CHARLES BUKOWSKI

MOCKINGBIRD WISH ME LUCK

for Linda King
for all the good reasons

Table of Contents

I.

a free 25 page booklet

the smoking car

the world’s greatest loser

the garbageman

girl in a miniskirt reading the bible

moyamensing prison:

notes upon the flaxen aspect:

funhouse

another academy

a day at the oak tree meet

rain

the colored birds

another lousy 10 percenter

making it

drunk ol’ bukowski drunk

the poetry reading

slim killers

the last days of the suicide kid

bang bang

5 men in black passing my window

the poet’s muse

somebody

story and poem

and the moon and the stars and the world

get the nose

my landlady and my landlord

bad night

hogs in the sky

the white poets

the black poets

millionaires

poetry

the painter

the inquisitor

my friend william

300 poems

lifting weights at 2 a.m.

reality

earthquake

the good life at o’hare airport

the golfers

II.

the mockingbird

ha ha ha ha ha, ha ha

a fine day and the world looks good

vacancy

3:16 and one half…

the rat

hot

radio

ariel

the passing of a dark gray moment

consummation of grief

those sons of bitches

the hunt

the big fire

ww 2

ants

he wrote in lonely blood

six chink fishermen

burning

a sound in the brush

the wild

4th of july

carnival

99 degrees

happy new year

the shoelace

chilled green

life

III.

american matador

I saw an old-fashioned whore today

poem for barbara, poem for jane

short order

the dwarf

merry christmas

marina

one with dante

an interesting night

a threat to my immortality

climax

a man’s woman

tight pink dress

more or less, for julie

this is the way it goes and goes and goes

left with the dog

praying for a best seller

that one

have you ever kissed a panther?

2 carnations

man and woman in bed at ten p.m.

the answer

a split

power failure

snake in the watermelon

style

the shower

if we take—

About the Author

Other Books by Charles Bukowski

Cover

Copyright

About the Publisher

I

the world is full of shipping clerks

who have read

the Harvard Classics

a free 25 page booklet

dying for a beer dying

for and of life

on a windy afternoon in Hollywood

listening to symphony music from my little red radio

on the floor.

a friend said,

“all ya gotta do is go out on the sidewalk

and lay down

somebody will pick you up

somebody will take care of you.”

I look out the window at the sidewalk

I see something walking on the sidewalk

she wouldn’t lay down there,

only in special places for special people with special $$$$

and

special ways

while I am dying for a beer on a windy afternoon in

Hollywood,

nothing like a beautiful broad dragging it past you on the

sidewalk

moving it past your famished window

she’s dressed in the finest cloth

she doesn’t care what you say

how you look what you do

as long as you do not get in her

way, and it must be that she doesn’t shit or

have blood

she must be a cloud, friend, the way she floats past us.

I am too sick to lay down

the sidewalks frighten me

the whole damned city frightens me,

what I will become

what I have become

frightens me.

ah, the bravado is gone

the big run through center is gone

on a windy afternoon in Hollywood

my radio cracks and spits its dirty music

through a floor full of empty beerbottles.

now I hear a siren

it comes closer

the music stops

the man on the radio says,

“we will send you a free 25 page booklet:

FACE THE FACTS ABOUT COLLEGE COSTS.”

the siren fades into the cardboard mountains

and I look out the window again as the clasped fist of

boiling cloud comes down—

the wind shakes the plants outside

I wait for evening I wait for night I wait sitting in a chair

by the window—

the cook drops in the live

red-pink salty

rough-tit crab and

the game works

on

come get me.

the smoking car

they stop out front here

it looks as if the car is on fire

the smoke blazes blue from the hood and exhaust

the motor sounds like cannon shots

the car humps wildly

one guy gets out,

Jesus, he says, he takes a long drink from a

canvas water bag

and gives the car an eerie look.

the other guy gets out and looks at the car,

Jesus, he says,

and he takes a drink from a pint of whiskey,

then passes the bottle to his

friend.

they both stand and look at the car,

one holding the whiskey, the other the water bag.

they are not dressed in conventional hippie garb

but in natural old clothes

faded, dirty and torn.

a butterfly goes past my window

and they get back in the

car

and it bucks off in low

like a rodeo bronc

they are both laughing

and one has the bottle

tilted…

the butterfly is gone

and outside there is a globe of smoke

40 feet in circumference.

first human beings I’ve seen in Los Angeles

in 15 years.

the world’s greatest loser

he used to sell papers in front:

“Get your winners! Get rich on a dime!”

and about the 3rd or 4th race

you’d see him rolling in on his rotten board

with roller skates underneath.

he’d propel himself along on his hands;

he just had small stumps for legs

and the rims of the skate wheels were worn off.

you could see inside the wheels and they would wobble

something awful

shooting and flashing

imperialistic sparks!

he moved faster than anybody, rolled cigarette dangling,

you could hear him coming

“god o mighty, what was that?” the new ones asked.

he was the world’s greatest loser

but he never gave up

wheeling toward the 2 dollar window screaming:

“IT’S THE 4 HORSE, YOU FOOLS! HOW THE HELL YA

GONNA BEAT THE

4?”

up on the board the 4 would be reading

60 to one.

