

the bull burned within me

my candle of

jesus,

dragged by his tail

he had nothing to do

having done it all,

and through the long tunnels and minatory glances,

the elbows and feet and eyes, I prayed for California,

and the dead bull

in man

and in me,

and I clasped my hands

deep within my

pockets, seized darkness,

and moved on.

It’s Not Who Lived Here

but who died here;

and it’s not when

but how;

it’s not

the known great

but the great who died unknown;

it’s not

the history

of countries

but the lives of men.

fables are dreams,

not lies,

and

truth changes

as

men change,

and when truth becomes stable

men

will

become dead

and

the insect

and the fire and

the flood

will become

truth.

O, We Are the Outcasts

ah, christ, what a CREW:

more

poetry, always more

POETRY.

if it doesn’t come, coax it out with a

laxative. get your name in LIGHTS,

get it up there in

8½ x 11 mimeo.

keep it coming like a miracle.

ah christ, writers are the most sickening

of all the louts!

yellow-toothed, slump-shouldered,

gutless, flea-bitten and

obvious…in tinker-toy rooms

with their flabby hearts

they tell us

what’s wrong with the world—

as if we didn’t know that a cop’s club

can crack the head

and that war is a dirtier game than

marriage…

or down in a basement bar

hiding from a wife who doesn’t appreciate him

and children he doesn’t

want

he tells us that his heart is drowning in

vomit. hell, all our hearts are drowning in vomit,

in pork salt, in bad verse, in soggy

love.

but he thinks he’s alone and

he thinks he’s special and he thinks he’s Rimbaud

and he thinks he’s

Pound.

and death! how about death? did you know

that we all have to die? even Keats died, even

Milton!

and D. Thomas—THEY KILLED HIM, of course.

Thomas didn’t want all those free drinks

all that free pussy—

they…FORCED IT ON HIM

when they should have left him alone so he could

write write WRITE!

poets.

and there’s another

type. I’ve met them at their country

places (don’t ask me what I was doing there because

I don’t know).

they were born with money and

they don’t have to dirty their hands in

slaughterhouses or washing

dishes in grease joints or

driving cabs or pimping or selling pot.

this gives them time to understand

Life.

they walk in with their cocktail glass

held about heart high

and when they drink they just

sip.

you are drinking green beer which you

brought with you

because you have found out through the years

that rich bastards are tight—

they use 5 cent stamps instead of airmail

they promise to have all sorts of goodies ready

upon your arrival

from gallons of whiskey to

50 cent cigars. but it’s never

there.

and they HIDE their women from you—

their wives, x-wives, daughters, maids, so forth,

because they’ve read your poems and

figure all you want to do is fuck everybody and

everything. which once might have been

true but is no longer quite

true.

and—

he WRITES TOO.

POETRY, of

course. everybody

writes

poetry.

he has plenty of time and a

postoffice box in town

and he drives there 3 or 4 times a day

looking and hoping for accepted

poems.

he thinks that poverty is a weakness of the

soul.

he thinks your mind is ill because you are

drunk all the time and have to work in a

factory 10 or 12 hours a

night.

he brings his wife in, a beauty, stolen from a

poorer rich

man.

he lets you gaze for 30 seconds

then hustles her

out. she has been crying for some

reason.

you’ve got 3 or 4 days to linger in the

guesthouse he says,

“come on over to dinner

sometime.”

but he doesn’t say when or

where. and then you find that you are not even

IN HIS HOUSE.

you are in

ONE of his houses but

his house is somewhere

else—

you don’t know

where.

he even has x-wives in some of his

houses.

his main concern is to keep his x-wives away from

you. he doesn’t want to give up a

damn thing. and you can’t blame him:

his x-wives are all young, stolen, kept,

talented, well-dressed, schooled, with

varying French-German accents.

and!: they

WRITE POETRY TOO. or

PAINT. or

fuck.

but his big problem is to get down to that mail

box in town to get back his

rejected poems

and to keep his eye on all the other mail boxes

in all his other

houses.

meanwhile, the starving Indians

sell beads and baskets in the streets of the small desert

town.

the Indians are not allowed in his houses

not so much because they are a fuck-threat

but because they are

dirty and

ignorant. dirty? I look down at my shirt

with the beerstain on the front.

ignorant? I light a 6 cent cigar and

forget about

it.

he or they or somebody was supposed to meet me at

the

train station.

of course, they weren’t

there. “We’ll be there to meet the great

Poet!”

well, I looked around and didn’t see any

great poet. besides it was 7 a.m. and

40 degrees. those things

happen. the trouble was there were no

bars open. nothing open. not even a

jail.

he’s a poet.

he’s also a doctor, a head-shrinker.

no blood involved that

way. he won’t tell me whether I am crazy or

not—I don’t have the

money.

he walks out with his cocktail glass

disappears for 2 hours, 3 hours,

then suddenly comes walking back in

unannounced

with the same cocktail glass

to make sure I haven’t gotten hold of

something more precious than

Life itself.

my cheap green beer is killing

me. he shows heart (hurrah) and

gives me a little pill that stops my

gagging.

but nothing decent to

drink.

he’d bought a small 6 pack

for my arrival but that was gone in an

hour and 15

minutes.

“I’ll buy you barrels of beer,” he had

said.

I used his phone (one of his phones)

to get deliveries of beer and

cheap whiskey. the town was ten miles away,

downhill. I peeled my poor dollars from my poor

roll. and the boy needed a tip, of

course.

the way it was shaping up I could see that I was

hardly Dylan Thomas yet, not even

Robert Creeley. certainly Creeley wouldn’t have

had beerstains on his

shirt.

anyhow, when I finally got hold of one of his

x-wives I was too drunk to

make it.

scared too. sure, I imagined him peering

through the window—

he didn’t want to give up a damn thing—

and

leveling the luger while I was

working

while “The March to the Gallows” was playing over

the Muzak

and shooting me in the ass first and

my poor brain

later.

“an intruder,” I could hear him telling them,

“ravishing one of my helpless x-wives.”

I see him published in some of the magazines

now. not very good stuff.

a poem about me

too: the Polack.

the Polack whines too much. the Polack whines about his

country, other countries, all countries, the Polack

works overtime in a factory like a fool, among other

fools with “pre-drained spirits.”

the Polack drinks seas of green beer

full of acid. the Polack has an ulcerated

hemorrhoid. the Polack picks on fags

“fragile fags.” the Polack hates his

wife, hates his daughter. his daughter will become

an alcoholic, a prostitute. the Polack has an

“obese burned out wife.” the Polack has a

spastic gut. the Polack has a

“rectal brain.”

thank you, Doctor (and poet). any charge for

this? I know I still owe you for the

pill.

Your poem is not too good

but at least I got your starch up.

most of your stuff is about as lively as a

wet and deflated

beachball. but it is your round, you’ve won a round.

going to invite me out this

Summer? I might scrape up

trainfare. got an Indian friend who’d like to meet

you and yours. he swears he’s got the biggest

pecker in the state of California.

and guess what?

he writes

POETRY

too!

Poem for My 43rd Birthday

To end up alone

in a tomb of a room

without cigarettes

or wine—

just a lightbulb

and a potbelly,

grayhaired,

and glad to have

the room.

…in the morning

they’re out there

making money:

judges, carpenters,

plumbers, doctors,

newsboys, policemen,

barbers, carwashers,

dentists, florists,

waitresses, cooks,

cabdrivers…

and you turn over

to your left side

to get the sun

on your back

and out

of your eyes.

The Genius of the Crowd

There is enough treachery, hatred,

violence,

Absurdity in the average human

being

To supply any given army on any given

day.

AND The Best At Murder Are Those

Who Preach Against It.

AND The Best At Hate Are Those

Who Preach LOVE

AND THE BEST AT WAR

—FINALLY—ARE THOSE WHO

PREACH

PEACE

Those Who Preach GOD

NEED God

Those Who Preach PEACE

Do Not Have Peace.

THOSE WHO PREACH LOVE

DO NOT HAVE LOVE

BEWARE THE PREACHERS

Beware The Knowers.

Beware

Those Who

Are ALWAYS

READING

BOOKS

Beware Those Who Either Detest

Poverty Or Are Proud Of It

BEWARE Those Quick To Praise

For They Need PRAISE In Return

BEWARE Those Quick To Censure:

They Are Afraid Of What They Do

Not Know

Beware Those Who Seek Constant

Crowds; They Are Nothing

Alone

Beware

The Average Man

The Average Woman

BEWARE Their Love

Their Love Is Average, Seeks

Average

But There Is Genius In Their Hatred

There Is Enough Genius In Their

Hatred To Kill You, To Kill

Anybody.

Not Wanting Solitude

Not Understanding Solitude

They Will Attempt To Destroy

Anything

That Differs

From Their Own

Not Being Able

To Create Art

They Will Not

Understand Art

They Will Consider Their Failure

As Creators

Only As A Failure

Of The World

Not Being Able To Love Fully

They Will BELIEVE Your Love

Incomplete

AND THEN THEY WILL HATE

YOU

And Their Hatred Will Be Perfect

Like A Shining Diamond

Like A Knife

Like A Mountain

LIKE A TIGER

LIKE Hemlock

Their Finest

ART

4:30 A.M.

the fields rattle

with red birds;

it is 4:30 in

the morning,

it is always

4:30 in the morning,

and I listen for

my friends:

the garbagemen

and the thieves,

and cats dreaming

red birds

and red birds dreaming

worms,

and worms dreaming

along the bones of

my love,

and I cannot sleep,

and soon morning will come,

the workers will rise,

and they will look for me

at the docks,

and they will say,

“he is drunk again,”

but I will be asleep,

finally,

among the bottles and

sunlight,

all darkness gone,

my arms spread like

a cross,

the red birds

flying,

flying,

roses opening in the smoke,

and

like something stabbed and

healing,

like

40 pages through a bad novel,

a smile upon

my idiot’s face.

The Simplicity of Everything in Viet Nam

man shot through back while

holding robes of a young priest

who looks like a woman,

and here we hang:

moon-bright

neatly gloved,

motorcycles everywhere, bees asleep,

nozzles rusted,

climate awry,

and we shake our bones,

blind skin there,

and the soldier falls dead,

another dead soldier,

the black robe of a young priest

who looks like a woman

is now beautifully red,

and the tanks

come on through.

The Night They Took Whitey

bird-dream and peeling wallpaper

symptoms of grey sleep

and at 4 a.m. Whitey came out of his room

(the solace of the poor is in numbers

like Summer poppies)

and he began to scream help me! help me! help me!

(an old man with hair as white as any ivory tusk)

and he was vomiting blood

help me help me help me

and I helped him lie down in the hall

and I beat on the landlady’s door

(she is as French as the best wine but as tough as

an American steak) and

I hollered her name, Marcella! Marcella!

(the milkman would soon be coming with his

pure white bottles like chilled lilies)

Marcella! Marcella! help me help me help me,

and she screamed back through the door:

you polack bastard, are you drunk again? then

Promethean the eye at the door

and she

sized up the red river in her rectangular brain

(oh, I am nothing but a drunken polack

a bad pinch-hitter a writer of letters to the newspapers)

and she spoke into the phone like a lady ordering bread and
eggs,

and I held to the wall

dreaming bad poems and my own death

and the men came…one with a cigar, the other needing a
shave,

and they made him stand up and walk down the steps

his ivory head on fire (Whitey, my drinking pal—

all the songs, Sing Gypsy, Laugh Gypsy, talk about

the war, the fights, the good whores,

skid-row hotels floating in wine,

floating in crazy talk,

cheap cigars and anger)

and the siren took him away, except the red part

and I began to vomit and the French wolverine screamed

you’ll have to clean it up, all of it, you and Whitey!

and the steamers sailed and rich men on yachts

kissed girls young enough to be their daughters,

and the milkman came by and stared

and the neon lights blinked selling something

tires or oil or underwear

and she slammed her door and I was alone

ashamed

it was the war, the war forever, the war was never over,

and I cried against the peeling walls,

the weakness of our bones, our sotted half-brains,

and morning began to creep into the hall—

toilets flushed, there was bacon, there was coffee,

there were hangovers, and I too

went in and closed my door and sat down and waited for the
sun.

The Japanese Wife

O lord, he said, Japanese women,

real women, they have not forgotten,

bowing and smiling

closing the wounds men have made;

but American women will kill you like they

tear a lampshade,

American women care less than a dime,

they’ve gotten derailed,

they’re too nervous to make good:

always scowling, belly-aching,

disillusioned, overwrought;

but oh lord, say, the Japanese women:

there was this one,

I came home and the door was locked

and when I broke in she broke out the bread knife

and chased me under the bed

and her sister came

and they kept me under that bed for two days,

and when I came out, at last,

she didn’t mention attorneys,

just said, you will never wrong me again,

and I didn’t; but she died on me,

and dying, said, you can wrong me now,

and I did,

but you know, I felt worse then

than when she was living;

there was no voice, no knife,

nothing but little Japanese prints on the wall,

all those tiny people sitting by red rivers

with flying green birds,

and I took them down and put them face down

in a drawer with my shirts,

and it was the first time I realized

that she was dead, even though I buried her;

and some day I’ll take them all out again,

all the tan-faced little people

sitting happily by their bridges and huts

and mountains—

but not right now,

not just yet.

Sundays Kill More Men Than Bombs

due to weekend conditions, and although there’s

too much smog, everything’s jammed

and it’s worse than masts down in a storm

you can’t go anywhere

and if you do, they are all staring through glass windows

or waiting for dinner, and no matter how bad it is

(not the glass, the dinner)

they’ll spend more time talking about it

than eating it,

and that’s why my wife got rid of me:

I was a boor and didn’t know when to smile

or rather (worse) I did,

but didn’t, and one afternoon

with people diving into pools

and playing cards

and watching carefully shaven T.V. comedians

in starched white shirts and fine neckties

kidding about what the world had done to them,

I pretended a headache

and they gave me the young lady’s bedroom

(she was about 17)

and hell, I crawled beneath her sheets

and pretended to sleep

but everybody knew I was a cornered fake,

but I tried all sorts of tricks—

I tried to think of Wilde behind bars,

but Wilde was dead;

I tried to think of Hem shooting a lion

or walking down Paris streets

medallioned with his wild buddies,

the whores swooning to their beautiful knees,

but all I did was twist within her young sheets,

and from the headboard, shaking in my nervous storm,

several trinkets fell upon me—

elephants, glass dogs with seductive stares,

a young boy and girl carrying a pail of water,

but nothing by Bach or conducted by Ormandy,

and I finally gave it up, went into the john

and tried to piss (I knew I would be constipated

for a week), and then I walked out,

and my wife, a reader of Plato and e.e. cummings

ran up and said, “ooooh, you should have seen

BooBoo at the pool! He turned backflips and sideflips

and it was the funniest thing you’ve

EVER seen!”

I think it was not much later that the man came

to our third floor apartment

about seven in the morning

and handed me a summons for divorce,

and I went back to bed with her and said,

don’t worry, it’s all right, and

she began to cry cry cry,

I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,

and I said, please stop,

remember your heart.

but that morning when she left

about 8 o’clock she looked

the same as ever, maybe even better.

I didn’t even bother to shave;

I called in sick and went down

to the corner bar.

The Loser

and the next I remembered I’m on a table,

everybody’s gone: the head of bravery

under light, scowling, flailing me down…

and then some toad stood there, smoking a cigar:

“Kid you’re no fighter,” he told me,

and I got up and knocked him over a chair;

it was like a scene in a movie, and

he stayed there on his big rump and said

over and over: “Jesus, Jesus, whatsamatta wit

you?” and I got up and dressed,

the tape still on my hands, and when I got home

I tore the tape off my hands and

wrote my first poem,

and I’ve been fighting

ever since.

On a Night You Don’t Sleep

at the sea at the beach in the dark there was somebody

sitting in a car along the shore and playing this drum

as if in Africa and the cops rode by on the sidewalk

and I went down to the disappointing sea

and saw two blue lights in the water and a boat

and a man walked by in a white shirt and squatted by the

shore and got up and walked along the shore

and then another man came and followed him:

they both walked along the shore by the water

one 12 feet behind the other and I watched them until

they disappeared and then I got up and walked through

the sand to the cement and through a bar door I saw a

negro singing with a light on his face

he wailed a strange song and the sound of the song twisted

in the air and everything was empty and dry and easy

and I got into my car and drove back to the hot city

but I knew I would always remember the time

and the catch of it—the way the night hung undisturbed

with people walking on it like some quiet rug

and a small boat rocking bravely by bulldogging water

and the colored pier lights like a broken mind sick in the sea.

An Empire of Coins

the legs are gone and the hopes—the lava of outpouring,

and I haven’t shaved in sixteen days

but the mailman still makes his rounds and

water still comes out of the faucet and I have a photo of

myself with glazed and milky eyes full of simple music

in golden trunks and 12 oz. gloves when I made the semi-finals

only to be taken out by a German brute who should have been

locked in a cage for the insane and allowed to drink blood.

Now I am insane and stare at the wallpaper as one would stare

at a Cézanne or an early Picasso (he has lost it), and I sent out

the girls for beer, the old girls who barely bother to wipe

their asses and say, well, I guess I won’t comb my hair today:

it might bring me luck! well, anyway, they wash the dishes and

chop the wood, and the landlady keeps saying let me in, I can’t

get in, you’ve got the lock on, and what’s all that singing and

cussing in there? but she only wants a piece of ass, she pretends

she wants the rent

but she’s not gonna get either one of ’em.

meanwhile the skulls of the dead are full of beetles and

old football scores like S.C. 16, N.D. 14 on a John

Baker field goal.

I can see the fleet from my window, the sails and the guns,
always

the guns poking their eyes in the sky looking for trouble like
young

L.A. cops who haven’t yet shaved and the young sailors out

there sex-hungry, trying to act tough, trying to act like men

but really closer to their mother’s nipples than to a true evaluation
of existence. I say, god damn it, that

the legs are gone and the outpourings too. inside my brain

rats snip and snipe and

pour oil

to burn and fire out early dreams.

darling, says one of the girls, you’ve got to snap out of it,

we’re running out of MONEY. how do you want

your toast?

light or dark?

a woman’s a woman, I say, and I put my binoculars between
her

kneecaps and I can see where

empires have fallen.