I never heard him pick a winner.

they say he slept in the bushes. I guess that’s where he

died. he’s not around any

more.

there was the big fat blonde whore

who kept touching him for luck, and

laughing.

nobody had any luck. the whore is gone

too.

I guess nothing ever works for us. we’re fools, of course—

bucking the inside plus a 15 percent take,

but how are you going to tell a dreamer

there’s a 15 percent take on the

dream? he’ll just laugh and say,

is that all?

I miss those

sparks.

the garbageman

we do not accept unsolicited manuscripts

the garbageman said

dropping to one knee

and blowing the head away from the priest’s

neck

and as the green bus stopped at the corner

a cripple got out and a witch and a little girl

with a flower.

we do not accept unsolicited manuscripts

the garbageman said

and he shot the cripple and the witch

but did not fire at the little girl,

then he ran down an alley

and climbed up on the roof of a garage,

reloaded

as the Goodyear Blimp sailed overhead

he pumped 6 shots, saying,

here are some unsolicited manuscripts,

and the blimp wavered, paused,

then began to nose down as 2 men parachuted

out

saying Hail Marys.

8 squad cars entered the area

and began to surround the garage

and the garbageman said,

we do not accept unsolicited manuscripts

and he got one cop,

and then they really began firing.

the garbageman stood up in the center of the sky,

threw his loaded rifle at them

and all the shells

and he said,

we do not accept unsolicited manuscripts,

and the first bullet got him in the chest,

spun him,

another in the back, one in the neck, and

he fell on top of the garage roof,

the blood rolling out on the tarpaper,

blood like syrup blood like honey blood like blood,

he said,

Holy Mary, we do not accept…

girl in a miniskirt reading the bible outside my window

Sunday. I am eating a

grapefruit. church is over at the Russian

Orthodox to the

west.

she is dark

of Eastern descent,

large brown eyes look up from the Bible

then down. a small red and black

Bible, and as she reads

her legs keep moving, moving,

she is doing a slow rhythmic dance

reading the Bible…

long gold earrings;

2 gold bracelets on each arm,

and it’s a mini-suit, I suppose,

the cloth hugs her body,

the lightest of tans is that cloth,

she twists this way and that,

long young legs warm in the sun…

there is no escaping her being

there is no desire to…

my radio is playing symphonic music

that she cannot hear

but her movements coincide exactly

to the rhythms of the

symphony…

she is dark, she is dark

she is reading about God.

I am God.

moyamensing prison:

we shot craps in the exercise yard while the

dummies played ball with a torn-up shirt

wound into a ball

once or twice a day we had to break it up

under a tommy gun from the tower—

some blank-faced screw pointing it at

us, but,

by god, through it we somehow played

and through some skill and

luck

I soon had all the money in the yard.

and in the morning and in the days that followed—

the screws, the sparrows, the shivs, the dips, the

strongarms, the looneys, the hustlers, the freaks,

the discarded dream-presidents of America, the cook,

in fact, all my critics, they all called me

“Mr. Bukowski,” a kind of fleeting immortality

I guess,

but real as hogs’ heads or dead flowers,

and the force of it

got to me there:

“Mr. Bukowski,” ace-crapshooter,

money-man in a world of almost no

money.

immortality.

I didn’t recite them Shelley, no,

and everything came to me after lights out:

slim-hipped boys I didn’t want

steaks and ice cream and cigars which I did

want, and

shaving cream, new razorblades, the latest copy of the

New Yorker.

what greater immortality than Heaven in Hell,

and I continued to enjoy it until they

threw me out on the streets

back to my typewriter,

innocent, lazy, frightened and mortal

again.

notes upon the flaxen aspect:

a John F. Kennedy flower knocks upon my door and is

shot through the neck;

the gladiolas gather by the dozens around the tip of

India

dripping into Ceylon;

dozens of oysters read Germaine Greer.

meanwhile, I itch from the slush of the Philippines

to the eye of the minnow

the minnow being eaten by the cumulative dreams of

Simon Bolivar. O,

freedom from the limitation of angular distance would be

delicious.

war is perfect,

the solid way drips and leaks,

Schopenhauer laughed for 72 years,

and I was told by a very small man in a New York City

pawnshop

one afternoon:

“Christ got more attention than I did

but I went further on less…”

well, the distance between 5 points is the same as the

distance between 3 points is the same as the distance

between one point:

it is all as cordial as a bonbon:

all this that we are wrapped

in:

eunuchs are more exact than sleep

the postage stamp is mad, Indiana is ridiculous

the chameleon is the last walking flower.

funhouse

I drive to the beach at night

in the winter

and sit and look at the burned-down amusement pier

wonder why they just let it sit there

in the water.

I want it out of there,

blown-up,

vanished,

erased;

that pier should no longer sit there

with madmen sleeping inside

the burned-out guts of the funhouse…

it’s awful, I say, blow the damn thing up,

get it out of my eyes,

that tombstone in the sea.

the madmen can find other holes

to crawl into.

I used to walk that pier when I was 8

years old.

another academy

how can they go on, you see them

sitting in old doorways

with dirty stained caps and thick clothes and

no place to go;

heads bent down, arms on

knees they wait.

or they stand in front of the Mission

700 of them

quiet as oxen

waiting to be let into the chapel

where they will sleep upright on the hard benches

leaning against each other

snoring and

dreaming;

men

without.

in New York City

where it gets colder

and they are hunted by their own

kind, these men often crawl under car radiators,

drink the anti-freeze,

get warm and grateful for some minutes, then

die.

but that is an older

culture and a wiser

one;

here they scratch and

wait,

while on Sunset Boulevard the

hippies and yippies

hitchhike in

$50

boots.

out in front of the Mission I heard one guy say to

another:

“John Wayne won it.”

“Won what?” said the other guy

tossing the last of his rolled cigarette into the

street.

I thought that was

rather good.

a day at the oak tree meet

Filet’s Rule, the 12 horse around 12 to one,

that was the first race, they had a different

janitor in the men’s room, and I didn’t have the

2nd race either, Bold Courage, around 19 to one,

my Kentucky Lark got a dead ride from the boy

who stood up in the saddle all the way, which is

hardly a way to ride a 2 to one shot, and I

got a roast beef sandwich for $1.10, if you’re going

to go broke you might as well eat well, and in the

3rd Grandby had to pull up to avoid Factional who

came over on him, the stewards argued for 15

minutes before allowing it to stand, and there I was

52 dollars down and the mountains were dry,

life was hardly worthwhile, and in the 4th, Aberion

Bob I think was the play but I went to Misty Repose

who got locked in the one hole at 6 furlongs and had

nothing left when he swung out. A. Bob won handily and

I was 67 dollars down, the coffee was a quarter and

the coffee girl looked like an x-prostitute, which

she probably wasn’t, and then in the 5th, Christie’s

Star took it at thirteen to one and I was 3rd, I think

with Bold Street, I can’t beat those maiden races, and

I was 77 dollars down and bought a hot dog which cost

50 cents and was gone in 2 bites, and then I had to

go 20 win on Nearbrook, which won by 6 or 7 lengths

but at 4 to 5, so I am still 65 dollars down and the

mountains are still dry, but nobody is talking to me

or bothering me, there’s a chance. I put 15 win on

Moving Express and 5 win on Choctaw Charlie and C.C.

comes in at eight to one, and then I am only 37 dollars

down, and we have the 8th race, Manta at 3 to 5

was a rather obvious bet, I looked for something to beat

her and came up with Hollywood Gossip. Manta went

on by, but I had been afraid of that and had only gone

5 win, I was 42 dollars down with one race to go, and

I put 20 win on Vesperal and ten win on Cedar Cross,

and Cedar Cross ran dead and Vesperal went wire to

wire, so that was 72 down before the race, and

you take the 84 dollar pay off and you’ve got 12 dollars

profit. There you go: behind for 8 races, winner in

the 9th. Nothing big, but bankroll intact. This comes,

my friends, out of years of training. There are thorough-

bred horses and thoroughbred bettors. What you do is

stay with your plays and let them come to you. Loving

a woman is the same way, or loving life. You’ve

got to work a bit for it. In a day or 2 I’ll go again

and get off better. You’ll see me that night having a

quiet drink at the track bar as the losers run for the

parking lot. Don’t talk to me or bother me and I won’t

bother you. All right?

rain

a symphony orchestra.

there is a thunderstorm,

they are playing a Wagner overture

and the people leave their seats under the trees

and run inside to the pavilion

the women giggling, the men pretending calm,

wet cigarettes being thrown away,

Wagner plays on, and then they are all under the

pavilion. the birds even come in from the trees

and enter the pavilion and then it is the Hungarian

Rhapsody #2 by Lizst, and it still rains, but look,

one man sits alone in the rain

listening. the audience notices him. they turn

and look. the orchestra goes about its

business. the man sits in the night in the rain,

listening. there is something wrong with him,

isn’t there?

he came to hear the

music.

the colored birds

it is a highrise apt. next door

and he beats her at night and she screams and nobody stops it

and I see her the next day

standing in the driveway with curlers in her hair

and she has her huge buttocks jammed into black

slacks and she says, standing in the sun,

“god damn it, 24 hours a day in this place, I never go anywhere!”