I wish I had a brush, some paint, some paint and a brush, I say.

why? asks one of the

whores

BECAUSE RATS DON’T LIKE OIL! I scream.

(I can’t do it. I don’t belong here. I listen to radio programs

and people’s voices and I marvel that they can get excited

and interested over nothing) and I flick out the lights, I

crash out the lights, and I pull the shades down, I

tear the shades down as I light my last cigar

then dream jump from the Empire State Building

into the thickheaded bullbrained mob with the hard-on attitude;

already forgotten the dead of Normandy, Lincoln’s stringy
beard,

all the bulls that have died to flashing red capes,

all the love that has died in women and men

while fools have been elevated to the trumpet’s succulent sneer

and I have fought (red-handed and drunk

in slop-pitted alleys)

the bartenders of this rotten land.

and I laugh, I can still laugh, who can’t laugh when the whole
thing

is so ridiculous

that only the insane, the clowns, the half-wits,

the cheaters, the whores, the horseplayers, the bankrobbers, the poets…are interesting?

in the dark I hear hands reaching for the last of my money

like mice nibbling at paper, automatic, while I slumber,

a false drunken God asleep at the wheel…

a quarter rolls across the floor, and I remember all the faces and

the football heroes, and everything has meaning, and an editor writes me, you are good

but

you are too emotional

the way to whip life is to quietly frame the agony,

study it and put it to sleep in the abstract.

is there anything less abstract

than dying everyday and

on the last day?

the door closes and the last of the great whores are gone

and they are all great, somehow no matter how they have

killed me, they are great, and I smoke quietly

thinking of Mexico, of the decaying horses and dead bulls,

of Havana and Spain and Normandy, of the jabbering insane,

of the Kamikaze

winning whether they lived or died,

of my dead friends, of no more friends

ever; and the voice of my Mexican buddy saying, you won’t die

you won’t die in this war, you’re too smart, you’ll take care

of yourself.

I keep thinking of the bulls. the rotting bulls, dying everyday.

the whores are gone. the shells have stopped for a minute.

fuck everybody.

All I Know

All I know is this: the ravens kiss my mouth,

the veins are tangled here,

the sea is made of blood.

All I know is this: the hands reaching out,

my eyes are closed, my ears are closed,

the sky rejects my scream.

All I know is this: my nostrils drip with dreams

the hounds lap us up, the fools laugh out,

the clock ticks out the dead.

All I know is this: my feet are sorrow here,

my words are less than lilies, my words are clotted now:

the ravens kiss my mouth.

On Going Back to the Street after Viewing an Art Show

they talk down through

the centuries to us,

and this we need more and more,

the statues and paintings

in midnight age

as we go along

holding dead hands.

and we would say

rather than delude the unknowing:

a damn good show,

but hardly enough for a horse to eat,

and out on the sunshine street where

eyes are dabbled in metazoan faces

I decide again

that in these centuries

they have done very well

considering the nature of their

brothers:

it’s more than good

that some of them,

(closer really to field-mouse than

falcon)

have been bold enough to try.

Anthony

and the hedges wet in the rain, flaking in a sheet of wind,

and for a moment everything working: rusty bells, April

birds, unblushing brides, anything you can name that has not

died, so exactly, and even the wind like a lover’s hand,

a somehow important wind, something too like sleep or slain
enemies,

and the feet move through paths not restricted by the
bull-goaded mind,

and see—all and everywhere—hedges in the rain

like great cathedrals now, new Caesars, cats walking,

new gods without plug or wire, love without wasps,

new Christians, bulls, Romes, new new leaves, new rain

now splashing through the fire; and I close the door, old room,

I fall upon the couch, I sweat

and I cough I cough small words

lions bearing down through coffee cups and puddles, I

sigh, Cleopatra. Not for either of us, but for the rest.

Layover

Making love in the sun, in the morning sun

in a hotel room

above the alley

where poor men poke for bottles;

making love in the sun

making love by a carpet redder than our blood,

making love while the boys sell headlines

and Cadillacs,

making love by a photograph of Paris

and an open pack of Chesterfields,

making love while other men—poor fools—

work.

That moment—to this…

may be years in the way they measure,

but it’s only one sentence back in my mind—

there are so many days

when living stops and pulls up and sits

and waits like a train on the rails.

I pass the hotel at 8

and at 5; there are cats in the alleys

and bottles and bums,

and I look up at the window and think,

I no longer know where you are,

and I walk on and wonder where

the living goes

when it stops.

The Dogs of Egypt

the dirty dogs of Egypt stride down my bones

the cat goes home in the morning

and I think of agony when there’s little else to

do, and there’s usually little else to do

except think the agony might kill us—

but, perhaps, what really saves us from it

is our being able to luxuriate in it—

like an old lady putting on a red hat.

yet my walls are stained where broken glass has

pissed its liquor.

I see agony in a box of kitchen soap

and the walls want their flatness to be my

flatness, o the dirty dogs of Egypt,

I see flatirons hanging from hooks

the eagle is a canary in the breakfastnook

eating dry seed and cramped by the dream.

I want so much that is not here and do not know

where to go.

Old Man, Dead in a Room

this thing upon me is not death

but it’s as real

and as landlords full of maggots

pound for rent

I eat walnuts in the sheath

of my privacy

and listen for more important

drummers;

it’s as real, it’s as real

as the broken-boned sparrow

cat-mouthed, uttering

more than mere

miserable argument;

between my toes I stare

at clouds, at seas of gaunt

sepulcher…

and scratch my back

and form a vowel

as all my lovely women

(wives and lovers)

break like engines

into steam of sorrow

to be blown into eclipse;

bone is bone

but this thing upon me

as I tear the window shades

and walk caged rugs,

this thing upon me

like a flower and a feast,

believe me

is not death and is not

glory

and like Quixote’s windmills

makes a foe

turned by the heavens

against one man;

…this thing upon me,

great god,

this thing upon me

crawling like a snake,

terrifying my love of commonness,

some call Art

some call Poetry;

it’s not death

but dying will solve its power

and as my grey hands

drop a last desperate pen

in some cheap room

they will find me there

and never know

my name

my meaning

nor the treasure

of my escape.

Love Is a Piece of Paper Torn to Bits

all the beer was poisoned and the capt. went down

and the mate and the cook

and we had nobody to grab sail

and the N.wester ripped the sheets like toenails

and we pitched like crazy

the hull tearing its sides

and all the time in the corner

some punk had a drunken slut (my wife)

and was pumping away

like nothing was happening

and the cat kept looking at me

and crawling in the pantry

amongst the clanking dishes

with flowers and vines painted on them

until I couldn’t stand it anymore

and took the thing

and heaved it

over

the side.

Big Bastard with a Sword

listen, I went to get a haircut, it was a perfectly good day

until they brought it to me, I mean I sat waiting my turn in the

chair and I found a magazine—the usual thing: women with their

breasts hanging out, etc., and then I turned the page and here

were photos of Orientals in a field, there was a big

bastard with the sword—the caption said he had a very good

swing, plenty of power and the picture showed him getting ready

with the sword, and you saw an Oriental kneeling there with his

eyes closed, then—ZIP!—he was kneeling there without a head

and you could see the neck clean, not yet even

spurting blood, the separation having been so astonishingly

swift, and more photos of beheadings, and then a photo of these

heads lolling in the weeds without bodies, the sun shining on
them.

and the heads looking still almost alive as if they hadn’t

accepted the death—and then the barber said

next!

and I walked over to the chair and my head was still on

and his head said to my head,

how do you want it?

and I said, medium.

and he seemed like a nice sensible fellow

and it seemed nice to be near nice sensible fellows

and I wanted to ask him about the heads

but I thought it would upset him

or maybe even give him ideas

or he might say something that wouldn’t help at

all

so I kept quiet.

I listened to him cut my hair

and he began talking about his baby

and I tried to concentrate on his

baby, it seemed very sane and logical

but I still kept thinking about the

heads.

when he finished the cutting

he turned me in the chair so I could look into the

mirror. my head was still on.

fine, I told him, and I got out of the chair, paid, and

gave him a good tip.

I walked outside and a woman walked by and she had her

head on and all the people driving cars had their heads

on.

I should have concentrated on the breasts, I thought,

it’s so much better, all that hanging out, or

the magic and beautiful legs, sex was a fine thing

after all, but my day was spoiled, it would take a night’s sleep

anyway, to get rid of the heads. it was terrible to be a human

being: there was so much going

on.

I saw my head in a plateglass window

I saw the reflection

and my head had a cigarette in it

my head looked tired and sad

it was not smiling with its new

haircut.

then

it disappeared

and I walked on

past the houses full of furniture and cats and

dogs and people

and they were lucky and I threw the cigarette

into the gutter

saw it burning on the asphalt

red and white, a tender spit of smoke,

and I decided that the sun

felt good.

About My Very Tortured Friend, Peter

he lives in a house with a swimming pool

and says the job is

killing him.

he is 27. I am 44. I can’t seem to

get rid of

him. his novel keeps coming

back. “what do you expect me to do?” he screams

“go to New York and pump the hands of the

publishers?”

“no,” I tell him, “but quit your job, go into a

small room and do the

thing.”

“but I need ASSURANCE, I need something to

go by, some word, some sign!”

“some men did not think that way:

Van Gogh, Wagner—”

“oh hell, Van Gogh had a brother who gave him

paints whenever he

needed them!”

“look,” he said, “I’m over at this broad’s house today and

this guy walks in. a salesman. you know

how they talk. drove up in this new

car. talked about his vacation. said he went to

Frisco—saw Fidelio up there but forgot who

wrote it. now this guy is 54 years

old. so I told him: ‘Fidelio is Beethoven’s only

opera.’ and then I told

him: ‘you’re a jerk!’ ‘whatcha mean?’ he

asked. ‘I mean, you’re a jerk, you’re 54 years old and

you don’t know anything!’”

“what happened

then?”

“I walked out.”

“you mean you left him there with

her?”

“yes.”

“I can’t quit my job,” he said. “I always have trouble getting a

job. I walk in, they look at me, listen to me talk and

they think right away, ah ha! he’s too intelligent for

this job, he won’t stay

so there’s really no sense in hiring

him.

now, YOU walk into a place and you don’t have any trouble:

you look like an old wino, you look like a guy who needs a

job and they look at you and they think:

ah ha!: now here’s a guy who really needs work! if we hire

him he’ll stay a long time and work

HARD!”

“do any of those people,” he asks “know you are a

writer, that you write poetry?”

“no.”

“you never talk about

it. not even to

me! if I hadn’t seen you in that magazine I’d

have never known.”

“that’s right.”

“still, I’d like to tell these people that you are a

writer!”

“don’t.”

“I’d still like to

tell them.”

“why?”

“well, they talk about you. they think you are just a

horseplayer and a drunk.”

“I am both of those.”

“well, they talk about you. you have odd ways. you travel

alone.

I’m the only friend you

have.”

“yes.”

“they talk you down. I’d like to defend you. I’d like to tell

them you write

poetry.”

“leave it alone. I work here like they

do. we’re all the same.”

“well, I’d like to do it for myself then. I want them to know

why

I travel with

you. I speak 7 languages, I know my music—”

“forget it.”

“all right, I’ll respect your

wishes. but there’s something else—”

“what?”

“I’ve been thinking about getting a

piano. but then I’ve been thinking about getting a

violin too but I can’t make up my

mind!”

“buy a piano.”

“you think

so?”

“yes.”

he walks away

thinking about

it.

I was thinking about it

too: I figure he can always come over with his

violin and more

sad music.

Not Quite So Soon

in the featherbeds of grander times

when Kings could call their shots,

I rather imagine on days like this

that concubines were sought,

or the unspoiled genius

or the chopping block.

how about a partridge or a grouse

or a bound behind the merry hounds?

Maybe I’ll phone Saroyan in Malibu

or eat a slice of toast…

the trees shake down September

like dysentery, and churches sit on their

corners and wait, and the streetcars are slow,

and everywhere

birds fly, cats walk, people ruefully

exist…

the charmers are gone, the armies have put down

their arms, the druid’s drunk, the horses have tossed

their dice; there are no fires, the phone won’t ring,

the factory’s closed, tenesmus, everything…

I think

even the schizomycetes are sleeping;

I think

the horror of no action is greater

than the scorch of pain; death is the

barker, but things

may get better

yet. I’ll use the knives for spreading

jam, and the gas to warm

my greying love.

Counsel

as the wind breaks in from the sea again

and the land is marred with riot and disorder

be careful with the sabre of choice,

remember

what may have been noble

5 centuries

or even 20 years ago

is now

more often than not

wasted action

your life runs but once,

history has chance after chance

to prove men fools.

be careful, then, I would say,

of any seeming noble

deed

ideal

or action,

be for this country or love or Art,

be not taken by the nearness of the minute

or a beauty or politic

that will wilt like a cut flower;

love, yes, but not as a task of marriage,

and beware bad food and excessive labor;

live in a country, you must,

but love is not an order

either of woman or the land;

take your time; and drink as much as is needed

in order to maintain continuance,

for drink is a form of life

wherein the partaker returns to a new chance

at life; furthermore, I say,

live alone as much as possible;

bear children if it happens

but try not to bear

raising them; engage not in small arguments

of hand or voice

unless your foe seeks the life of your body

or the life of your soul; then,

kill, if necessary; and

when it comes time to die

do not be selfish:

consider it inexpensive

and where you are going:

neither a mark of shame or failure

or a call upon sorrow

as the wind breaks in from the sea

and time goes on

flushing your bones with soft peace.

I Wait in the White Rain

I wait in the white rain for knives like your tongue

I see the spiral clowns fountain up with myths untrue,

I wrestle spasms in the dark on dark stairways

while dollar crazy landladies

are threaded with the hot needles of sperm,

come these morning drunks

brushing away sunlight from the eyes like a web,

come darling, come gloria patri, come luck,

come anything,

this is the hot way—

points sticking in like armadillos

in the rear of a Benedictine mind,

and snow snow snow snow snow

shovel all the snow upon me I can hold,

gingerbread mouth, duck-like dick,

raisins for buttons, thread for heart-strings,

damned waves of blood caught in them

like a minnow in the Tide of Everywhere

I wait in the white rain for knives like your tongue,

and the trucks go by

with bankrupt faces

the steam of their essence like foul sweat

stale stink death in my socks

all the drums of hell

cannot awaken a rhythm within me

I am gone

like an old pale goldfish

dead and stiff as aunt Helen

looking flat-eyed into the center of my brain

and flushed away like any other waste of man,

the man-turd, the breath of life,

and why we don’t go mad as roaches, why not more

suicides I’ll never know

as I wait in the white rain for knives like your tongue,

I am done, quite; like any ford that cuts off a river

I am done forever and only,

this christ-awful waiting on the end of a stale movie,

everyone screaming for beauty and victory

like children for candy,

my hands open

unamazed hand

unamazed mind

unamazed doorsill

send your flowers to Shakey Joe

or Butternut Carlyle

who might trade them to useful purpose

before everything, everyone,

is dead

Breakout

The landlord walks up and down the hall

coughing

letting me know he is there,

and I’ve got to sneak

in the bottles,

I can’t walk to the crapper

the lights don’t work,

there are holes in the walls from

broken water pipes

and the toilet won’t flush,

and the little jackoff

walks up and down

out there

coughing, coughing,

up and down his faded rug

he goes,

and I can’t stand it anymore,

I break out,

I GET him

just as he walks by,

“What the hell’s wrong?”

he screams,

but it’s too late,

my fist is working against the bone;

it’s over fast and he falls,

withered and wet;

I get my suitcase and then

I am going down the steps,

and there’s his wife in the doorway,

she’s ALWAYS IN THE DOORWAY,

they don’t have anything to do but

stand in doorways and walk up and down the halls,

“Good morning, Mr. Bukowski,” her face is a mole’s face

praying for my death, “what—”

and I shove her aside,

she falls down the porch steps and

into a hedge,

I hear the branches breaking

and I see her half-stuck in there

like a blind cow,

and then I am going down the street

with my suitcase,

the sun is fine,

and I begin to think about

the next place where I’m

going to set up, and I hope

I can find some decent humans,

somebody who can treat me

better.

I Cannot Stand Tears

there were several hundred fools

around the goose who broke her leg

trying to decide

what to do

when the guard walked up

and pulled out his cannon

and the issue was finished

except for a woman

who ran out of a hut

claiming he’d killed her pet

but the guard rubbed his straps

and told her

kiss my ass,

take it to the president;

the woman was crying

and I cannot stand tears.

I folded my canvas

and went further down the road:

the bastards had ruined

my landscape.

Horse on Fire

Bring bring

straight things

like a horse on fire

Ezra said,

write it

soaz a man on th’ West Coast’a

Africka culd

understand ut;

and he proceeded to write the Cantos

full of dead languages

newspaper clippings

and love scenes from St. Liz;

bring bring

straight things: in bird-light,

the terror of a mouse,

grass-arms great stone heads;

and reading Canto 90

he put the paper down

Ez did (both their eyes were wet)

and he told her…

“among the greatest love poems

ever written.”

Ezra, there are many kinds of traitors

of which

the political are the least,

but self-appraisal of

poetry and love

has proved more fools than

rebels.

Mother and Son

a lady in pink sits on her porch

in tight capris

and her ass is a marvelous thing

pink and crouched in the sun

her ass is a marvelous thing,

and now she rises and claps her hands

toward the sea

and shouts:

TIM, TIM, COME BACK, COME BACK

HERE! it is a child in a walker

running across the cement

looking for butterflies

and a way out,

and she chases him:

TIM, TIM, COME BACK HERE!

I watch her butt

her pink tight magic butt

and it rises in my mind

like a Beethoven symphony

but she is not mine.

I have been quietly reading about

the 18th century glass harmonica

and somebody else will take the pink wobble

to direct hand;

but

really

I’ve seduced her on this Sunday afternoon

and I have seen each movement and crawl

of pink flesh beneath pink capris,

and she catches her boy in the sun

and he laughs back at her

already a man on the dare

exploring the new front yards of his mind,

and he might resent that I have made love

to his mother this way

as he might resent other things

later

pink red dawn blood bombs

the squealing of sheep

the taxis that ride us out,

or he might put on a necktie

choke out the mind

and become like the rest

therefore

making my pink love

upon these black keys

wasted.