then he comes out, proud, the little matador,

a pail of shit, his belly hanging over his bathing trunks—

he might have been a handsome man once, might have,

now they both stand there and he says,

“I think I’m goin’ for a swim.”

she doesn’t answer and he goes to the pool and

jumps into the fishless, sandless water, the peroxide-codein water,

and I stand by the kitchen window drinking coffee

trying to unboil the fuzzy, stinking picture—

after all, you can’t live elbow to elbow to people without wanting to

draw a number on them.

every time my toilet flushes they can hear it. every time they

go to bed I can hear them.

soon she goes inside and then comes out with 2 colored birds

in a cage. I don’t know what they are. they don’t talk. they

just move a little, seeming to twitch their tail-feathers and

shit. that’s all they do.

she stands there looking at them.

he comes out: the little tuna, the little matador, out of the pool,

a dripping unbeautiful white, the cloth of his wet suit gripping.

“get those birds in the house!”

“but the birds need sun!”

“I said, get those birds in the house!”

“the birds are gonna die!”

“you listen to me, I said, GET THOSE BIRDS IN THE HOUSE!”

she bends and lifts them, her huge buttocks in the black slacks

looking so sad.

he slams the door behind them. then I hear it.

BAM!

she screams

BAM! BAM!

she screams

then: BAM!

and she screams.

I pour another coffee and decide that that’s a new

one: he usually only beats her at

night. it takes a man to beat his wife night and

day. although he doesn’t look like much

he’s one of the few real men around

here.

another lousy 10 percenter

I have read your stuff with

sharp inter…

he said,

falling forward

and knocking over his wine.

get that bum

OUTA here! screamed my old

lady.

but ma, I said, he’s my

agent! got a joint in

Plaza Square!

well, kiss my bubs, she said.

(she poured wine

all around,

the bat.)

I’ve represented, he said,

raisen his head, somerset mawn, ben heck

and tomas carylillie.

an’ as you might ’ave surmised, ’e said,

mah cut, daddy-o, is ten percent!

’is haid fell

forshafts.

Ma? I asked. who’s

forshafts?

Somerset Maun! she answered,

yo hashole!

making it

ignore all possible concepts and possibilities—

ignore Beethoven, the spider, the damnation of Faust—

just make it, babe, make it:

a house a car a belly full of beans

pay your taxes

fuck

and if you can’t fuck

copulate.

make money but don’t work too

hard—make somebody else pay to

make it—and

don’t smoke too much but drink enough to

relax, and

stay off the streets

wipe your ass real good

use a lot of toilet paper

it’s bad manners to let people know you shit or

could smell like it

if you weren’t

careful.

drunk ol’ bukowski drunk

I hold to the edge of the table

with my belly dangling over my

belt

and I glare at the lampshade

the smoke clearing

over

North Hollywood

the boys put their muskets down

lift high their fish-green beer

as I fall forward off the couch

kiss rug hairs like cunt

hairs

close as I’ve been in a

long time.

the poetry reading

at high noon

at a small college near the beach

sober

the sweat running down my arms

a spot of sweat on the table

I flatten it with my finger

blood money blood money

my god they must think I love this like the others

but it’s for bread and beer and rent

blood money

I’m tense lousy feel bad

poor people I’m failing I’m failing

a woman gets up

walks out

slams the door

a dirty poem

somebody told me not to read dirty poems

here

it’s too late.

my eyes can’t see some lines

I read it

out—

desperate trembling

lousy

they can’t hear my voice

and I say,

I quit, that’s it, I’m

finished.

and later in my room

there’s scotch and beer:

the blood of a coward.

this then

will be my destiny:

scrabbling for pennies in dark tiny halls

reading poems I have long since become tired

of.

and I used to think

that men who drove busses

or cleaned out latrines

or murdered men in alleys were

fools.

slim killers

there are 4 guys at the door

all 6 feet four

and checking in at

around 210 pounds,

slim killers.

come in, I say,

and they walk in with their drinks

and circle the old man—

so you’re Bukowski, eh?

yeh, you fucking killers, what do you

want?

well, we don’t have a car

and Lee needs a ride to this nightspot

in Hollywood.

let’s go, I say.

we get into my car

all of us drunk, and

somebody in back says,

we’ve been reading your poetry a long time,

Bukowski, and I say,

I’ve been writing it a long time,

kid. we dump Lee at the nightspot

then stop off for enough beer and cigars

to demolish the

stratosphere.

back at my place I sit with the killers and

we drink and smoke.

it is somehow enjoyable.

I find I can outdrink and outsmoke them

but I realize that in areas such as fights on

the front lawn

my day is done.

the motherfuckers are just getting too young and

too big.

after they pass out

I give each of them a pillow and a blanket

and make sure all the cigars are

out.

in the morning they were just 3 big kids

untrapped, a couple of them

heaving in the bathroom.

an hour later

they were gone.

readers of my poems

I can’t say that

I disliked them.

the last days of the suicide kid

I can see myself now

after all these suicide days and nights,

being wheeled out of one of those sterile rest homes

(of course, this is only if I get famous and lucky)

by a subnormal and bored nurse…

there I am sitting upright in my wheelchair…

almost blind, eyes rolling backward into the dark part of my skull

looking

for the mercy of death…

“Isn’t it a lovely day, Mr. Bukowski?”

“O, yeah, yeah…”

the children walk past and I don’t even exist

and lovely women walk by

with big hot hips

and warm buttocks and tight hot everything

praying to be loved

and I don’t even

exist…

“It’s the first sunlight we’ve had in 3 days,

Mr. Bukowski.”

“Oh, yeah, yeah.”

there I am sitting upright in my wheelchair,

myself whiter than this sheet of paper,

bloodless,

brain gone, gamble gone, me, Bukowski,

gone…

“Isn’t it a lovely day, Mr. Bukowski?”

“O, yeah, yeah…” pissing in my pajamas, slop drooling out of

my mouth.

2 young schoolboys run by—

“Hey, did you see that old guy?”

“Christ, yes, he made me sick!”

after all the threats to do so

somebody else has committed suicide for me

at last.

the nurse stops the wheelchair, breaks a rose from a nearby bush,

puts it in my hand.

I don’t even know

what it is. it might as well be my pecker

for all the good

it does.

bang bang

absolutely sesamoid

said the skeleton

shoving his chalky foot

upon my desk,

and that was it,

bang bang,

he looked at me,

and it was my bone body

and I was what remained,

and there was a newspaper

on my desk

and somebody folded the newspaper

and I folded,

I was the newspaper

under somebody’s arm

and the sheet of me

had eyes

and I saw the skeleton

watching

and just before the door closed

I saw a man who looked

partly like Napoleon,

partly like Hitler,

fighting with my skeleton,

then the door closed

and we went down the steps

and outside

and I was under

the arm

of a fat little man

who knew nothing

and I hated him

for his indifference

to fact, how I hated him

as he unfolded me

in the subway

and I fell against the back

of an old woman.

5 men in black passing my window

5 men in black passing my window

it’s Sunday

they’ve been to church.

5 men in black passing my window;

they’re between 40 and 60

each with a little smile on his face

like a tarantula.

they’re without women;

I am too.

look at them,

it’s the way they walk by fives—

no two together,

not speaking,

just the little smiles.

each has done his horrible thing

during the week—

fired a stockboy, stolen from a partner;

cowardly horrible little men

passing my window.

5 men in black with little

smiles.

I could machinegun them

without feeling

banal

bury them without a tear:

death of all these things

Springtime.

the poet’s muse

there was one

made a thousand dollars

one day

in a town no larger than

El Paso

jumping taxies between

universities and ladies’

clubs.

hell, you can’t blame him;

I’ve worked for $16 a week,

quit, and lived a month on

that.

his wife is suing for divorce

and wants $200 a week

alimony.

he has to stay famous and

keep

talking.

I see his work

everywhere.

somebody

god I got the sad blue blues,

this woman sat there and she

said

are you really Charles

Bukowski?

and I said

forget that

I do not feel good

I’ve got the sad sads

all I want to do is

fuck you

and she laughed

she thought I was being

clever

and O I just looked up her long slim legs of heaven

I saw her liver and her quivering intestine

I saw Christ in there

jumping to a folk-rock

all the long lines of starvation within me

rose

and I walked over

and grabbed her on the couch

ripped her dress up around her face

and I didn’t care

rape or the end of the earth

one more time

to be there

anywhere

real

yes

her panties were on the

floor

and my cock went in

my cock my god my cock went in

I was Charles

Somebody.

story and poem

look, he said, that story,

everybody knew it was me.

by god, I said, are you still

hacking at that?

I thought you were going to write a

story exposing me?

what happened to that?

you didn’t have to write that

story about me!

forget it, I said, it’s not

important.

he leaped and slammed the door;

the glass didn’t break

but the curtain rod and curtain

fell.

I tried to finish a one-act play

gave up

and went to bed.

the phone rang.

listen, he said, when I came over

I had no idea I’d act like

that.

it’s o.k., I said.

relax.

I leaned back to sleep and I

thought,

now I’ll probably write a poem about

him.

there seems to be no way out, I thought,

everybody is always angry about the truth

even though they claim to

believe in it.

I slept and wrote the poem

in the morning.

and the moon and the stars and the world:

long walks at

night—

that’s what’s good

for the

soul:

peeking into windows

watching tired

housewives

trying to fight

off

their beer-maddened

husbands.

get the nose

comfrock, you motherfuck

get up off your crazy knees

and I’ll belt you down

again—

what’s that?

you say I eat stem pipes?