The Day I Kicked Away a Bankroll

and, I said, you can take your rich aunts and uncles

and grandfathers and fathers

and all their lousy oil

and their seven lakes

and their wild turkey

and buffalo

and the whole state of Texas,

meaning, your crow-blasts

and your Saturday night boardwalks,

and your 2-bit library

and your crooked councilmen

and your pansy artists—

you can take all these

and your weekly newspaper

and your famous tornadoes,

and your filthy floods

and all your yowling cats

and your subscription to Time,

and shove them, baby,

shove them.

I can handle a pick and ax again (I think)

and I can pick up

25 bucks for a 4-rounder (maybe);

sure, I’m 38

but a little dye can pinch the gray

out of my hair;

and I can still write a poem (sometimes),

don’t forget that, and even if

they don’t pay off,

it’s better than waiting for death and oil,

and shooting wild turkey,

and waiting for the world

to begin.

all right, bum, she said,

get out.

what? I said.

get out. you’ve thrown your

last tantrum.

I’m tired of your damned tantrums:

you’re always acting like a

character in an O’Neill play.

but I’m different, baby,

I can’t help

it.

you’re different, all right!

God, how different!

don’t slam

the door

when you leave.

but, baby, I love your

money!

you never once said

you loved me!

what do you want

a liar or a

lover?

you’re neither! out, bum,

out!

…but baby!

go back to O’Neill!

I went to the door,

softly closed it and walked away,

thinking: all they want

is a wooden Indian

to say yes and no

and stand over the fire and

not raise too much hell;

but you’re getting to be

an old man, kiddo;

next time play it closer

to the

vest.

The Dogs

certainly sought: one quiet time,

the horses of war

shot

with their broken legs,

air sprayed with the languor

of walking through a small neighborhood

at 6 p.m.

to smell porkchops frying,

the arrayed sensibility

of men living through light and sound,

and rain

if there be rain

or snow

if there be snow,

and pain,

living through wives and children

and the sensibility of fire

when it is cold; but

the dogs want a part of us,

they want all of us,

and coming in from the factory

to a bug-infected room

in East Kansas City

is not enough

(but who the enemy is

we are

not quite sure)

only

this morning

combing my hair

one eye on the clock,

wondering if another drink

would do,

I

think

I

saw them.

Imbecile Night

imbecile night,

corkscrew like a black guitar,

the day was heaving hell,

and now you come

crawling down the drainpipes

emptying your bladder

all over the place,

and I have drunk 9 bottles of beer,

a pint of vodka,

smoked 18 cigarettes,

and still you sit upon me,

you march the dead out upon

the balcony of my brain;

I see shaven eyebrows; lips, slippers;

my love, in an old robe, curses,

reaches out for me; the

Confederate Army runs; Hitler

turns a handspring…then

the yowling love of cats

saves me, brings me

back again…one more drink,

one more smoke, and in the drawer

a picture of a day at the beach

in 1955…god, I was young then,

younger anyhow; and at the window,

one or 2 lights, the city is dead

except for thieves and janitors,

and I am almost dead too, so

much gone, and I raise the bottle

in the center of the room

and you are everywhere

black imbecile night,

you are under my fingernails,

in my ears and mouth,

and here we stand,

you and I, a giant and a midget

locked in disorder, and when the

first sun comes down showing the spiders

at work, caterpillars crawling on razor threads,

you will let me go,

but now you crawl into the tomb of my bottle,

you wink at me and posture, the wallpaper is

weak with roses, the spiders dream of

gold-filled flies, and I walk the room again,

light another cigarette, feeling I really

should go mad, but not quite knowing

how.

A Kind of Lecture on a Dull Day When There Isn’t Even a Fly Around to Kill

don’t kid yourself:

something kills them all—

finally it becomes a matter of

dying of one thing or

the other—

cancer, a new car, sex, warm

art, poetry, ballet dancing,

a hardware store, smoking grass, peeking

out of windows or

wiping the ass with

cheap toilet

paper

when Christ began

he had the cross in mind

all along.

if I came down off this one

here

it would only be to find a

better one.

meanwhile, sitting with a drink in hand

I know, of course,

what it’s all

about, come to the point,

dismiss it, forget it,

hand to mouth

I kid myself a

little.

The Gift

that this is the gift

and I am ill with it;

it has sloshed around my bones

and brings me awake to

stare at walls.

musing often leads to madness,

o dog with an

old rag doll.

into and beyond terror.

seriousness will not do,

seriousness is gone:

we must carve from

fresh marble.

hell, jack, this is wise-time:

we must insist on camouflage,

they taught us that;

wine come down through

staring eye,

god coughed alive

through the indistinct smoke

of verse.

the light yellow mamas are gone

the garter high on the leg,

the charm of 18 is 80.

and the kisses,

snakes darting liquid silver

have stopped:

no man lives the magic

long.

until one morning it catches you;

you light the fire,

pour a hasty drink

as the psyche crawls like a mouse

into an empty pantry.

if you were El Greco

or even a watersnake

something could be done.

another drink.

well, rub your hands

and prove you are alive.

walk the floor. seriousness

will not do.

this is the gift,

this is the gift…

certainly the charm of dying

lies in the fact

that very little

is lost.

Object Lesson

It is always best, of course,

to push it in right below

the heart.

Don’t try to hit the

bull’s eye.

When seeking damage

aim for a large target

and strike several times.

He who pauses is

one damn fool.

I remember a discourse

with a leper

who suggested using

hooks and pulleys.

Not so. Not so.

He was very bitter.

It is best to go for the eye,

smash the cornea,

blind him,

then strangle him with rope.

My mother suggested an old bathing cap

down the throat.

Not so. Not so.

Be safe. Be wise.

Tell him to seek the stars

and he will kill himself with climbing.

Tell him about Chatterton. Villon.

Make suggestions.

Take your time.

He will do it himself.

There is no hurry. Time means nothing

to you.

Goldfish

my goldfish stares with watery eyes

into the hemisphere of my sorrow;

upon the thinnest of threads

we hang together,

hang hang hang

in the hangman’s noose;

I stare into his place and

he into mine…

he must have thoughts,

can you deny this?

he has eyes and hunger

and his love too

died in January; but he is

gold, really gold, and I am grey

and it is indecent to search him out,

indecent like the burning of peaches

or the rape of children,

and I turn and look elsewhere,

but I know that he is there behind me,

one gold goblet of blood,

one thing alone

hung between the reddest cloud

of purgatory

and apt. no. 303.

god, can it be

that we are the same?

Sleep

she was a short one

getting fat and she had once been

beautiful and

she drank the wine

she drank the wine in bed and

talked and screamed and cursed at

me

and i told her

please, I need some

sleep.

—sleep? sleep? you son of a

bitch, you never sleep, you

don’t need any

sleep!

I buried her one morning early

I carried her down the sides of the Hollywood Hills

brambles and rabbits and rocks

running in front of me

and by the time I’d dug the ditch

and stuck her in

belly down

and put the dirt back on

the sun was up and it was warm

and the flies were lazy and

I could hardly see anything out of my eyes

everything was so

warm and yellow.

I managed to drive home and I got into bed and I

slept for 5 days and 4

nights.

Hello, Willie Shoemaker

the Chinaman said don’t take the hardware

and gave me a steak I couldn’t cut (except the fat)

and there was an ant circling the coffee cup;

I left a dime tip and broke out a stick of cancer,

and outside I gave an old bum who looked about

the way I felt, I gave him a quarter,

and then I went up to see the old man

strong as steel girders, fit for bombers and blondes,

up the green rotten steps that housed rats

and past the secretaries showing leg and doing nothing

and the old man sat there looking at me

through two pairs of glasses and a vacation in Paris,

and he said, Kid, I hear you been takin’ Marylou out,

and I said, just to dinner, boss,

and he said, just to dinner, eh? you couldn’t hold

that broad’s pants on with all the rivets on 5th street,

and please remember you are a shipping clerk,

I am the boss here and I pay these broads and I pay you.

yes, sir, I said, and I felt he was going to skip it

but he slid my last check across the desk

and I took it and walked out

past

all the lovely legs, the skirts pulled up to the ass,

Marylou’s ass, Ann’s ass, Vicki’s ass, all of them,

and I went down to the bar

and George said whatya gonna do now,

and I said go to Russia or Hollywood Park,

and I looked up in time to see Marylou come in,

the long thin nose, the delicate face, the lips, the legs,

the breasts, the music, the talk the love the laughing

and she said

I quit when I found out

and the bastard got down on his knees and cried

and kissed the hem of my skirt and offered me money

and I

walked out

and he blubbered like a baby.

George, I said, another drink, and I put a quarter in

the juke

and the sun came out

and I looked outside in time to see the old bum

with my quarter

and a little more luck

that had turned into a happy wine-bottle,

and a bird even flew by cheep cheep,

right there on Eastside downtown, no kidding,

and the Chinaman came in for a quickie

claiming somebody had stolen a spoon and a coffee cup

and I leaned over and bit Marylou on the ear

and the whole joint rocked with music and freedom

and I decided that Russia was too far away

and Hollywood Park just close enough.

The Literary Life

There is this long still knife somehow like a

cossack’s sword…

and C. writes that Ferlinghetti has written

a poem about Castro. well, all the boys

are doing poems on Castro now, only

Castro’s not that good

or that bad—just a small horse

in a big race.

I see this knife on the stove and I move it to

the breadboard…

after a while it is time to look around and

listen to the engines and wonder if it’s

raining; after a while writing won’t help

anymore, and drinking won’t help anymore, or

even a good piece of ass won’t.

I see this knife on the breadboard and I move it

to the sink…

this wallpaper here: how many years was it here

before I arrived?…this cigarette in my hand

it is like a thing itself, like a donkey walking

uphill…somebody took my candle and candle-

holder: a lady with red hair and a white face

standing near the closet, saying, “Can I have

this? can I really have this?”

The edge of the knife is not as sharp as it should

be…but the point, the point fascinates, the way

they grind it down like that—symmetry, real Art,

and I pick up this breadknife and walk into the

dining room…

Larsen says we mustn’t take ourselves so

seriously. Hell, I’ve been telling him that

for 8 years!

There is this full length mirror in the hall. I

can see myself in it and I look, at last.

It hasn’t rained in 175 days and it

is as quiet as a sleeping peacock. a

friend of mine shoots pool in a hall across from

the university where he teaches English, and when

he gets tired of that, he drags out a .357 magnum

and splits the rocks in half BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!

while figuring just where the word will fit real

good. In front of the mirror I cut swift circles in the

air, dividing sides of light. I am hypnotized,

unsettled, embarrassed. my nose is pink, my

cheeks are pink, my throat is white, the phone

rings like a wall sliding down and I answer

“Nothing, no, I’m not doing anything…”

it is a dull conversation but it is soon over. I

walk to the window and open it. the cars go by

and a bird turns on the wire and looks at me. I

think 3 centuries ahead, of myself dead that long

and life seems very odd…like a crack of

light in a buried tomb.

the bird flies away and I walk to the machine and

sit down:

Dear Willie:

I got your letter, everything fine
here…

Countryside

I drive my car

through a valley

where

(very oddly)

young girls sit on fencerails

showing impartial leg and

haunch

in butterglory sun,

young girls painting

cows and

trees in heat

painting

old farms that sit like

pools of impossibility

on unplanted ground,

ground as still and insane

as the weathervanes

stuck northwest

in the degenerate air;

I drive on

with the girls and their brushes and

their taffy bodies stuck inside my

head like

toothache,

and I get out

much farther down the road

walk into a peeling white cafe

and am handed water in a glass as

thick as a

lip, and

4 people sit

eating,

eyes obsessed with molecules of no

urgency;

I order a veal cutlet and the

waitress walks away

trussed in white flat linen

and I sit and watch and wait

so disattached I wish I could

cry or curse or break the water glass;

instead I pour cream into the

coffee

I think of the girls and the cows,

stir the cream with a damaged and

apologetic

tinkle

then decide

not to think or feel anymore

that day.

Death Wants More Death

death wants more death, and its webs are full:

I remember my father’s garage, how child-like

I would brush the corpses of flies

from the windows they had thought were escape—

their sticky, ugly, vibrant bodies

shouting like dumb crazy dogs against the glass

only to spin and flit

in that second larger than hell or heaven

onto the edge of the ledge,

and then the spider from his dank hole

nervous and exposed

the puff of body swelling

hanging there

not really quite knowing,

and then knowing—

something sending it down its string,

the wet web,

toward the weak shield of buzzing,

the pulsing;

a last desperate moving hair-leg

there against the glass

there alive in the sun,

spun in white;

and almost like love:

the closing over,

the first hushed spider-sucking:

filling its sack

upon this thing that lived;

crouching there upon its back

drawing its certain blood

as the world goes by outside

and my temples scream

and I hurl the broom against them:

the spider dull with spider-anger

still thinking of its prey

and waving an amazed broken leg;

the fly very still,

a dirty speck stranded to straw;

I shake the killer loose

and he walks lame and peeved

towards some dark corner

but I intercept his dawdling

his crawling like some broken hero,

and the straws smash his legs

now waving

above his head

and looking

looking for the enemy

and somehow valiant,

dying without apparent pain

simply crawling backward

piece by piece

leaving nothing there

until at last the red gut-sack splashes

its secrets,

and I run child-like

with God’s anger a step behind,

back to simple sunlight,

wondering

as the world goes by

with curled smile

if anyone else

saw or sensed my crime.

Eat

talking of death

is like talking of

money—

we neither know the

price or the

worth,

yet looking down at my hands

I can guess

a little.

man’s made for guessing and for

failure

and woman

for the rest.

when the time comes

I hope I can remember

eating a pear.

we are sick now

with so many dead

dogs

skulls

armies

flowers

continents.

there is a fight—

this is it:

against the mechanics

of the thing.

eat a good pear today

so tomorrow

you can

remember

it.

10 Lions and the End of the World

in a national magazine of repute

(yes, I was reading it)

I saw a photograph of lions

crossing a street

in some village

and taking their time;

that’s the way

it should be

and some day when

they turn out the lights

and the whole thing’s over,

I’ll be sitting here

in the chalky smoke

thinking of those 10 damned

(yes, I counted them)

lions

blocking traffic

while the roses bloomed.

we all ought to

do that

now

while there’s

t

i

m

e.

The Blackbirds Are Rough Today

lonely as a dry and used orchard

spread over the earth

for use and surrender.

shot down like an ex-pug selling

dailies on the corner.

taken by tears like

an aging chorus girl

who has gotten her last check.

a hanky is in order your lord your

worship.

the blackbirds are rough today

like

ingrown toenails

in an overnight

jail—

wine wine whine,

the blackbirds run around and

fly around

harping about

Spanish melodies and bones.

and everywhere is

nowhere—

the dream is as bad as

flapjacks and flat tires:

why do we go on

with our minds and

pockets full of

dust

like a bad boy just out of

school—

you tell

me,

you who were a hero in some

revolution

you who teach children

you who drink with calmness

you who own large homes

and walk in gardens

you who have killed a man and own a

beautiful wife

you tell me

why I am on fire like old dry

garbage.

we might surely have some interesting

correspondence.

it will keep the mailman busy.

and the butterflies and ants and bridges and

cemeteries

the rocket-makers and dogs and garage mechanics

will still go on a

while

until we run out of stamps

and/or

ideas.

don’t be ashamed of

anything; I guess God meant it all

like

locks on

doors.

A Word on the Quick and Modern Poem-Makers

it is quite easy to appear modern

while in reality being the biggest damnfool

ever born;

I know: I have gotten away with some awful stuff

but not nearly such awful pot as I read in the journals;

I have an honesty self-born of whores and hospitals

that will not allow me to pretend to be

something which I am not—

which is a double failure: the failure of people

in poetry

and the failure of people

in life.

and when you fail in poetry

you fail life,

and when you fail life

you were never born

no matter what the statistics

or what your mother named you.

the grandstands are crowded with the dead

screaming for a winner

wanting a number to carry them over

into living,

but it is not as easy as that—

just as with the poem:

if you are dead

you might as well be buried

and throw the typewriter away

and stop fooling with

poems horses women life:

you are cluttering up

the exits—

so get out fast

and desist from the

precious few

pages.

Seahorse

I own the ticks on a horse

I own his belly and balls

I own this

the way his eyes roll

the way he eats hay

and shits and

stands up asleep

he is mine

this machine

like a blue train I used to play with

when my hands were smaller

and my mind better

I own this horse,

someday I will ride my horse

down all the streets

past the trees we will go

up the mountain

down the valley

ticks and eyes and balls

the both of us

we will go to where kings eat

dandelions

in the giant sea

where thinking is not terror

where eyes do not go out

like Saturday night children

the horse I own and the myself I own

will become blue and nice and clean

again

and I will get off and

wait for you.

I Have Lived in England

I have lived in England

and I have lived in hell,

but perhaps there is nothing quite so horrible

as picking up the latest literary review

filled with the latest literary darlings;

K. teaches at L.; M. has a second volume of

poems coming out; O. has been published

in the leading journals; S. has won a

scholarship to Paris—

and you hold the pages up

to the overhead light

and still

nothing comes through.

it is a puzzle indeed,

far more a puzzle than when a 90-to-one shot

leaps through at the last moment

along the rail.

a horse can live.

and, indeed, do you expect to find

poetry

in a poetry review?

things are not that

simple.

Farewell, Foolish Objects

I have lain in bed all day

but I have written one poem

and I am up now

looking out the window

and like a novelist might say

drunk: the clouds are coming at me

like scullery maids with dishpans

in their hands—

something that holds gritty dirty

water.

but I am a drunken non-novelist

but in clear condition now

here sits the bottle of beer

and I am warmly thinking

in a kind of foam-shaped idle fancy

working closely

but all I can stoke up are

squares and circles which

do not fit; so

messeigneurs

I will tell you the truth:

again (in bed)

I read another article on D. Thomas &

some day I will get lucky and sit around

and own a French horn and a tame eagle

and I will sit on the porch all day

a white porch always in the sun

one of those white porches with green

vines all around, and

I will read about Dylan and D.H. until

my eyes fall out of my head for eagle

meat and I will play the French horn

blind. but even now it gets darker

the evening thing into night

the bones down here

the stars up there

somebody rattling the springs in

Denver so another pewker can be born.

I think everything is a sheet of sun

and the best of everything

is myself walking through it

wondering about the pure nerve

of the life-thing going on:

after the jails the hospitals

the factories the good dogs

the brainless butterflies.

but now I am back at the window

there is an opera on the radio

and a woman sits in a chair to my left

saying over and over again:

BRATCH BRATSHT BRAATCHT!

and she is holding a book in her hand:

How to Learn Russian Easily.

but there is really nothing you can do

easily: live or die or accept fame

or money or defeat, it’s all hard.

the opera says this, the dead birds

the dead countries the dead loves

the man shot because somebody thought

he was an elk

the elk shot because somebody thought

it was an elk.

all the pure nerve of going on

this woman wanting to speak Russian

myself wanting to get drunk

but we need something to eat.

GRIND CAT GRIND MEAT says

the woman in Russian so I figure

she’s hungry, we haven’t eaten

in a couple of hours. CLAM

BAYONET TURKEY PORK

AND PORK she says, and I walk

over and put on my pants and

I am going out to get something.

the forests are far away and I am

no good with the bow and arrow

and somebody sings on the radio:

“farewell, foolish objects.”

and all I can do is walk into a grocery

store and pull out a wallet and hope

that it’s loaded. and this is

about how I waste my Sundays.

the rest of the week gets better

because there is somebody telling

me what to do

and although it seems madness

almost everybody is doing it

whatever it is.

so now if you will excuse me

(she is eating an orange now)

I will put on my shoes and shirt

and get out of here—it’ll

be better for

all of us.

A Report Upon the Consumption of Myself

I am a panther shut up and bellowing in

cement walls, and I am angry at blue

evenings without ventilation

and I am angry with you, and it will come

like a rose

it will come like a man walking through fire

it will shine like an unseen trumpet in a trunk

the eyes will smell like sausages

the feet will have small propellers

and I will hold you in Bayonne and

the sailors will smile

my heart like something cut away from

cancer will feel and beat again feel

and beat again—but now

the blue evening is cinched like old

muskets and the dangling sex rope hangs

as the tree stands up and calls:

July. the dust of hope in the bottom of paper cups

along with small spiders that have names like ancient

European cities; spit and dross, heavy wheels;

oilwells stuck between fish and sucking up the grey gas

of love and the palms up on the cliff waving

waving in the warm yellow light

as I walk into a drugstore to buy toothpaste,

rubbers, photographs of frogs, a copy of the latest

Consumer Reports (50 cents) for I consume and

am consumed and would like to know

on this blue evening

just which razorblade it would be best for me

to use, or maybe I could get a station wagon or buy a

stereo or a movie camera, say 8mm, under $55

or an electric frying pan…like the silver head

of some god-thing after they drop the bomb BANG

and the grass gives up and love is a shadow

and love is a fishtail weaving through

threads that seem eyes but are only what’s

left of me on the last blue evening after the bands

have suicided out, the carnival has left town and

they’ve blown up the Y.W.C.A. like a giant balloon and

sent it out to sea full of screaming lovely lonely

girls.

Fleg

Now it’s Borodin…4:18 a.m.,

symphony #2,

the gas is on

but the masses still sleep

except the bastard

downstairs

who always has the light on

all night, he yawns all night

and sleeps all day,

he’s either a madman

or a poet; and has an

ugly wife,

neither of them work

and we pass each other

on the steps (the wife and I)

when we go down

to dump our bottles,

and I look at his name

on the mailbox: Fleg

God. No wonder. A fleg

never sleeps. Some kind

of fish-thing waiting

for a twist in the sky.

but very kind, I must

remember, when the

drunk women up here

scream or throw things

Fleg ignores it all,

yawns, and this is

fine. There used to be

an Anderson, a Chester

Anderson always at my door

in his pants

and undershirt,

red-eyed as a woman

who has lost a lover,

manager behind his shoulder

(and one night 2 cops),

“God, I can’t sleep.

I’m a working man,

I’ve got to get my sleep

Jesus. I can’t SLEEP.”

Fleg? Sleep? I’ve never even

seen him. I don’t think

he does anything. Just some

kind of shoulder of mutton

with silver eyes

looking up at his ceiling,

tiredly smiling,

saying softly to his

ugly wife: “That Bukowski

up there, he’s a kick

for sore balls, ain’t he?”

“Now, Honey, don’t talk that way.”

“He had a colored woman up there

the other night. I can tell,

I can tell.”

“Now, Mission, you can’t tell no

such damn thing.”

(Mission? Mission Fleg. Christ.)

“Yes, I can. I heard her screaming.”

“Screaming?”

“Well, moaning, kind of like you

know. What’s this guy look like,

baby?”

“Passed him today. Face kind of smashed

in. A long nose like an ant-eater.

Mouth like a monkey. Kind of funny eyes.

Never saw eyes like those.”

It’s about 4:38 a.m. Borodin is finished (yeah)

not a very long symphony. I turn my radio down

and the Flegs I find

are listening

to the same station.

I hope we never meet,

I like Fleg the way he is

(in my mind)

and I’m sure he wants me

the way I am

(in his mind),

and he has just yawned now

up through the ceiling

his ceiling

which is my floor; ah,

my poor tired Fleg

waiting for me to give

him LIFE;

he’s probably slowly dying of

something

and I am too,

but I’m so glad

he doesn’t call the police

while I’m

at it.

Interviewed by a Guggenheim Recipient

this South American up here on a Gugg

walked in with his whore

and she sat on the edge of my bed and

crossed her fine legs

and I kept looking at her legs

and he pulled at his stringy necktie

and I had a hangover

and he asked me

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE AMERICAN

POETS?

and I told him I didn’t think very much

of the American poets

and then he went on to ask some other

very dull questions

(as his whore’s legs layed along the side of

my brain) like

WELL? YOU DON’T CARE ABOUT ANYTHING

BUT IF YOU WERE TEACHING A CLASS AND ONE OF THE

STUDENTS ASKED YOU WHICH AMERICAN POETS

THEY SHOULD READ

WHAT WOULD YOU TELL THEM?

she crossed her legs as I watched and I thought

I could knock him out with one punch

rape her in 4 minutes

catch a train for L.A.

get off in Arizona and walk off into the desert

and I couldn’t tell him that I would never teach

a class

that along with not liking American poetry

that I didn’t like American classes either

or the job that they would expect me to

do,

so I said

Whitman, T. S. Eliot, D. H. Lawrence’s poems about

reptiles and beasts, Auden. and then I

realized that Whitman was the only true American,

that Eliot was not an American somehow and the

others certainly not, and

he knew it too

he knew that I had fucked up

but I made no apologies

thought some more about rape

I almost loved the woman but I knew that when she walked out

that I would never see her again

and we shook hands and the Gugg said

he’d send me the article when it came out

but I knew that he didn’t have an article

and he knew it too

and then he said

I will send you some of my poems translated into

English

and I said fine

and I watched them walk out of the place

I watched her highheels clack down the tall

green steps

and then both of them were gone

but I kept remembering her dress sliding all over her

like a second skin

and I was wild with mourning and love and sadness

and being a fool unable to

communicate

anything

and I walked in and finished that beer

cracked another

put on my ragged king’s coat

and walked out into the New Orleans street

and that very night

I sat with my friends and acted vile and

the ass

much mouth and villainy

and cruelness

and they never

knew why.

Very

I take the taxi to Newport and study the wrinkles in the

driver’s skull; all anticipation is gone:

defeat has come so often

(like rain)

that it has assumed more meaning

than victory; the player is good at

the piano

and we wait in a corner

(this poet!)

waiting to recite

poems; it’s like a cave here:

full of bats and whores

and bodiless music

moving at the back of the world; my head aches,

and seeking a deliberate door

I think gently of successful papa Haydn

rotting in the rainy garden

above copulating

tone-deaf gophers…

the sun is in a box somewhere

asleep like a cat;

the bats flit, a body

takes my hand (the one with the drink:

the right hand is the drinker)

a woman, a horrible

damned woman,

something alive

sits

and blinks

at me:

Hank, it says,

they want you up

front!

fuck ’em, I say, fuck ’em.

I have grown quite fat and

vulgar (a deliberate death

on the kitchen floor) and

suddenly I laugh

at my excellent condition

like some swine of a businessman

and I don’t even feel

like getting up

to piss…

Angels,

we have grown apart.

The Look:

I once bought a toy rabbit

at a department store

and now he sits and ponders

me with pink sheer eyes:

He wants golfballs and glass

walls.

I want quiet thunder.

Our disappointment sits between us.

One Night Stand

the latest sleeping on my pillow catches

window lamplight through the mist of alcohol.

I was the whelp, the prude who shook when

the wind shook blades of grass the eye could see

and

you were a

convent girl watching the nuns shake loose

the Las Cruces sand from God’s robes

you are

yesterday’s

bouquet so sadly

raided, I kiss your poor

breasts as my hands reach for love

in this cheap Hollywood apartment smelling of

bread and gas and misery.

we move through remembered routes

the same old steps smooth with hundreds of

feet, 50 loves, 20 years.

and we are granted a very small summer, and

then it’s

winter again

and you are moving across the floor

some heavy awkward thing

and the toilet flushes, a dog barks

a car door slams…

it’s gotten inescapably away, everything,

it seems, and I light a cigarette and

await the oldest curse

of all.

Poem to a Most Affectionate Lady

Please keep your icecream hands

for the leopard,

please keep your knees

out of my nuts;

if women must love me

I ask them also

to cook me sauerkraut dinners

and leave me time

for games of gold

in the mind,

and time for sleep

or scratching

or rolling upon my side

like any tired bull

in any tired meadow.

love is not a candle

burning down—

life is,

and love and life are

not the same

or else

love having choice

nobody would ever die.

which means? which means:

let loose a moment

your hand upon my center—

I’ve done you well

like any scrabby plant

upon a mountain, so

please be kind enough

to die for an hour

or 2,

or at least

take time

to turn the

sauerkraut.

Parts of an Opera, Parts of a Guitar, Part of Nowhere

I don’t know, it was raining and I had fallen down

somewhere but I seemed to have money so it didn’t

matter, and I went into the opera to dry off, and it

was opening night and everybody was dressed and

trying

to act very polite and educated but I saw a lot of

guys there mean as hell, I don’t mean mean enough

to be

a Dillinger but mean enough to be successful in

business and their wives were all tone deaf

and even the people hollering in the opera

were not enjoying it but hollering because it was the

thing to do, like wearing bermudas in the summer, and

I thought, I’ll never write an opera because they’ll

walk all over it, and I walked out

and phoned a gal I knew from South Philly and she met

me on Olvera Street and we went into a fancy place

and ate and drank and this big female kept

whirling her fans and shaking her ass in my face

and the South Philly broad got mad and I laughed

and a little Mexican mean as a tarantula

kept asking us to keep quiet and I asked him out

in the alley and he went and I took him quite

easily and I felt like Hemingway and I took the

S. Philly broad to my room and I told her all about

the opera

how the people were so nicely dressed

and applauded all the time

whether it was good or bad

and we slept real good that night

the rain coming down on our heads

through the open window

but I kept thinking of the bigassed Mexican gal

with the fans who kept shaking it

and I don’t think she was kidding

because I am real handsome

and educated

and someday I’m going to give up

drinking and smoking and whoring

and kneel and pray in the Sunday sunshine

while they are killing the beautiful bulls

and selling their ears and tails in

Tiajuana, and I’m going to the opera,

I’m going to the opera and have 12 guys

working for me for

80 dollars a week, including half-days on

Saturdays and no

hangovers on

Monday.

Letter from the North

my friend writes of rejection and editors,

and how he has visited K. or R. or W.,

and am I in S.#12? he will have a poem in there,

and T. has written him from Florida

but rejected his poems; R. sleeps in the printshop

and T. chided him mercilessly…

met editor of the X. Review in the street,

and editor acted like he was kicked in the nuts

when he found out who he was

and pressed him for opinion of poems;

it does good to corner these guys sometime,

flush them outa the brush;

ad agencies have forgotten him, and W. is taking

too long to read his book; only got $5

for reading at the Unicorn,

phoned K. of the W. Review, sounds like a sharp guy;

and he thinks he is done with R.;

encloses some clippings for my amusement:

his name in a newspaper column;

he’ll have to call R. again: S. is lecturing at

the university

and he can’t bear to go; M. is a homo,

C. can’t make up his mind and P. is mad at him

because he drank beer in front of N.

nothing but rejects but he knows his stuff is good.

L. was there to borrow a pack of Pall Malls, bastard makes

him sick, always whining…

B. writes that P. is in trouble, they must organize

a benefit;

awful discouraged. not even money for stamps.

dead without stamps. write me, he says,

I got the blues.

write you? about what, my friend?

I’m only interested in

poetry.

The Best Way to Get Famous Is to Run Away

I found a loose cement slab outside the icecream store,

tossed it aside and began to dig; the earth was

soft and full of worms and soon I was in to my

waist, size 36;

a crowd gathered but stepped back before my shots

of mud,

and by the time the police came, I was in below

my head,

frightening gophers, eels and finding bits of golden

inlaid skull,

and they asked me, are you looking for oil, treasure,

gold, the end of China? are you looking for love, God,

a lost key chain? and little girls dripping icecream

peered into my darkness, and a psychiatrist came

and a

college professor and a movie actress in a bikini, and

a Russian spy and a French spy and an English spy,

and a drama critic and a bill collector and an old

girl friend, and they all asked me, what are you

looking

for? and soon it began to rain…atomic submarines

changed course, Tuesday Weld hid behind a newspaper,

Jean-Paul Sartre rolled in his sleep, and my hole

filled

with water; I came out black as Africa, shooting

stars

and epitaphs, my pockets full of lovely worms,

and they took me to their jail and gave me a shower

and a nice cell, rent-free, and even now the people

are picketing in my cause, and I have signed

contracts to appear on the stage and television,

to write a guest column for the local paper and

write a book and endorse some products, I have

enough money to last me several years at the best

hotels, but as soon as I get out of here, I’m gonna

find me another loose slab and begin to dig, dig,

dig, and this time I’m not coming back…rain, shine,

or bikini, and the reporters keep asking, why did you

do it? but I just light my cigarette and smile…

The Kings Are Gone

to say great words of kings and life

to give equations like a math genius;

I sat in on a play by Shakespeare,

but the grandeur did not come through;

I do not claim to have a good ear

or a good soul, but most of Shakespeare

laid me dry, I confess,

and I went me into a bar

where a man with hands like red crabs

laid his sick life before me through the fumes,

and I grew drunk,

mirror upon myself,

the age of life like a spider

taking last blood from us all,

and I knew I had misjudged Shakey,

his voice speaking out of the tube of the grave,

and the traffic went past

I could see it out the door,

pieces of things that moved

and the red crab hands moved before my face

and I took my drink then knocked it over

with the back of my hand;

and I walked out on the street

but nothing got better.

Reprieve and Admixture

exposed to grief too long

I become in time

surfeited with suffering,

decide that I owe myself

survival; this is not easy:

telling yourself that you

deserve better days

after the history of your past;

but I have seen complete fools

go on (of course)

without ever

considering their shortcomings;

then too turtles crawl the

land, dirty words scratched

on their backs…

but they hardly

improve the horizon.

The Swans Walk My Brain in April It Rains

would you have me peel an orange and

talk of Saavedra (Miguel de) Cervantes?

get out! you are like that fly on the

curtain.

I am not liked in the marketplace.

I do not smile at the children.

I am not interested in the doings of

armies.

I drink at fountains until my eyes

stick out like ripe berries.

I stink under the armpits and do not

shine my shoes.

I do not own

anything.

I understand little but my

misuse.

I understand only horror and

more horror.

I cannot rhyme.

I am too tired to

steal.

I listen to Segovia

smile.

I look at a hog’s head and

am in

love.

I walk I walk a

hymenotomy of a

man—o

sweet things of this time

where are you?

you must find me now for I am

terrified with what I

see!

the dungeons sweep past lit with

eyes. eyes? magma!

I enter a shop and buy wine from a

dead man

then walk away under a sky overflowing

with pus. the hunters cough

on the benches.

I walk…

The End

here they come

grey and beastly

rubbing out the night

with their bloodred torches,

Numbo! they scream,

Hail Numbo!

and grocer John gets down

on the floor and hugs

his precious eggs

and sausage,

and the bats of

Babe Ruth get up and

strut their

averages

around a dark bar,

and the grey blonde in bed

with me asks

“what’s all the noise?”

and I say,

“the world is coming

to an end.”

and we sit in the window

and watch, strangely

happy. we have 14 cigarettes

and a bottle of wine.

enough to last

until they

find us.

A Farewell Thing While Breathing

a farewell thing while breathing

was walking down the hall

in underwear

with painted face like clown

a bomb from Cologne in right pocket

a Season in Hell

in the left,

stripes of sunset

like

bass

running

down

his

arms,

and they found him in the morning

dangling in the fire escape

window,

face frosted and gone as an electric bulb,

and the sparrows

were in the brush downstairs,

and

friend,

sparrows do not sing

and they

(the people, not the sparrows)

carried him down the steps

like a wasted owl.

Sad-Eyed Mules of Men

daily the

sledgehammers and the

sad-eyed mules of men, &

there was Christ hung like

dried bacon, and now

the con-men raking it in:

the young girls

the mansions

the trips to

Paris, and look:

even the great artists

the great writers

raking it in.

but where do we go

while the great writers are

saving their own

souls?

where do we go?

…to hell, of course, juggling their

collected works

under our

collective

arms.

Dear Friend

this

is what happens when the

drink and the life

catch up with what is left of

one.

I still hope to send you the

paperback although it is all

swollen.