I’ll kill you!

stop crying. god damn.

all right, we dumped your car into the sea

and raped your daughter

but we are only extending the possibilities of a working

realism, shut up!, I said

any man must be ready for anything and

if he isn’t then he isn’t a

man a goat a note or a plantleaf,

you shoulda known the entirety of the trap, asshole,

love means eventual pain

victory means eventual defeat

grace means eventual slovenliness,

there’s no way

out…you see, you

understand?

hey, Mickey, hold his head up

want to break his nose with this pipe…

god damn, I almost forgot the

nose!

death is every second, punk.

the calendar is death. the sheets are death. you put on your

stockings: death. buttons on your shirt are death.

lace sportshirts are death. don’t you smell it? temperature is

death. little girls are death. free coupons are death. carrots are

death. didn’t you

know?

o.k., Mack, we got the nose.

no, not the balls, too much bleeding.

what was he when? oh, yeah, he used to be a cabby

we snatched him from his cab

right off Madison, destroyed his home, his car, raped his

12 year old daughter, it was beautiful, burned his wife with

gasoline.

look at his eyes

begging mercy…

my landlady and my landlord

56, she leans

forward

in the kitchen

2:25 a.

m.

same red

sweater

holes in

elbows

cook him something to

EAT

he says

from the

same red

face

3 years ago

we broke down a tree

fighting

after he caught me

kissing

her.

beer by the

quarts

we drink

bad beer

by the

quarts

she gets up

and

begins to

fry

something

all night

we sings songs

songs from 1925 a.

d. to

1939 a.

d.

we talk about

short skirts

Cadillacs the

Republican Administration

the depression

taxes

horses

Oklahoma

here

you son of a bitch,

she says.

drunk

I lean forward and

eat.

bad night

Bartenders are human too

and when he reached for the baseball bat

the little Italian hit him in the face

with a bottle

and several whores screamed.

I was just coming out

of the men’s room

when I saw the bartender

get off the floor

and open the cigar box

to get the gun,

and I turned around

and went out back,

and the Italian

must have argued poorly

because I heard the shot

just as I got

the car door open.

I drove down the alley

and turned East on 7th st.,

and I hadn’t gone a block

before a cop pulled me over.

You trying to get killed?

he asked. Turn your lights

on.

He was a big fat one and he

kept pushing his helmet

further and further

on the back of his head.

I took the ticket and then

drove down to Union. I

parked outside the Reno Hotel

and went downstairs

to Harry’s.

It was quiet there, only

a big redhead, bigger

than the cop.

She called me Honey

and I ordered 2.

hogs in the sky

the territory of the diamond and the territory of the

cross and the territory of the spider and the territory of

the butcher

divided by the territory of you and me

subtracted from the territory of mathematical

reality

multiplied by those tombstones in the

moonlight

just going on

is a greater gut-miracle than the life-death cycle

itself, I mean

going on against uselessness—

that’s different than living,

say, the way a fly lives;

the brain gives us enough light to know

that living is only an artful sacrifice

at best. at worst, it’s

hogs in the sky.

the territory of the darning needle

the territory of the mustard jar

the territory of mad dogs and love gone stale

the territory of you and me

each evening bent like the point of a thumb tack

that will no longer stick

in

each kiss a hope of returning to the first kiss

each fuck the same

each person nailed against diminishing

returns

we are slaves to hopes that have run to

garbage

as old age

arrives on schedule.

the territory of meeting and leaving

the territory of you and me

death arrived on schedule on a

Sunday afternoon, and,

as always,

it was easier than we thought

it would be.

the white poets

the white poets usually knock quite early

and keep knocking and ringing

ringing and knocking

even though all the shades are down;

finally I arise with my hangover

figuring such persistency

must mean good fortune, a prize of some

sort—female or monetary,

“aw right! aw right!” I shout

looking for something to cover my ugly

naked body. sometimes I must vomit first,

then gargle; the gargle only makes me vomit again.

I forget it—go to the door—

“hello?”

“you Bukowski?”

“yeh. come in.”

we sit and look at each other—

he very vigorous and young—

latest blooming clothes—

all colors and silk—

face like a weasel—

“you don’t remember me?” he

asks.

“no.”

“I was here before. you were rather short. you didn’t like my

poems.”

“there are plenty of reasons for not liking

poems.”

“try these.”

he put them on me. they were flatter than the paper they were typed

upon. there wasn’t a tick or a

flare. not a sound. I’d never read

less.

“uh,” I said, “uh-uh.”

“you mean you don’t LIKE

them?”

“there’s nothing there—it’s like a pot of evaporated piss.”

he took the papers, stood up and walked

around. “look, Bukowski. I’ll put some broads from Malibu on

you, broads like you’ve never

seen.”

“oh yeah, baby?” I asked.

“yeah, yeah,” he

said.

and ran out the

door.

his Malibu broads were like his

poems: they

never arrived.

the black poets

the black poets

young

come to my door—

“you Bukowski?”