I read

most of it in the bathroom where the

faucets drip hot water and make

steam

and that is what happened to the pages and

the binding is about to

pop

but I still thought I’d mail it to

you but

something always interferes—

there is a mirror

here and

I see myself in the mirror

and I stagger like a deer taking a

slug in the neck

the face is not what it should

be and I tell myself that it does not

matter

that I

am tired of factual and recognized

good

that we need new goodness new

truth for

ourselves and

let the others wear that

out.

but anyhow

I still hope to mail you the

paperback

I am sure I will mail it to you

sometime I think I will

just walk into the room and brush by

knock it to the floor with my

hand and pick it up

without looking at anything

and I will find an envelope and

mail it to

you.

I want to get it out

of here.

A Conversation on Morality, Eternity and Copulation

all up and down the street they came back

without arms or legs or eyes or

lungs or minds or

lives, although

the war had been

won

and the madam stood in the doorway

and told me,

it won’t matter, it’ll be

business as

usual

because if they haven’t shot off

the other parts

they’ll still want to

fuck.

and the dead? I

asked.

the dead are without money or

sense.

many of the living are the same

way? I suggested.

yeah, but those we don’t

serve.

God will love

you.

I’m sure He

will.

will you serve

Him?

I have been serving Him, you know

that: men are men and

soldiers are soldiers and

they love to

fuck, don’t

you?

amen, I

said.

Soirée

ants crawl upon paper flowers with all the insect color

of my hatred and

I crash out the lamp and rise to scream,

but, lo, I am greater than garlic and faster

than the foreigner Errico!

in the cupboard sits my bottle

like a dwarf waiting to scratch out my prayers.

I drink and cough like some idiot at a symphony,

sunlight and maddened birds are everywhere,

the phone rings gamboling its sound

against the odds of the crooked sea;

I drink deeply and evenly now,

I drink to paradise

and death

and the lie of love.

at the window I watch the soldiers parachute down

as my radio plays the Symphonie Fantastique by

Berlioz;

the lightning stills the ants, stiffens them with

the fear of man, and there is a knock upon my door.

I walk with my luger and turn the knob. everything

is nonsense, nothing matters. the flies are upon

the sugar, wildly in the small richness: they have

my blithe and tinkered soul…

THE MARCH TO THE GALLOWS!

I laugh gaily as the chandeliers swing

and the last of the lovers

clutch at the straws of their lives,

and I fire through the doorway

as the music sinks to a lisp at the dismay

and derangement

of Birth.

Notations from a Muddled Indolence

a woman walks by and I look at her and know that her
existence is

depleted of thought and worms

that she does not realize that successful men can be such

beasts

that she does not know that I have fallen into the sloth of

formula

I watch her as I sit in a dirty kitchen on a dirty

afternoon

she walks dreaming of oranges and

Cadillacs

mentally I throw her up into a palm

tree

physically I rape her

spiritually I spit in her

eye

I realize that really she is no more say than

some words written by a small boy in a public

crapper

these innumerable and astounding

realizations

this dirty

life

her skin is white and sagging

she has on a purple

underslip

this is what causes

wars

great paintings

suicides

harps

geognosy and

hermits.

Nothing Subtle

there is nothing subtle about dying or

dumping garbage, or the spider

and this fist full of nickels and

the barking of dogs tonight

when the beast puffs on beer

and moonlight,

and asks my name

and I hold to the wall

not man enough to cry

as the city dumps its sorrow

in wine bottles and stale kisses,

and the handcuffs and crutches and slabs

fornicate like mad.

I Don’t Need a Bedsheet with Slits for Eyes to Kill You in

if it’s raining and you’re sitting behind a shade with

a cup of curari or a dead

antelope

with bluer eyes than any of the beautiful blue eyes

of any of the girls in this ugly

town

I’ll paint your fence green or

unplug your drain for almost

nothing;

if the fog comes in like soft cleanser

and you can see old men looking out at it

from behind curtains

these warm old men smoking pipes

I will tell you stories to make your dreams

easier;

but if you mutilate me

hang me alongside the scarecrow like a

cheap Christ

and let some schoolboy hang a sign about my

throat

I’m going to walk your streets of night

with a knife

in the rain in the snow

on gay holidays I’ll be there

behind you

and when I decide finally that we will

meet

you will not understand

because you did not want

to

and the flowers and the dogs and the

cities and the children will not

miss you.

86’d

the most binding labor

is

trying to make it

under a sanctified

banner.

similarity of intention

with others

marks the fool from the

explorer

you can learn this at

any

poolhall, racetrack, bar

university or

jail.

people run from rain but

sit

in bathtubs full of

water.

it is fairly dismal to know that

millions of people are worried about

the hydrogen bomb

yet

they are already

dead.

yet they keep trying to make

women

money

sense.

and finally the Great Bartender will lean forward

white and pure and strong and mystic

to tell you that you’ve had

enough

just when you feel like

you’re getting

started.

The Ants

I was down by the mill at last,

and I saw a rabbit go by

and a rotten log

and a rotten heart,

and I sat and smoked on a stump

and I watched the ants;

the ants are everywhere

picking up the dead,

their dead and the other dead,

cleaning up the earth,

and the sky was the same old

pale blue

like a weak water color,

and a couple of clouds,

fat and senseless;

and I took out the bottle

and the notebook

and I was a man a thousand years old,

and a thousand years back

or a thousand years ahead,

and I looked down into the oil of water

and the sun came back

painting blurs in my head,

showing me who was master

and how weak I was

and I put my hand flat on the dirt

palm up

and the ants came up

and touched

and passed around

so I guessed that I was not dead,

but no, there was one,

he came up and climbed

and I could feel the thin hair-legs

as he climbed

both of us brilliant in the sunlight,

and then down he went into the dirt,

and he ran ahead, but the next one ran

up my sleeve and then out,

and then stood there in my palm, blind,

looking up at me, and while he stood there

another came up and touched his feelers

and they talked about me,

and then came a third and a fourth

and I felt their excitement:

this palm in the dust could be theirs,

and I rose with a curse

and pinched and blew them off

like the idiots they were:

their time would come to share with the worm,

but this time this time was mine!

but no matter that I walked off into the pines

and frightened a squirrel,

they had said,

they’d had their say,

and I was done.

Suicide

he told me he had all the gas on

without flame

but when I got there

at 11:30 p.m. the gas was flaming and

he was drunk on the couch

with his ragged goatee:

“it got too much,” he told me,

“I got to thinking

and it got too much.”

which is good enough, we who think

or work with words, we who carve

can come up against this, especially

if we believe our early successes

and believe the game is won.

I think of Ernie tagging himself

when the time was ready

and I think of Frost

going on,

licking the boots of politicians,

telling the pretty lies

of an addled mind,

and I think,

well, Ernie’s won

another round.

I pour the kid a drink, then

pour myself one. kid?

hell, he’s 30. a lady’s man

and a master of the English

language with a

peanut-shell soul.

and I? and I? nothing more.

we drink and he reels off

petty larcenies. later I leave,

both of us alive.

the next Sunday, I’m told,

my friend was in Frisco

in a green bow tie

reading his poems to a

society of misplaced ladies.

I’m told he

gassed them to

death.

3:30 A.M. Conversation

at 3:30 a.m. in the morning

a door opens

and feet come down the hall

moving a body,

and there is a knock

and you put down your beer

and answer.

god damn it, she says,

don’t you ever sleep?

and she walks in

her hair in curlers

and herself in a silk robe

covered with rabbits and birds

and she has brought her own bottle

to which you splendidly add

2 glasses;

her husband, she says, is in Florida

and her sister sends her money and dresses,

and she has been looking for a job

for 32 days.

you tell her

you are a jockey’s agent and a

writer of jazz and love songs,

and after a couple of drinks

she doesn’t bother to cover

her legs

with the edge of the robe

that keeps falling away.

they are not bad legs at all,

in fact, very good legs,

and soon you are kissing a

head full of curlers,

and the rabbits are beginning

to wink, and Florida is a long way

away, and she says we are not strangers

really because she has seen me

in the hall.

and finally

there is very little

to say.

Cows in Art Class

good weather

is like

good women—

it doesn’t always happen

and when it does

it doesn’t

always last.

a man is

more stable:

if he’s bad

there’s more chance

he’ll stay that way,

or if he’s good

he might hang

on,

but a woman

is changed forever

by

children

age

diet

conversation

sex

the moon

the absence or

presence of the sun

or good times.

a woman must be nursed

into subsistence

by love

where a man can become

stronger

by being hated.

I am drinking tonight in Spangler’s Bar

and I remember the cows

I once painted in Art class

and they looked good

they looked better than anything

in here. I am drinking in Spangler’s Bar

wondering which to love and which

to hate, but the rules are gone:

I love and hate only

myself—

the others stand beyond me

like oranges dropped from the table

and rolling away; it’s what I’ve got to

decide:

kill myself or

love myself?

which is the treason?

where’s the information

coming from?

books…like broken glass:

I wdn’t wipe my ass with ’em

yet, it’s getting

darker, see?

(we drink here and speak to

each other and seem knowing.)

paint the cow with the biggest

tits

paint the cow with the biggest

rump.

the bartender slides me a beer

it runs down the bar

like an Olympic sprinter

and the pair of pliers that is my hand

stops it, lifts it,

golden, dull temptation,

I drink and

stand there

the weather bad for cows

but my brush is ready

to stroke up

the green grass straw eye

sadness takes me over

and I drink the beer straight down

order a shot

fast

to give me the guts and the love to

go

on.

Practice

I keep practicing death

and as the worms writhe

in agony of waiting

I might as well have another

drink, and I am thinking

I am there:

and I cross my legs

in the patio of

some Mexico City hotel

in 1997

and the birds come down

to pick out my eyes

and the birds fly away

and I no longer see

them.

is it shotguns of cancer

or sun-madness?

the rotting of the heart,

the gut, the lily.

now there’s Hem. I always thought of Hem

as a tough old guy frying a steak

in some kitchen

under a bright light. what

happened, Ernie?

Hem was practicing too.

Everytime he watched a bull die

he got ready. when he lit a cigar

at four in the afternoon, he

got ready.

the bulls, the soldiers, the cities

the towns…

my sadness, my sadness

(let me have this drink)

could be strung across guitars

everywhere

and played for 10 minutes

with all the generals bowing

whores little girls again

maids kissing my photograph

on the plaza wall haha

and old warriors

rubbing their blue stiff veins

and hoping for one more day

of bravery.

I practice for you, death:

your wig

that dress

your eyes

these teeth.

I too am an old man frying a steak

in a small kitchen.

when I run out of luck

I’ll run out of whiskey

and when I run out of whiskey

the land will not be green,

and my love and my sadness…

who needs these?

I practice death pretty good:

send in the bull

send in the girl whose white flesh

maddens men on the boulevards,

send in Paris,

send in a car on the freeway

with 6 people going to a picnic,

send in the winner of the 8th,

send in Palm Beach and all the people

on the sand!

and I practice for you

too,

and the man sweeping the sidewalk

and the lady in bed with me

and the poems of Shakespeare

and the elephants

and the queers and the murderers,

I practice for everybody,

but for myself mostly.

pouring another drink now

at 9:30 in the morning,

the Racing Form on the couch,

the mailman walking toward me

with a loveletter from a lady who

doesn’t want to die and a letter from the

government

telling me to give them money;

and I practice for the government too,

and I’m red, all red inside,

punctured with heart and intestine and lung,

I hope they don’t arrest me,

I practice pretty good

and I’ve got a steak, a cigar

and a fifth of scotch,

I’ve read most of the classics

and I watch the birds fly this morning

and I can see most of them,

many of them that you can’t see,

and I’m going to take a bath pretty soon,

put on some clean clothes

and drive South to the track.

it is not an unusual morning except that

it is one more,

and I want to thank you

for listening.

I Kneel

these legs need to run

but I kneel

before female flowers

catch the scent of

forgetfulness

and grab it

sure

and evenings

hours of evenings

grey-headed evenings

nod

and afterwards

fall asleep.

Freedom: The Unmolested Eagle of Myself

justification of blood and rock is

justification of you

waiting in the doorway

justification of gun and club and pincers is

justification of you

spreading a tablecloth

the tree’s mathematics is the pounding dull leaves of

your eyes

my feet pushed into socks is an Arab crawling up to

kill

juice of christ in a pear is myself driving away

at 90 miles an hour

and

the flak and the gruel and the words are riveted to the

walls

they are

packaged like bombs to explode under my

enemies

and the evening comes down smiling and humming one

more dead tune

and

it’s hooray: look out: wait:

starve and be covered by dirt until

life is tall and silver

again.

Singing Is Fire

the birds are on fire

now

out there

and I walk across the room

and hold back the shade

and they are out there now

burning at

5:05 a.m.—darkness lifting like a

horse falling through sand. well,

I’ve got a blazer of whiskey left and

there are enough stretchers to carry the dead

but

not enough water to save the burning

birds: and they are telling me now:

FLAME!           FLAME!

FLAME!

as old trains move through the

desert

as the whores sleep with the job

done

as the schoolboys dream of laborless

love

the birds BURN and

die before me—

they

fly away done

leaving the grass for what’s left of the

worms     what’s left of the worms

what’s left of them

for what’s left of me:

old tin song with lunatic tears:

which

is nothing new

except it’s different now

feeling so bad

they used to call it the blues

but it’s not so bad

whatever you call it

because at this time of light

say 5:36 a.m.

I still have a little whiskey left and

therefore a

chance.

The Sun Wields Mercy

and the sun wields mercy

but like a torch carried too high,

and the jets whip across its sight

and rockets leap like toads,

and the boys get out the maps

and pin-cushion the moon,

old green cheese,

no life there but too much on earth:

our unwashed India boys

crossing their legs, playing pipes,

starving with sucked-in bellies,

watching the snakes volute

like beautiful women in the hungry air;

the rockets leap,

the rockets leap like hares,

clearing clump and dog

replacing out-dated bullets;

the Chinese still carve

in jade, quietly stuffing rice

into their hunger, a hunger

a thousand years old,

their muddy rivers moving with fire

and song, barges, houseboats

pushed by the drifting poles

of waiting without wanting;

in Turkey they face the East

on their carpets

praying to a purple god

who smokes and laughs

and sticks his fingers in their eyes

blinding them, as gods will do;

but the rockets are ready: peace is no longer,

for some reason, precious;

madness drifts like lily pads

on a pond, circling senselessly;

the painters paint dipping

their reds and greens and yellows,

poets rhyme their loneliness,

musicians starve as always

and the novelists miss the mark,

but not the pelican, the gull;

pelicans dip and dive, rise,

shaking shocked half-dead

radioactive fish from their beaks;

indeed, indeed, the waters wash

the rocks with slime; and on Wall St.

the market staggers like a lost drunk

looking for his key; ah,

this will be a good one, by God:

it will take us back to the

snake, the limpet, or if we’re lucky,

the catalysis to the

sabre-teeth, the winged monkey

scrabbling in the pit over bits

of helmet, instrument and glass;

a lightning crashes across

the window and in a million rooms

lovers lie entwined and lost

and sick as peace;

the sky still breaks red and orange for the

painters—and for the lovers,

flowers open as they have always

opened but covered with the thin dust

of rocket fuel and mushrooms,

poison mushrooms; it’s a bad time,

a dog-sick time—curtain,

act III, standing room only,

SOLD OUT, SOLD OUT, SOLD OUT again,

by god, by somebody and something,

by rockets and generals and

leaders, by poets, doctors, comedians,

by manufacturers of soup

and biscuits, Janus-faced hucksters

of their own indexterity;

I can see now the coal-slick

contaminated fields, a snail or 2,

bile, obsidian, a fish or 3

in the shallows, an obloquy of our

source and our sight…

has this happened before? is history

a circle that catches itself by the tail,

a dream, a nightmare,

a general’s dream, a president’s dream,

a dictator’s dream…

can’t we awaken?

or are the forces of life greater than we?

can’t we awaken? must we forever,

dear friends, die in our sleep?

On the Failure of a Poet

pinch-penny light, rifted, pitied light

like the drunken face of God in the sand,

smiling forgiveness…some old candle burning

in some old house

on the last night of earth,

house burning,

earth burning

in tears and poetry

scorching the filthy stars.

stalwart death, clean-up batter,

picking his nose and his victims,

old buddy, chewing stale bread,

always successful

as I listen to the crickets

while the master poets snore,

as I bring up the walls of China

in my poor brain

and walk them in wet dark

dropping lilies into ponds

calling to the dead

who have crawled away to hide;

while the master poets snore

I pay homage to bombs

the face of Baune turning to blood

with only the eyes holding still to the edge of sunset,

not wanting to go down…

now I cling evilly to these walls

and stand before a mirror

examining my content:

I represent rent, cheap labor

and nickle-coffee nights,

dancer in the splendid hock-shops

and rooms that close across the throat

as words fly from my small white hands

as the master poets snore…

are their birds more silken than mine?

perhaps, perhaps…it is so hard to deny!

what trick hikes their wings?

I tell you, no sparrow is more carved or

craving than mine…and yet

across my window

no voice answers, nothing responds;

I hear only the electric voices,

the shuffling of plates and lives,

on and on

these same simple dead sounds

enfolding me in their unchallenged weight,

while the master poets sing

and are praised,

and even fools love and are loved;

faith burns away:

I am a beggar hoisting lulled

sacked thoughts,

knowing I have the bolt to throw

but the catcher’s out of sight.

The Beast

Beowulf may have killed Grendel and

Grendel’s mother

but he

couldn’t kill this

one:

it moves around with broken back and

eyes of spittle

has cancer

sweeps with a broom

smiles and kills

germs germans gladiolas

it sits in the bathtub

with a piece of soap and

reads the newspaper about the

Bomb and Vietnam and the freeways

and it smiles and then

gets out naked

doesn’t use a towel

goes outside

and rapes young girls

kills them and

throws them aside like

steakbone

it walks into a bedroom and watches

lovers fuck

it stops the clock at

1:30 a.m.

it turns a man into a rock while he

reads a book

the beast

spoils candy

causes mournful songs to be

created

makes birds stop

flying

it even killed Beowulf

the brave Beowulf who

had killed Grendel and Grendel’s

mother

look

even the whores at the bar

think about it

drink too much and

almost

forget business.

A Rat Rises

in some suburban cellar

a rat rises and tongues the leaky bottom of your life;

dreams of Cairo leave the body first,

such a November!—sweet pain tickling

like a fly, brushed off, it circles back

and settles again…

I will not lie: I hear the cackle of the grave

on nights that cannot be drunk away,

and it has rained all this same day

and buying my paper

I saw the drops falling

from the newsboy’s hat

to his nose

and then falling from his nose…

but I doubt he ever considered

cutting his throat,

ending a quick love.

Ramsey, says a voice on the phone,

Ramsey, you sound so damned sad!

downstairs a child draws circles in the mud,

it has stopped raining.

circles, circles

weep less, wonder less.

I hear a voice singing.

I open a window.

a dog barks.

in Amsterdam a holy man trembles.

Pansies

pansies in a glass

this is sterile

sterile meaning

less trouble,

the arms of color

lifting

like cobras,

everything standing

around the glass

in the room.

I am thinking

of the

bee.

The Man with the Hot Nose

I am stuck with a snarl,

by God,

that would walk up the side

of a house;

I snarl, kissing maidens,

50-year-old whores

and torn-up mutuel

tickets;

all affected, I think,

as the motorcycle cop

writes out his ticket

and I think of myself

killing him,

laying him in the sunlight

badge upwards

for butterflies

and stares;

I snarl when I shit

or read the

stock market quotations;

I snarl when it rains,

I am almost depraved,

seldom laugh,

misunderstand flat tires

and various things

such as

human decay of mind and

body, spiders at

work,

all the dead troops of

forever,

toy crosses for sale

in stationery store

windows,

elephants for sale

or thirsty,

riot for useless

causes; stuck elevators,

constipation,

I understand nothing

except maybe

falling off a couch

drunk;

ariel ariel by God,

the clown’s tin sides

thumping,

I bring the cigarette

close,

light it,

not setting my hair

on fire

(I guess this is

important);

I snarl a bit

in case there is Anybody

on the stairway,

on the roof,

on the mountain,

pissing from the tower of

Pisa (which must be

leaned back a bit

for ten million dollars)

and looking.

Hangover and Sick Leave

I know very little

and while I have eyes inside my head,

and feet to walk with, and

there are universities and

books full of men and

places like

Rome and Madrid—

I stay in bed

and watch the light rise in the curtains

and listen to the sounds

that I dislike, and

I fear the angry wife

the landlord

the psychiatrist

the police

the priest,

yet in bed here

the sun of myself working around my

bones

I am real enough

while

thinking of the factory workers with

sweating crotches

I know enough

of Los Angeles

in this room

so that there is nothing to

prove

and I raise the covers

to the ears of my empty head

and breathe in and out

in and out

within these walls

the beautiful cardboard day of

the mole.

Mercy, Wherever You Are, Come Running in to Me and Grab Me in Your Good Arms—

sterile faces squeezed out from squalid tubes of

bodies ream and blind me to any

compromise.

I would crawl down into the black volcanic gut of a

chicken and

hide hide hide.

listen, I know you think I am bitter and

maybe insane, well

that’s all right

but find me a place:

a doorman at the casino

where I may separate the drunks from their

florins

or let the air out of the tires of the

mayor

until the years pass by and they

burn the world

until the difference in faces is

indifferent.

or now look

while I’m asking for things

I’d like to tell you

this:

I would like a piece of ass

I have always wanted a piece of ass

most of the

time.

I mean good

stuff not like what

I’ve been

getting.

I want all

silk and garters and flesh and

snake wriggle and the

diamond earrings and the

accent, and the smell of

small cotton

animals.

I don’t ask for a field of flowers in a

coal mine.

I don’t ask you to put eyes in the bats in the

cave.

I don’t ask you to dissolve the bombs like

snow.

I don’t ask pet lions on the front lawn or a

free train ride to

St. Louis.

just a few things.

either that or I’ve got to sell the

piano.

It’s Nothing to Laugh About

there’s no color like the color of an orange,

and the mountains were a sad smokey purple like

old curtains in some cheap burlesque house;

and the small toad sat there

holding the dusty road like a tiny tank,

and staring,

staring like something really definite,

a greener living green than any green leaf;

and it puffed its sides and let them fall

and sometimes through the skin you could see

the dark water of another world;

and then it shot the blood through one eye—

you could see the guts contract

gripped by the glove of the skin—and

the red-thin stream of frogblood

a bright neat trick of centuries

hurled through bright valley air

upon golden nylon;

she screamed and he laughed, delighted with

the frog’s great victory; she rubbed a quick

pink hanky against the desecrated nylon—

some womanly female in her had been splashed

and unveiled and defeated, and her dress hung

like some loose and second skin as the

indelicate horror writhed in her and claimed away

her fullness;

“you fool!” she spit over the stocking, “it’s

nothing to laugh about!”

he looked at the toad in the fine rustbrown road

and imagined it smiled at him—

and then it turned half-sideways and hopped left

without haste

and popped again into the air

like some slow-motion nature film,

the legends seeming to grip for notches in the air

and the head humped stiff

and brutalized away from life

like an old man reading a newspaper;

and then, with a backward over-the-shoulder look

it hopped into the grass of home;

“he’s gone,” he spoke sadly.

he looked to the rocks of the purple mountains

and sensed the frog moving toward them,

done with cities and roads;

he imagined the frog in a stream

his green skin happy against the blue-chill water;

he took her hand and they moved forward

together

over the unguarded road.

35 Seconds

failures. one after the

other. a whole duckpondfull

of failures. my

right arm hurts way

up into my shoulder.

it’s like at the track.

you walk up to the bar

your eyes scared out of

your head and

you drink it down:

bar legs asses

walls ceiling

program

horseturds

and you know you

only have 35 seconds left to live

and all the red mouths

want to kiss you,

all the dresses

want to lift and

show you leg,

it’s like bugles

and symphonies

everywhere

like war

like war

like war

and the bartender leans

across and says

I hear they’re going to

send in the 6

in the next

race.

and you say

fuck you,

and he is

a white dishtowel

in your grandmother’s house

which is no longer

there.

and then he says

something.

and that’s how

I hurt my

arm.

Regard Me

regard me in high level of terror

as the one who pulled down the shades

when the president stopped to shave,

enthralled by the way the Indian turned

through darkness and water and sand;

regard me as the one who laughed

when the cat caught fire in the radio

and the owl blew his stinking stack

grabbing mice and bulls and ornaments;

regard me as the one who picked the meat

from the bones and shot craps with God

as the poison coronets floated in the air;

regard me, even as dead, more alive than

many of the living,

and regard me, as I fumble with flat breasts,

regard me as nothing

so we may have peace

and forget.

With Vengeance Like a Tiger Crawls

to hell with metric—I have read the lore of the ages

and placed them back on their lifeless shelves:

we have written ourselves insensible

while outside…

to hell with poesy—I would rather sit

in cheap burlesque houses

and watch the sick Irish and Jewish clowns

spill their rank wit

into thimble minds.

ah, I know the clouds are quicker than we think

and that we fail at center,

spread outward

like so much ink

and quickly die;

so being a poltroon, I have read the classics,

I have argued in the marketplace,

I have been drunk with the immortals:

I have listened to these children cry

that language is too huge a bone for all of us:

even the finer wits have dulled their massive teeth.

all the waters are wasted

on Cadillacs and dahlias,

and I am wasted on Milton and matchsticks…

and, tonight, closer to madness than I have ever known,

I watch a small yellow bird

eat gravel at the bottom of his cage.

oh, let me lose my father’s face!

…and find a forest all the axmen execrate,

let me be fuddled in the glade

numb with the growth of fancy;

let me find men and dogs and children,

let me find towers and lattice swaying

in the sun

and a God of Life instead of Death.

when they deal their sticks against my brain

let me see dogs and goats and islands

and clasp my hands beneath their might

(to hell with your bright wit,

with vengeance like a tiger crawls)

and flying, flying

reach Israel

the waters

a stone of blue

all round in midnight

ah, I want too much!

bring on your voices, gallant but gall,

chill me with garlic and horns

and yawn me glibly through the

last candle of my hours: I will die

witless and poor.

Itch, Come and Gone

words words like steel

like a copper bodice,

like flamingoes

their bloody straw legs

caught under rock;

words as ridiculous

as the equator

as pitiful and clumsy

as some mongrel dog

scratching

working away at an itch

in the skin;

then

there are other tools:

other ways

some shine and some sing

and there are some that spin

and some that kill,

but always,

back to the word:

it will describe your painting

your statue—

words

to end a fable

that no longer itches

anywhere

now ridiculous but not clumsy

pitiful

but not wrong.

This

I have refused the discipline

of Art and Government and

God and all that which

destroys my seeming

and lifting my beer now

frothy

in the golden afternoon

light

I have it:

plateaus of softness, wire

leaves, spirit of the sidewalks

walls that weep like old paintings

everything real, not bent,

and as a brown sparrow

drops across my window’s sight

and the planes graze Africa again

in fire-lit nightmare

I have all I need on this tablecloth:

sunflower seeds, can opener

razor, 2 pencils, bent paper clip

memory of sparrow, angular sidewalk—

this under my fingers

myself myself myself.

2 Outside, As Bones Break in My Kitchen

they get up on their garage roof

both of them 80 or 90 years old

standing on the slant

she wanting to fall really

all the way

but hacking at the old roofing

with a hoe

and he

more coward

on his knees praying for more days

gluing chunks of tar

his ear listening

for more green rain

more green rain

and he says

mama be careful

and she says nothing

and hacks a hole

where a tulip

never grew.

Saying Goodbye to Love

no more stalling,

the war torch is lit

and all over the neighborhood

men rattle in their irons,

flares kite the sky

somebody rushes past,

a confused cock crows

and I strike up

a cigarette.

it is difficult to decide

where the enemy is:

I go inside

to wife and hound

both fat and soft

as peaches

under the

sun.

I shave by candlefat and lightning,

I shave by their holy silence

in a shattered mirror.

I put on my hat

and hug them both

like two jellychildren

lost in smoke;

then outside I go,

searching the West

(dim and hilly

I’m told)

with bright

mean eyes.

You Smoke a Cigarette

You smoke a cigarette in fury and fall into

neutral slumber, to awaken to a dawn of

windows and grieving, without trumpets; and

somewhere, say, is a fish—all eye and movement—

wiggling in water; you could be that

fish, you could be there, held in water,

you could be the eye, cool and hung,

non-human; put on your shoes, put on

your pants, boy; not a chance, boy—

the fury of the absent air, the scorn of those alike

as dead violets; scream, scream, scream

like a trumpet, put on your shirt, your

tie, boy: grieve is a pretty word like

mandolin, and strange like artichoke; grieve is

a word and grieve is a way; open the door,

boy; go away.

Friendly Advice to a Lot of Young Men

Go to Tibet.

Ride a camel.

Read the bible.

Dye your shoes blue.

Grow a beard.

Circle the world in a paper canoe.

Subscribe to The Saturday Evening Post.

Chew on the left side of your mouth only.

Marry a woman with one leg and shave with a

straight razor.

And carve your name in her arm.

Brush your teeth with gasoline.

Sleep all day and climb trees at night.

Be a monk and drink buckshot and beer.

Hold your head under water and play the violin.

Do a belly dance before pink candles.

Kill your dog.

Run for Mayor.

Live in a barrel.

Break your head with a hatchet.

Plant tulips in the rain.

But don’t write poetry.

Everything

the dead do not need

aspirin or

sorrow,

I suppose.

but they might need

rain.

not shoes

but a place to

walk.

not cigarettes,

they tell us,

but a place to

burn.

or we’re told:

space and a place to

fly

might be the

same.

the dead don’t need

me.

nor do the

living.

but the dead might need

each

other.

in fact, the dead might need

everything we

need

and

we need so much,

if we only knew.

what it

was.

it is

probably

everything

and we will all

probably die

trying to get

it

or die

because we

don’t get

it.

I hope

you will understand

when I am dead

I got

as much

as

possible.

…American Express, Athens, Greece

fucker, you might at least send me a couple of your

books

I don’t read anymore unless

I get them free

you write a good letter but then

a lot of them write good

letters

but when it comes to writing the poem

they dry up and die like a

wax museum.

and, baby, I see you’ve been around:

Evergreen Review, Poetry etc.

I cannot

make these golden outhouses of

culture and have long since

given up.

I will never have a house in the valley with

little stone men to water my

lawn.

as I get older

(and I am getting older)

I can look at a green gardenhouse

(not mine)

for hours or I can look at

these swinging elephant ears outside the

window

they are caught between the wind and me and

the sinking sun

and the sea is 20 miles west and

I have not seen the sea for maybe 3

years and

maybe it’s not there anymore and maybe I’m

not here, anymore.

and the only time I begin to feel

is when I drink the yellow beer down so fast and so

long that the electric light bulb glows like the

sun and my woman looks like a highschool girl with

schoolbooks and

there is not a dent in the world and

Pound has shaved and

the bulldog smiles.

now,

for a cigarette. cancer and I

have an understanding like a

whore paid for. I haven’t been to a

charity ward and been slugged to my knees for some

time

all the stale blood everywhere like

puke

and I keep thinking that there have been men who

died for something or

thought they did

and so

there’s this sense of waste

just dying for yourself with

nobody around

not even a nurse

just

this

old man of 80

yelling at you down on the floor while you are

hemorrhaging,

yelling from his bed:

“shut up! I want to SLEEP!”

well, he’ll get his

sleep.

One Hundred and Ninety-Nine Pounds of Clay Leaning Forward

the chain is on the door

the naked women shut out

the naked power on as I

bend over turbine-powered

sun-powered jets

knowing that I am not very good at

going on—

I’d rather watch a beetle crawl the sick

powdered dust of

earth—

while you are aware of my

cold handshake and

my cigar more alive than my

eyes, my

wit dimmer than

last Fall’s sunlight.

but, Christ, friends—

the luger, the mortar, the patchwork

as I gape out at you from a

porkchop mouth—

take me as Caesar was taken

or

Joan of Arc

or

the man who fell off the fire escape drunk

or

the suicide at Bellevue

or Van Gogh confused with

ravens

and the atomic yellow.

I hold everything away from myself

so that you may become

real and shaking and stemmed

and ascending and blue and buttermilk

as the chorus girls kick out,

flags wave,

the eagle sinks into the sea,

as

our dirty time is just about

served and done.

I Write This Upon the Last Drink’s Hammer

grief-tailed fish,

Sunday-eye in walking shorts

with staff,

motorcades in honor of the roots

of trees,

the rain like a young girl

walking toward me,

the houses waving like flags

filled with drunken hymns,

the bulls of Spain

the bulls of Spain

winning

unpracticed as leaves

as alone as shrimp upon a sea-bottom

or if this is wrong

as alone as what is there,

as my love

an old woman with rouged cheeks

skips rope again

as Hemingway’s fingers live again

tough and terrible and good,

as Kid Gavilan once again flurries

like hyacinths into Spring,

I am sad I am sad I am sad

that the tongue and teeth will eat us

must choose so many good

like these fingers of lilies into the brain

sock out light

to those of us who sit in dark rooms alone

on Monday mornings

while presidents speak of honor and culture

and dedication;

or orange moon of moaning

that my voice speaks like slivers through a broken

face,

all this time I’ve seen through the bottoms of bottles

and black oil wells pumping their stinking arms

ramming home to the core of a rose

split into shares split into dividends

that tinkle less than the grunt of a frog,

I am hammered home not upon wisdom

but upon defamation:

old cars in junk yards,

old men playing checkers in the park,

women putting a price upon the curve of leg and breast,

men going to education like a bank account

or a high-priced whore to accompany them to a symphony,

one-third of the world starving while

I am indecent enough to worry about my own death

like some monkey engrossed with his flea,

I am sad because my manliness chokes me down

to the nakedness of revulsion

when there is so little time to understand,

I am sad because my drink is running low

and I must either visit people who drink

or go to storekeepers

with a poem they will never print,

strings of an avant-garde symphony

upon my radio,

somebody driving a knife through the everywhere cotton

but only meaning

that he protests dying,

and I have seen the dead

like figs upon a board

and my heart gone bad

breaking from the brain and reason

left with only

the season of

love

and

the question:

why?

that Wagner is dead say

is bad enough

to me

only

or that Van Gogh

does not see the strings and puddles

of this day,

this is not so good,

or the fact that

those I have known to touch

I am no longer able to touch;

I am a madman who sits in the front row

of burlesque shows and musical comedies

sucking up the light and song and dance

like a child

upon the straw of an icecream soda,

but I walk outside

and the heinous men

the steel men

who believe in the privacy of a wallet

and cement

and chosen occasions only

Christmas New Year’s the 4th of July

to attempt to manifest a life

that has lain in a drawer like a single glove

that is brought out like a fist:

too much and too late.

I have seen men in North Carolina mountains

posing as priests when they had not even

become men yet

and I have seen men in odd places

like bars and jails

good men who posed nothing

because they knew that posing was false

that the blackbird the carnation the dollar bill in the palm

the poem for rested people with 30 dollar curtains plus

time for flat and meaningless puzzles,

they knew the poem the knife

the curving blueing cock of Summer

that all the love that hands could hold

would go would go

and that the needs for knicknacks and gestures

was done

o fire hold me in these rooms

o copper kettle boil,

the small dogs run the streets,

carpenters sneeze,

the barber’s pole itches

to melt in the sun,

come o kind wind of black car

as I cross Normandy Avenue

in a sun gone blue

like ruptured filaments of a battered suitcase,

to see where you are to see where you have gone

I enter the store of a knowing Jew, my friend,

and argue for another bottle

for him

and

for me

for

all

of

us.

Poem for Liz

the bumblebee

is less than a stack of

potato chips,

and growling and groaning

through barbs

searchlight shining into eyes,

I think of the good whore

who wouldn’t even

take god damn easy money

and when you slipped it into her purse

she’d find it

and slap it back

like the worst of insults,

but she saved you from the law

and your own razor

only meant to shave with

to find her dead later

in a three-dollar-and-fifty-cent-a-week room,

stiff as anything can stiffen,

never having complained

starved and laughing

only wanting one more drink

and one less man

only wanting one small child

as any woman would

coming across the kitchen floor toward her,

everything done up in ribbons and sunshine,

and when the man next to the barstool

that stood next to mine

heard about Liz

he said,

“Too bad, god damn, she was a fine piece.”