“yeh. come in.”

they sit and look around at the

destroyed room

and at

me.

they hand me their poems.

I read

them.

“no,” I say and hand them

back.

“you don’t like

them?”

“no.”

“’roi Jones came down to see us at our

workshop…”

“I hate,” I say,

“workshops.”

“…Leroi Jones, Ray Bradbury, lots of big

boys…they said this stuff was

good…”

“it’s bad poetry, man. they are powdering your

ass.”

“there’s this big film-writer too. he started the whole

idea: Watts Writers’ Workshop.”

“ah, god, don’t you see? they are tickling your

assholes! you should have burned the whole town

down! I’m sick of it!”

“you just don’t understand

the poems…”

“I do, they are rhymers, full of

platitudes. you write bad

poetry.”

“look muthafucka, I been on the radio, I been printed in the L.A.

Times!”

“oh?”

“well, that happened to

you?”

“no.”

“o.k., muthafucka, you ain’t seen the last of

me!”

I suppose I haven’t. and it’s useless to tell you that I am not

anti-black

because

somehow

that’s when the whole subject becomes

sickening.

millionaires

you

no faces

no faces

at all

laughing at nothing—

let me tell you

I have drunk in skidrow rooms with

imbecile winos

whose cause was better

whose eyes still held some light

whose voices retained some sensibility,

and when the morning came

we were sick but not ill,

poor but not deluded,

and we stretched in our beds and rose

in the late afternoons

like millionaires.

poetry

the bus driver grins while sweating in the heat

of the plateglass windshield,

he doesn’t have a chance—

only Hollywood Boulevard, an impossible sun

and an impossible timetable,

there are so many without a chance.

I realize that there is very little chance

for any of

us. poetry won’t save us or a job won’t save us,

a good job or a bad

job.

we take a little bit and hang onto that until it is

gone.

gongs ring, dances begin, there are holidays and

celebrations…

we try to cheat the bad dream…

poetry, you whore, who will go to any man and then

leave him…

the bus driver has Hollywood Boulevard

I sit next to a fat lady who lays her dead thigh

against me.

there is a tiny roll of sweat behind one of the bus driver’s

ears. he is ashamed to brush it

away.

the people look ahead or read or look out their

windows.

the tiny roll of sweat begins to roll

it rolls along behind the ear

then down the neck,

then it’s

gone.

Vine street, says the bus driver,

this is Vine

street.

he’s right, at last. what a marvelous thing.

I get off at Vine Street. I need a drink or something

to eat. I don’t care about the bus

anymore. it is a

rejected poem. I don’t need it

anymore.

there will be more busses.

I decide upon something to eat

with a drink as

openers.

I walk out of the dark and into the dark

and sit down and

wait.

the painter

he came up on the porch

with a grinning subnormal type

and they stood there

drunk on wine.

the painter had his coat wrapped around something,

then pulled the coat away—

it was a policeman’s helmet

complete with badge.

“gimme 20 bucks for this,” he said.

“fuck off, man,” I said, “what do I want with a

cop’s derby?”

“ten bucks,” he said.

“did you kill him?”

“5 bucks…”

“what happened to that 6 grand you made

at your art show last month?”

“I drank it. all in the same bar.”

“and I never got a beer,” I said.

“2 bucks…”

“did you kill him?”

“we ganged him, punched him around a bit…”

“that’s chickenshit. I don’t want the headpiece.”

“we’re 18 cents short of a bottle, man…”

I gave the painter 35 cents

keeping the chain on the door, slipping it to him

with my fingers. he lived with his mother,

beat his girlfriend regularly

and really didn’t paint that

well. but I suppose a lot of obnoxious characters

work their way into

immortality.

I’m working on it myself.

the inquisitor

in the bathtub rereading Céline’s

Journey to the End of the Night

the phone rings

and I get out

grab a towel.

some guy from SMART SET,

he wants to know what’s in my mailbox

how my life has been

going.

I tell him there isn’t anything in the

mailbox or the

life.

he thinks that I’m holding

back. I hope that

I am.

my friend william

my friend William is a fortunate man:

he lacks the imagination to suffer

he kept his first job

his first wife

can drive a car 50,000 miles

without a brake job

he dances like a swan

and has the prettiest blankest eyes

this side of El Paso

his garden is a paradise

the heels of his shoes are always level

and his handshake is firm

people love him

when my friend William dies

it will hardly be from madness or cancer

he’ll walk right past the devil

and into heaven

you’ll see him at the party tonight

grinning

over his martini

blissful and delightful

as some guy

fucks his wife in the

bathroom.

300 poems

look, he said, I’ve written

300 poems in 2

months,

and he handed me the

stack and I

thought

oo oo.

a young girl

walked up

and handed him a plate of

corn and meat

in his cottage

by the beach

and the sea rolled in

and I turned the

white

pages.