No wonder a whore is a whore.

Liz, I know, and although I’d like to see you

now

I’m glad

you’re dead.

A Nice Place

It isn’t easy running through the halls

lights out trying to find a door

with the jelly law

pounding behind you like the dead,

then #303 and in, chain on,

and now they rattle and roar,

then argue gently,

then plead,

but fortunately

the landlord would rather have his door

up than me down

in jail…

“…he’s drunk in there

with some woman. I’ve warned him,

I don’t allow such things,

this is a nice place, this is…”

soon they go away;

you’d think I never paid the rent;

you’d think they’d allow a man to drink

and sit with a woman and watch the sun

come up.

I uncap the new bottle

from the bag and she sits in the corner

smoking and coughing

like an old Aunt from New Jersey.

Insomnia

have you ever been in a room

on top of 32 people sleeping

on the floors below,

only you are not sleeping,

you are listening to the engines

and horns that never stop,

you are thinking of minotaurs,

you are thinking of Segovia

who practices 5 hours a day

or the graves

that need no practice,

and your feet twist in the sheets

and you look down at a hand

that could easily belong to a man

of 80, and you

are on top of 32 people sleeping

and you know that most of them

will awaken

to yawn and eat and empty trash,

perhaps defecate,

but right now they are yours,

riding your minotaurs

breathing fiery hailstones of song,

or mushroom breathing:

skulls flat as coffins,

all lovers parted,

and you rise and light a cigarette,

evidently,

still alive.

Wrong Number

the foreign hands and feet that tear my window shades,

the masses that shape before my face and ogle

and picture me relegated to their damned cage

failed and locked

quite finally in;…

the fires are preparing the burnt flowers of my hills,

the wall-eyed butcher spits

and flaunts his blade

backed by law, dullness and admiration—

how the girls rejoice in him: he has no doubts,

he has nothing

and it gives him strength

like a bell clanging against the defenseless air…

there is no church for me,

no sanctuary; no God, no love, no roses to rust;

towers are only skeletons of misfit reason,

and the sea waits

as the land waits,

amused and perfect;

carefully, I call voices on the phone,

measuring their sounds for humanity and laughter;

somewhere I am cut off, contact fails;

I return the receiver

and return also

to the hell of my undoing, to the looming

larks eating my wallpaper

and curving fat and fancy in the bridgework

of my tub,

and waiting against my will

against music and rest and color

against the god of my heart

where I can feel the undoing of my soul

spinning away like a thread

on a quickly revolving spool.

When the Berry Bush Dies I’ll Swim Down the Green River with My Hair on Fire

the insistent resolution like

the rosebud or the anarchist

is eventually

wasted

like moths in towers

or bathing beauties in

New Jersey.

the buses sotted with people

take them through the streets of

evening where Christ

forgot to weep

as I move down move down

to dying

behind pulled windowshades

like a man who has been gassed or stoned

or insulted by the days.

there goes a rat stuck with love,

there goes a man in dirty underwear,

there go bowels like a steam roller,

there goes the left guard for Notre Dame in

1932, and like Whitman

I have these things:

I am a face behind a window

a toothache

an eater of parsley

a parallel man staring at ceilings of night

a heaver of gas

an expeller of poisons

smaller than God and not nearly as sure

a bleeder when cut

a lover when lucky

a man when born.

there’s much more and much less.

at 6 o’clock they start coming in like the

sea or the evening paper, and like the leaves of the

berry bush outside they are a little sadder now,

inch by inch now it’s speckled with brown and falling leaves,

day by day it gets worse like a wart haggled with a pin;

my shades are down as the scientists decide how

to get to Mars,

how to get out of

here. it is evening, it is time to eat a pie, it is time for

music.

Whitman lies there like a sandcrab like a frozen

turtle and I get up and walk across

the room.

Face While Shaving

So what is a body but a man

caught inside

for a little while?

staring into a mirror,

recognizing the vegetable clerk

or a design on wallpaper;

it is not vanity that seeks reflection

but dumb ape wonder;

but still the reflection…

movement of arm and muscle, shell-head,

a face staring down through the

stale dimension of dreams

as a Mississippi coed powders her nose

and paints a lavender kiss;

the phone rings like a plea

and the razor breaks through the snow,

the dead roses, the dead moths,

sunset after sunset,

steam and Christ and darkness,

one tiny inch of light.

9 Rings

the simple misery of survival

the tyranny of ancient rules

and new deaths,

the coming of the beetle-winged

enemy

chanting, cursing

bits of blood and grit;

I slam my fingers

in the window

as the phone rings.

I count 9 rings

and then it stops;

some voice it was

to test my reality

when I have no reality,

when I am water

walking around bone

in a green room.

I would burn the swans

in their lake,

I would send messengers

to the mountaintop

to razz the clouds.

she was getting to be a

dull lay

anyway.

Somebody Always Breaking My Dainty Solitude…

hey man! somebody yells down to me through my broken

window,

ya wanna go down to the taco stand?

hell, no!

I scream from down on the floor.

why not? he asks.

I yell back, who are you?

none of us knows who we are, he states, I just thot maybe you

wanted to go down to the taco

stand.

please go away.

no, I’m comin’ in.

listen, friend, I’ve got a foot of salami

here and the first fink that walks in,

he’s gonna get it in the side of his

head!

don’t mess with me, he answers, my mother played halfback for

St. Purdy High for half-a-year before somebody found her

squatting over one of the

urinals.

oh yeah, well, I’ve got bugs in my hair, mice and fish in

my pockets and Charles Atlas is in my bathroom

shining my mirror.

with that, he leaves.

I get up, brush the beercans off my chest

and yell at Atlas to get the humping hell out of there,

I’ve got

business.

Thank God for Alleys

hummingbird make yr mark he said and then something about

an arab and a son of a bitch and I hit him in the mouth and

we fought in the snow for ten minutes spotting it with red

blossoms—breathing is a blade—and I kept thinking of astronauts

up there circling the earth like a rowboat around a pond

all out of trouble and in trouble, and we finally stopped

or somebody or something stopped us and we went into Harry’s

for a drink and the place was empty and Harry kept looking

at us as if he hated us and pretty soon we began to hate him

his money, his hate, his hate of us without as much money

or as much hate, and my friend threw his glass against Harry’s

mirror and then he did hate us, and we ran out down the alley

and the dogs barked, and the only essence that was left

was remembering

the time

the last time I was asleep

and the earth obeyed

everything.

The Millionaire

look at him

a withered man

sure

he’s been thru a

bit

he was under the covers and the house shook with the

bombardment

he smiled out at

us

I hope I never get that

old

a slice of wall shook free and fell across his

bed

they say he was a tough boy

they say he was worth millions

sunlight poked thru a hole in the

wall

sunlight and smoke and a

treebranch

I had almost finished ripping out the plumbing

looking for something valuable

but there was nothing

left

somebody had been there

earlier

“let’s go”

when we got to the top of the hill

a shell landed right in the middle of where we’d

left

it was boards flying and him down in there

and then a fire came—

fast

red

perfect

we went into the woods and Harry threw a rock at a

squirrel and

missed.

Dow Jones: Down

how can we endure?

how can we talk about roses

or Verlaine?

this is a hungry band

that likes to work and count

and knows the special laws,

that likes to sit in parks

thinking of nothing valuable.

this is where the stricken bagpipes blow

upon the chalky cliffs

where faces go mad as sunburned violets

where brooms and ropes and torches fail,

squeezing shadows…

where walls come down en masse.

tomorrow the bankers set the time

to close the gates against our flood

and prevaricate the waters;

bang, bang the time,

remember now

the flowers are opening in the wind

and it doesn’t matter finally

except as a twitch in the back of the head

when back in our broad land

dead again

we walk among the dead.

As I Lay Dying

The time comes to go deeper

into self and the time comes

when it is more innocent

or easier to die

like bombers over

Santa Monica,

and I remember

laying there in the sand,

myself 20 years old,

reading Faulkner

because the name sounded good

and being vaguely excited

by something

that was not myself

and closing the book

and getting

sick of the sea

and the sky

blue blue blue

spots of white,

all dizzy in the trap,

wanting out

but knowing

I was nailed

like the sand-fleas

I slapped at,

and Mr. Faulkner

laying on his side

immortal and burning

with my toes

and everything tilting

and not quite

true.

A Minor Impulse to Complain

well

it’s interesting what does go on,

and what doesn’t go on

that should,

and the world’s quite a sight

spun through spiders and webs

that catch us half asleep

and do us in

before we’re even old enough

to know we’re through

if it isn’t a whore it’s a wife,

and if it isn’t a wife

it’s a jam over taxes

or bread or liquor,

or somebody’s slipping it into her

while you’re down at the shop

sweating your nuggets to keep her in silk.

or you’re on horses or pot

or crossword puzzles,

or you’re on vitamins or Beethoven.

but you oughta see

what goes on on a 75 foot yacht:

it would make you give up

liberty and little magazines

and Tolstoy

to see what beautiful young ladies can do

to somebody else.

and he doesn’t even care,

and he’ll tell you

pouring a short shot,

that bitch’d outscrew a rabbit,

and unless you’ve got money

by the time you got it figured out

you’re either so old you’re senseless

or you’re so old you’re dead.

and there she stands by the rail

looking good

golden sun and real gold,

the fish going by in the largest swimming pool

in the world, and she even smiles at you

as you go below to get more bottles and boots

and to scrape the barnacles from the master;

but, ah, you pig!—he told me all you did,

as men will do—which is another way of saying

you and I ain’t living well,

or enough.

Buffalo Bill

whenever the landlord and landlady get

beer-drunk

she comes down here and knocks on my door

and I go down and drink beer with them.

they sing old-time songs and

he keeps drinking until

he falls over backwards in his chair.

then I get up

tilt the chair up

and then he’s back at the table again

grabbing at a

beercan.

the conversation always gets around to

Buffalo Bill. they think Buffalo Bill is

very funny. so I always ask,

what’s new with Buffalo Bill?

oh, he’s in again. they locked him

up. they came and got him.

why?

same thing. only this time it was a

woman from the Jehovah’s Witness. she

rang his bell and was standing there

talking to him and he showed her his

thing, you know.

she came down and told me about it

and I asked her, “why did you bother that

man? why did you ring his bell? he wasn’t

doing anything to you!” but no, she had to

go and tell the authorities.

he phoned me from the jail, “well, I did it

again!” “why do you keep doing that?” I

asked him. “I dunno,” he said, “I dunno

what makes me do that!” “you shouldn’t do

that,” I told him. “I know I shouldn’t do

that,” he told me.

how many times has he done

that?

Oh, god, I dunno, 8 or 10 times. he’s

always doin’ it. he’s got a good lawyer, tho,

he’s got a damn good

lawyer.

who’d you rent his place to?

oh, we don’t rent his place, we always keep his

place for him. we like him. did I tell you about

the night he was drunk and out on the lawn

naked and an airplane went overhead and he

pointed to the lights, all you could see

was the taillights and stuff and he pointed to

the lights and yelled, “I AM GOD,

I PUT THOSE LIGHTS IN THE SKY!”

no, you didn’t tell me about

that.

have a beer first and I’ll

tell you about it.

I had a beer

first.

Experience

there is a lady down the hall who paints

butterflies and insects

and there are little statues in the room,

she works with clay

and I went in there

and sat on the couch and had something to drink,

then I noticed

one of the statues had his back turned to us,

he stood there brooding, poor bastard,

and I asked the lady

what’s wrong with him?

and she said, I messed him up,

in the front, sort of.

I see, I said, and finished my drink,

you haven’t had too much experience with men.

she laughed and brought me another drink.

we talked about Klee,

the death of cummings,

Art, survival and so forth.

you ought to know more about men,

I told her.

I know, she said. do you like me?

of course, I told her.

she brought me another drink.

we talked about Ezra Pound.

Van Gogh.

all those things.

she sat down next to me.

I remember she had a small white mustache.

she told me I had a good life-flow

and was manly.

I told her she had nice legs.

we talked about Mahler.

I don’t remember leaving.

I saw her a week later

and she asked me in.

I fixed him, she said.

who? I asked.

my man in the corner, she told me.

good, I said.

want to see? she asked

sure, I said.

she walked to the corner and turned

him around.

he was fixed, all right

my god, it was ME!

then I began to laugh and she laughed

and the work of Art stood there,

a very beautiful thing.

I Am Visited by an Editor and a Poet

I had just won $115 from the headshakers and

was naked upon my bed

listening to an opera by one of the Italians

and had just gotten rid of a very loose lady

when there was a knock upon the wood,

and since the cops had just raided a month or so ago,

I screamed out rather on edge—

who the hell is it? what you want, man?

I’m your publisher! somebody screamed back,

and I hollered, I don’t have a publisher,

try the place next door, and he screamed back,

you’re Charles Bukowski, aren’t you? and I got up and

peeked through the iron grill to make sure it wasn’t a cop,

and I placed a robe upon my nakedness,

kicked a beercan out of the way and bade them enter,

an editor and a poet.

only one would drink a beer (the editor)

so I drank two for the poet and one for myself

and they sat there sweating and watching me

and I sat there trying to explain

that I wasn’t really a poet in the ordinary sense,

I told them about the stockyards and the slaughterhouse

and the racetracks and the conditions of some of our jails,

and the editor suddenly pulled five magazines out of a portfolio

and tossed them in between the beercans

and we talked about Flowers of Evil, Rimbaud, Villon,

and what some of the modern poets looked like:

J. B. May and Wolf the Hedley are very immaculate, clean
fingernails, etc.;

I apologized for the beercans, my beard, and everything on the
floor

and pretty soon everybody was yawning

and the editor suddenly stood up and I said,

are you leaving?

and then the editor and the poet were walking out the door,

and then I thought well hell they might not have liked

what they saw

but I’m not selling beercans and Italian opera and

torn stockings under the bed and dirty fingernails,

I’m selling rhyme and life and line,

and I walked over and cracked a new can of beer

and I looked at the five magazines with my name on the cover

and wondered what it meant,

wondered if we are writing poetry or all huddling in

one big tent

clasping assholes.

The Mexican Girls

whichever way you turn

there is gauze and the needle,

the back turned to light,

scars like valleys

scars like pits of terror,

and the peach falls to

the dirt.

the hospitals are the same

most grey like old balloons,

these sidewalks

they are so sweet

leading to the beds

where they shit upon

themselves,

my hands again locked,

sick twigs of limbs,

hurricane here:

minds going out

like lighthouse lamps

hell hell

so much sick

and they come up to change

the sheets, 2 mexican girls

without even a sneeze

or pause

and one of them points at

me: “I’ll take this one

and you take that one

and we’ll make them well

and then we’ll

all

shack-up together!”

and they laugh

and the clean sheet comes

down bringing in the cool

air, and I hear them

walk away laughing

and the trees are filled

with fruit, the sun

brings gophers peeking

from their holes; stones

are these which stick in

shoes, that pounce upon

the hollow head

that cannot bleed or

kiss; I touch the sheets,

I touch the sheets…

The New Place

I type at a window that faces the street

on ground level and

if I fall out

the worst that can happen is a dirty shirt

under a tiny banana tree.

as I type people go by

mostly women

and I sit in my shorts

(sometimes without top)

and going by they

can’t be sure I am not entirely

naked. so

I get these faces

which pretend they don’t see

anything

but I think they do:

they see me as I

sweat over the poem like beating a

hog to death

as the sun begins to fail over

Sunset Blvd.

over the motel sign

where tired people from Arkansas and Iowa

pay too much to sleep while

dreaming of movie stars.

there is a religionist next door

and he plays his radio loud

and it seems to have

very good volume

so I am getting the

message.

and there’s a white cat

chewed-up and neurotic

who calls 2 or 3 times a day

eats and leaves

but just looking at him

lifts the soul a little

like something on strings.

and the same young man from the girlie

magazine phones and we talk

and I get the idea

that we each hang up

mildly thinking each other

somewhat the fool.

now the woman calls me to dinner.

it’s good to have food.

when you’ve starved

food always remains a

miracle.

the rent is a little higher here

but so far I’ve been able to

pay it

and that’s a miracle too

like still maybe being sane

while thinking of guns and sidewalks

and old ladies in libraries.

there are still

small things to do

like rip this sheet from the typer

go in and eat

stay alive this way.

there are lots of curtains waving here

and now the woman has walked in

she’s rocking back and forth

in the rocker behind me

a bit angry

the food is getting cold and

I’ve got to go

(she doesn’t care that

I’ve got to finish this thing).

it’s just a poor little neighborhood

no place for Art,

whatever that is, and

I hear sprinklers

there’s a shopping basket

a boy on roller skates.

I quit I quit

for the miracle of food and

maybe nobody ever angry

again, this place and

all the other places.

Conversation in a Cheap Room

I keep putting the empties out back but

the kids smash them against the

wall almost as fast as I can drink them, and

old Mr. Sturgeon died and

they carried him down the stair and

I was in

my underwear; the rats ran after

him leaping with beautiful tails like the

tails of young whores half-drunk on

wine; I kept watching the

signal change outside and

my shoes sitting in the closet and

pretty soon people started coming

in, talking about death and

I watched a billboard advertising beer, and

we turned out all the lights and

it was dark and

somebody lit a cigarette and

we all watched the

flame; it warmed the

room, it put a glow on the walls and

there was a flaring concert of

liquid voices saying the

room is still here, the

drawers are

still here; Mrs. McDonald will

want her rent.

that’s all they

said.

soon somebody went out for another bottle and

we were thinking of

something else.

I don’t remember what, but

the

signal kept changing.

I Was Born to Hustle Roses Down the Avenues of the Dead

1

rivergut girlriver damn drowned

people going in and out of books and

doors and graves people dressed in pink

getting haircuts and tired and dogs and

Vivaldi

2

you missed a cat argument the grey was

tired mad flipping tail and he monkied

with the black one who didn’t want to

be bothered and then the black one

chased the grey one pawed it once the

grey one said yow

ran away stopped scratched its ear

flicked at a straw popped in air and

ran off defeated and planning as a

white one (another one) ran along the

other side of the fence chasing a

grasshopper as somebody shot Mr

Kennedy.

3

the best way to explain the meaning

of concourse is to forget all about

it or any meaning at all

is

just something that grows or does not

grow lives a while and dies a long time

life is weak, the rope around a man’s

neck is stronger than the man because

it does not suffer it also does not

listen to Brahms but Brahms can get

to be a bore and even insufferable when

you are locked in a cage with

sticks almost forever.

I remember my old

man raged because I did not sweat

when I mowed his lawn twice over

while the lucky guys played football

or jacked-off in the garage, he threw a

2 by 4 at the back of one of my legs

the left one, I have a bloodvessel that

juts out an inch there now and I

picked up the log and threw it into

his beautiful roses and limped around

and finished the lawn not sweating

and 25 years later I buried him. it

cost me a grand: he was stronger

than I was.

4

I see the river now I see

the river now grassfish

limping through milkblue

she is taking off her stockings

she is beginning to cry.

my car needs 2 new

front tires.

Winter Comes to a Lot of Places in August

Winter comes in a lot of places in August,

like the railroad yards

when we come over the bridge,

hundreds of us,

workers, like cattle,

like Hannibal victorious over the Mountain;

Winter comes in Rome, Winter comes in Paris

and Miami

and we come

over the silver bridge,

carrying our olive lunch pails

with the good fat wives’ coffee

and 2 bologna sandwiches

and oh, just a tid-bit found somewhere

to warm our gross man-bones

and prove to us that love

is not clipped out like a coupon;

…here we come,

hundreds of us,

blank-faced and rough

(we can take it, god damn it!)

over our silver bridge,

smoking our cheap cigars in the grapefruit air;

here we come,

bulls stamping in cheap cotton,

bad boys all;

ah hell, we’d rather play the ponies

or chance a sunburn at the shore,

but we’re men, god damn it, men,

can’t you see?

men,

coming over our bridge,

taking our Rome and our coffee,

bitter, brave and

numb.

Bring Down the Beams

folding away my tools with the dead parts of

my soul

I go to night school, study Art;

my teacher is a homosexual who teaches us to

make shadows with

a 2b pencil (there are five laws of light, and it

has only been

known for the last 400 years

that shadows have a core);

there are color wheels,

there are scales

and there are many deep and futile rules

that must never be broken;

all about me sit half-talents, and suddenly—

I know

that there is nothing more incomplete than a

half-talent;

a man should either be a genius

or nothing at all;

I would like to tell that homosexual

(though I never will)

that people who dabble in the Arts

are misfits in a misshapen society;

the superior man of today is the man

of limited feeling

whose education consists of

ready-made actions and reactions to

ready-made situations;

but he is more interested in men than ideas,

and if I told him that a society which takes

its haircuts from characters in comic strips

needs more than heavenly guidance,

he would say

with sweeping and powerful irrelevance

that I was a bitter man;

so we sit and piddle with charcoal

and talk about Picasso

and make collages; we are getting ready

to do nothing unusual

and I alone am angry

as I think about the sun clanging against the earth

and all the bodies moving

but ours;

I would bring down the world’s stockpile of drowned

and mutilated days!

I would bring down the beams of sick warehouses

I have counted

with each year’s life!

I want trumpets and crowing,

I want a red-palmed Beethoven rising from the grave,

I want the whir and tang of a simple living orange

in a simple living tree;

I want you to draw like Mondrian, he says;

but I don’t want to draw

like Mondrian,

I want to draw like a sparrow eaten by a cat.

Reunion

the love of the bone

where the earth chewed it down, that’s

what lasts,

and I remember sitting on the grass

with the negro boy,

we were sketching housetops and

he said,

you’re leaving some out,

you’re cheating,

and I walked across the street

to the bar

and

then he came in—

you are due back in class

at 2, he told me,

then he left.

class doesn’t matter, I thought,

nothing matters that we’re told,

and if I am a fly I’ll never know

what a lion really is.

I sat there until 4:30

and when I came out,

there he was.

Mr. Hutchins liked my

sketch, he told me.

that was over 20 years

ago.

I think

I saw him the other night.

he was a cop in the city jail

and he pushed me into

a cell.

I’m told

he doesn’t paint

any

more.

Fragile!

I tried all night to sleep

but I couldn’t sleep

and I began drinking

around 5:30

and reading about Delius

and Stravinsky,

and soon I heard them getting up

all over the building,

putting on coffee,

flushing toilets,

and then the phone rang

and she said,

“Sam, you haven’t been in jail?”

“not lately,”

I told her,

and then she asked where the hell

I had been and all that,

and finally I got rid of her

and pulled up the shades

and put my clothes on,

and I went down to the coffeeshop

and they were all sitting there

with bacon and eggs.

I had a coffee and went on in.

I emptied the baskets and

ashtrays, put toilet paper

in the women’s john

and then scattered the compound

to sweep. the old man came in

and eyed me riding the broom.

“you look like hell,” he said, and

“did you

put paper in the ladies’ room?”

I spit into the compound and

nodded. “that package to

McGerney’s,” he said. “12 pints

of floor wax…”

“yeah?” I asked.

“he says 7 of them pints

were broken. did you pack them right?”

“yeah.”

“did you put FRAGILE labels

on them.”

“yeah.”

“if you run out of FRAGILE

labels, let me know.”

“O.K.”

“…and be more careful

from now on.”

he went into the office and

I swept on toward the back.

a few minutes later

I heard him laughing with

the secretaries.

I unlocked the back door, brought in

the empty trashcans, sat down and
smoked

a cigarette. I began to get sleepy

at last.

one of the secretaries came back

rotating her can,

pounding her spikes

on the cement floor.

she handed me a stack of orders

to pick and pack, and this look, this
smile

on her face saying—

I don’t have to do much work,

but you do.

then she walked away wobbling,

wobbling meat.

I put some water in the tape machine

and stood there

waiting

waiting for 5:30.

I Am with the Roots of Flowers

Here without question is the bird-torn design,

drunk here in this cellar

amongst the flabby washing machines

and last year’s rusty newspapers;

the ages like stone

whirl above my head

as spiders spin sick webs;

I can leech here for years

undetected

sleeping against the belly of a boiler

like some growthless

hot yet dead

foetus;

I lift my bottle like a coronet

and sing songs and fables

to wash away

the fantastic darkness

of my breathing;

oh, coronet, coronet:

sing me no bitterness

for I have tasted stone,

sing me no child’s pouting and hate

for I am too old for night;

I am with the roots

of flowers

entwined, entombed

sending up my passionate blossoms

as a flight of rockets

and argument;

wine churls my throat,

above me

feet walk upon my brain,

monkies fall from the sky

clutching photographs

of the planets,

but I seek only music

and the leisure

of my pain; oh, damned coronet:

you are running dry!

…I fall beneath the spiders,

the girders move like threads,

and feet come down the stairs,

feet come down the stairs, I think,

belonging to the golden men

who push the buttons

of our burning universe.

Monday Beach, Cold Day

bluewhite bird-light

nothing but the motor of sand

noticing bits of life:

I and fleas and chips of wood,

wind sounds, sounds of paper

caught with its life flapping,

deserted dogs

as content as rock,

facing rump to sea

furred against sun and sensibility,

snouting against dead crabs

and last night’s bottles…

everything dirty, really,

really dirty,

like back at the hotel,

the white jackets and 15c tips,

the old girls skipping rope

not like young neighborhood girls

but for room, bottle and trinket,

and the hotel sits behind you

like grammar school and old wars

and you simply roll upon your stomach,

skin against warm dirty sand

and a dog comes up with his ice-nose

against the bottoms of your feet

and you howl angry laughter

through hangover and forty-year old kisses,

through guilty sun and tired wave,

through cheap memories that can never be

transformed by either literature or love,

and the dog pulls back

looking upon this stick of a white man

with red coal eyes

through filtered smoke,

and he makes for the shore, the sea,

and I get up and chase after him,

another hound, I am,

and he looks over a round shoulder,

frightened, demolished,

as our feet cut patterns of life,

dog-life, man-life,

lazy indolent life, gull-life

and running, and the sharks

out beyond the rocks

thrashing for our silly blood.

The High-Rise of the New World

it is an orange

animal

with

hand grenades

fire power

big teeth and

a horn of smoke

a colored man

with cigar

yanks at

gears and the damn thing never gets

tired

my neighbor

…an old man in blue

bathing trunks

…an old man

a fetid white obscene

thing—

the old man

lifts apart some purple flowers

and peeks through the fence at the

orange animal

and like a horror movie

I see the orange animal open its

mouth—

it belches it has teeth fastened onto a giraffe’s

neck—

and it reached over the fence and it gets the

old man in his blue

bathing trunks

neatly

it gets him

from behind the fence of purple flowers

and his whiteness is like

garbage in the air

and then

he’s dumped into a

shock of lumber

and then the orange animal

backs off

spins

turns

runs off into the Hollywood Hills

the palm trees the

boulevards as

the colored man

sucks red steam

from his

cigar

I’ll be glad when it’s all

over

the noise is

terrible and I’m afraid to go and

buy a

paper.

The Gypsies Near Del Mar

they live down by the sea…these men

and you see them going to the gray public bath

like colonels on parade;

they have trailers and dogs and wives and children

in that importance; they crawl upon the rocks

as turtles do and dream sun-dreams

turtle-dreams

that do not hurt;

—or you see them singly…standing with their poles

the sea climbing their ankles and ignored like some

useless oil

and their long lines search and wait beyond the breakers,

a vein from life to life and calm brisk death.

I have never seen their fish, or their gods

or the color of their eyes—though I imagine

the palest shade of pink,

like small-sweet pickled onions, and their bellies

like the bellies of jellyfish hiding in flowers

beneath the rock.

they are there all year, I’m told…these same men

with their rusty lives. when it rains the sand gets wet,

not as bad as mud, and they never die: you see

their fires at night as you drive back from the track,

nothing moving except the flame a little and the sea

changing shape, and you can see the threads of smoke

easing into the sky;

and as their camp goes by, leaving you vacant

you stare again into a world of red tail lights

and turn on the radio

and through the glass like the hand of some

forgotten god

you watch

a gull dip over your car

and then rise and fly out toward the sea.

6 A.M.

naked

unarmored

before the open window

sitting at the table

drinking tomato juice

the publicly unpardonable part

of my body

below the table

I watch

a man in an orange robe

and bedroom slippers

shit his dog upon the lawn

both of them

tempered by sparrows.

we are losers; even at high noon

or late evening

none of us dresses well

in this neighborhood

none of us studies the grace of high

finance

successfully enough

to shake

ugly things away

(like needing the rent or

drinking 59 cent wine).

yet now

the wind comes through the window

cool,

as pure as a cobra;

it is a sensible time

undivided

either by

explanation

deepeyed cats

life insurance or

Danish kings.

I finish the

tomato

juice and

go to

bed.

A Trick to Dull Our Bleeding

practically speaking

the great words of great men

are not so great.

nor do great nations nor great beauties

leave anything but the residue

of reputation to be slowly

gnawed away.

nor do great wars seem so great,

nor great poems

nor first-hand legends.

even the sad deaths

are not now so sad,

and failure was nothing but a

trick

to keep us going,

and fame and love

a trick to dull our bleeding.

and as fire becomes ash and steel

becomes rust, we become

wise

and then

not so wise.

and we sit in chairs

reading old maps,

wars done, loves done, lives done,

and a child plays before us like a monkey

and we tap our pipe and yawn,

close our eyes and sleep.

pretty words

like pretty ladies,

wrinkle up and die.

Rose, Rose

rose, rose

bark for me

all these centuries in the sun

you have heard men sing

to break like the stems that held you

you have sat in the hair of young girls

like roses themselves, feeling like roses,

and you know, you know what happened

I gave roses to a lady once and she put them

on her dresser and hugged them and smelled them

and now the lady is gone and the roses are gone

but the dresser is there, I see the dresser

and on the boulevards I see you again

alive again! yes!

and, I am still

alive.

rose, rose

bark for me

walking last night

feeling my flesh fat about my girth

old dreams faint as fireflies

I came upon a flower

and like a giant god gone mad

yanked off its head

and then put the petals in my pocket

feeling and tearing

soft insides, ha so!—

like defiling a virgin.

she hugged you, she loved you

and she died, and

in my room, hand out of pocket,

the first night’s drink, and

along the edge of the glass,

the same same scarlet

virgin and thorn, my hand

my hand my hand; bark, rose

teeth of centuries blooming

in the sun, vast god damned

god pulling these poems out

of my head.

Spain Sits Like a Hidden Flower in My Coffeepot

it is like tanks come through Hungary and

I am looking for matchsticks to

build a soul

it is the hunger of the intestine

and feeling sorry for a

radio dropped and broken last Tuesday night

Gertrude knows what is left of me

but she can hardly boil an egg and

she can’t boil me

or put me together like

matchsticks

but some day I must send you

some of her poems or

her old shoe once worn by a

duchess

there isn’t anybody on the street now

the street is empty and

Spain sits like a hidden flower

in my coffeepot as

the audience applauds the bones of

Vivaldi

and I could go on

tossing phrases like

burning candles

but I leave that to the

acrobats

a loaf of bread

dog bark

babycry

the matchless failure of

bright things

her leaning forward

over a cup of tea

telling me—

you are a kind man

you are a very kind

man

the eyes believing dynasties of softness

the hands touching my neck

the cars going by

the snails sleeping with pictures of Christ

I phrase the ending like hatchets

or a bush burned down

and kiss a staring

greenblue

eye

greenblue eye

like faded drapes the light burned through

and my god

another woman another night

going on

the rats are thimbles in cats’ paws when it

rains in Miami

and the fence falls down

the world is on its back

legs lifted

and I enter again

into the

sweat and stink and torture—

a very kind man

gentle as a knife

the brilliant hush of parrots

Gertrude lives in a place by the freeway

and I live here—

the mice the garbage the lack of air

the gallantry

and

outside of here:

young girls skipping rope

strong enough to hang the men

now nowhere

about

me?:

I dreamed I drank an Arrow shirt

and stole a broken

pail.

Thermometer

As my skin wrinkles in warning like

paint on a burning wall

fruitflies with sterile

orange-grey

eyes

stare at me

while I dream of lavender ladies as impossible

and beautiful as

immortality

as my skin wrinkles in warning

I read The New York Times

while spiders wrestle with ants in shaded roots

of grass

and whores lift their hands to heaven for

love

while the white mice

huddle in controversy over a

piece of cheese

as my skin wrinkles in warning

I think of Carthage and Rome and

Berlin

I think of young girls crossing their

nylon legs at bus stops

as my skin wrinkles in warning like

paint on a burning wall

I get up from my chair to drink water

on a pleasant afternoon

and I wonder about water

I wonder about me,

a warm thermometer kind of wonderment

that rises like a butterfly

in a distilled pale yellow afternoon

and then I walk back out

and sit on my chair

and don’t think anymore—

as to the strain of broken ladders and old war

movies—

I let everything

burn.

Eaten by Butterflies

maybe I’ll win the Irish Sweepstakes

maybe I’ll go nuts

maybe

maybe unemployment insurance or

a rich lesbian at the top of a hill

maybe re-incarnation as a frog…

or $70,000 found floating in a plastic sack

in the bathtub

I need help

I am a fat man being eaten by

green trees

butterflies and

you

turn turn

light the lamp

my teeth ache the teeth of my soul ache

I can’t sleep I

pray for the dead streetcars

the white mice

engines on fire

blood on a green gown in an operating room in

San Francisco

and I am caught

ow ow

wild: my body being there filled with nothing but

me

me caught halfway between suicide and

old age

hustling in factories next to the

young boys

keeping pace

burning my blood like gasoline and

making the foreman

grin

my poems are only scratchings

on the floor of a

cage.

Destroying Beauty

a rose

red sunlight;

I take it apart

in the garage

like a puzzle:

the petals are as greasy

as old bacon

and fall

like the maidens of the world

backs to floor

and I look up

at the old calendar

hung from a nail

and touch

my wrinkled face

and smile

because

the secret

is beyond me.

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).

All of his books have now been published in translation in over a dozen languages and his worldwide popularity remains undiminished. In the years to come, Ecco will publish additional volumes of previously uncollected poetry and letters.

Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.

BY CHARLES BUKOWSKI

The Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over the Hills (1969)

Post Office (1971)

Mockingbird Wish Me Luck (1972)

South of No North (1973)

Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame: Selected Poems 1955—1973 (1974)

Factotum (1975)

Love Is a Dog from Hell: Poems 1974—1977 (1977)

Women (1978)

Play the Piano Drunk /Like a Percussion Instrument/ Until the Fingers Begin to Bleed a Bit (1979)

Shakespeare Never Did This (1979)

Dangling in the Tournefortia (1981)

Ham on Rye (1982)

Bring Me Your Love (1983)

Hot Water Music (1983)

There’s No Business (1984)

War All the Time: Poems 1981—1984 (1984)

You Get So Alone at Times That It Just Makes Sense (1986)

The Movie: “Barfly” (1987)

The Roominghouse Madrigals: Early Selected Poems 1946—1966 (1988)

Hollywood (1989)

Septuagenarian Stew: Stories & Poems (1990)

The Last Night of the Earth Poems (1992)

Screams from the Balcony: Selected Letters 1960—1970 (1993)

Pulp (1994)

Living on Luck: Selected Letters 1960s—1970s (Volume 2) (1995)

Betting on the Muse: Poems & Stories (1996)

Bone Palace Ballet: New Poems (1997)

The Captain Is Out to Lunch and the Sailors Have Taken Over the Ship (1998)

Reach for the Sun: Selected Letters 1978—1994 (Volume 3) (1999)

What Matters Most Is How Well You Walk Through the Fire: New Poems (1999)

Open All Night: New Poems (2000)

The Night Torn Mad with Footsteps: New Poems (2001)

Beerspit Night and Cursing: The Correspondence of Charles Bukowski & Sheri Martinelli 1960—1967 (2001)

Copyright

THE ROOMINGHOUSE MADRIGALS: EARLY SELECTED POEMS 1946-1966. Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1965, 1968, 1988 by Charles Bukowski. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

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