I’ve been drinking

he said

and writing

and the young girl said

is there anything else

I can get

you?

he was rich and I was poor

and the sea rolled in

and I turned the

white

pages.

what do you think?

he asked?

and I said,

well, some of

these…

but I didn’t

finish.

later I walked

outside. I walked down

the sand to where the sand got

wet and I looked at the water and

the moon

and then I turned around

and I walked up to the

boardwalk and I thought,

oo oo.

lifting weights at 2 a.m.

queers do this

or is it that you’re

afraid to die?

biceps, triceps, forceps,

what are you going to do

with muscles?

well, muscles please the ladies

and keep the bullies

at bay—

so

what?

is it worth it?

is it worth the collected works

of Balzac?

or a 3 week vacation

in Spain?

or, is it another way of

suffering?

if you got paid to do it,

you’d hate it.

if a man got paid to make love,

he’d hate it.

still, one needs the

exercise—

this writing game:

only the brain and soul get

worked-out.

quit your bitching and

do it.

while other people are

sleeping

you’re lifting a mountain

with rivers of poems

running off.

reality

my little famous bleeding elbows

my knotty knees (especially) and

even my balls

hairy and wasted.

these blue evenings of walking past buildings

where Jews pray beautifully about seasons I

know nothing of

and would leave me alone

with the roaches and ants climbing my dying body

in some place

too real to touch.

earthquake

Americans don’t know what tragedy is—

a little 6.5 earthquake can set them to chattering

like monkeys—

a piece of chinaware broken,

the Union Rescue Mission falls down—

6 a.m.

they sit in their cars

they’re all driving around—

where are they going?

a little excitement has broken into their

canned lives

stranger stands next to stranger

chattering gibberish fear

anxious fear

anxious laughter…

my baby, my flowerpots, my ceiling

my bank account

this is just a tickler

a feather

and they can’t bear it…

suppose they bombed the city

as other cities have been bombed

not with an a-bomb

but with ordinary blockbusters

day after day,

every day

as has happened

in other cities of the world?

if the rest of the world could see you today

their laughter would bring the sun to its knees

and even the flowers would leap from the ground

like bulldogs

and chase you away to where you belong

wherever that is,

and who cares where it is

as long as it’s somewhere away from

here.

the good life at o’hare airport

3 hour wait at the airport in

Chicago, surrounded by killers

I found a table alone

and had a scotch and water

when 4 preachers sat down,

and look here, said one of them,

looking at a newspaper,

here’s a guy drunk, ran through a

wall, killed one person, injured 4.

if I was him, said another,

I’d commit suicide.

I ordered a large beer

and sat there reading my own novel.

look here, said the one with the paper,

here’s a guy, no, two guys,

tried to hijack a liquor truck,

they were so dumb they didn’t even know

it was only carrying wine. didn’t even

break the seal. bound the driver

and then stopped for coffee. the driver

leaned on the horn and a cop car came by

and that was it. they went in and got

those 2 guys.

any 2 guys that dumb, said another,

they sure have it coming.

look sweetie, said another to the waitress,

we don’t want anything to drink, we don’t drink,

but we could sure use 4

coffees, and haven’t I seen you someplace before,

hee hee hee?

give me another beer, I told the

waitress. I drink, and I’ve never seen you anyplace

before.

the waitress came back with 4 cups of coffee

and the beer, and I sat there reading my own novel

as the 4 preachers sat there

whirling their spoons around their cups,

clink clink clink

and I thought, this isn’t a bad novel

this isn’t a bad novel

at all, but the next one is going to be

better, and I lifted my old beer and finished it,

and then drank some of the new

one, and clink clink clink

went the spoons against the cups

and one of the preachers coughed

and everybody was unhappy but

me.

the golfers

driving through the park

I notice men and women playing golf

driving in their powered carts

over billiard table lawns,

they are my age

but their bodies are fat

their hair grey

their faces waffle batter,

and I remember being startled by my own face

scarred, and mean as red ants

looking at me from a department store mirror

and the eyes mad mad mad

I drive on and start singing

making up the sound

a war chant

and there is the sun

and the sun says, good, I know you,

and the steering wheel is humorous

and the dashboard laughs,

see, the whole sky knows

I have not lied to anything

even death will have exits

like a dark theatre.

I stop at a stop sign and

as fire burns the trees and the people and the city

I know that there will be a place to go

and a way to go

and nothing need ever be

lost.

II

spider on the wall:

why do you take

so long?

the mockingbird

the mockingbird had been following the cat

all summer

mocking mocking mocking

teasing and cocksure;

the cat crawled under rockers on porches

tail flashing

and said something angry to the mockingbird

which I didn’t understand.

yesterday the cat walked calmly up the driveway

with the mockingbird alive in its mouth,

wings fanned, beautiful wings fanned and flopping,

feathers parted like a woman’s legs,

and the bird was no longer mocking,

it was asking, it was praying

but the cat

striding down through centuries

would not listen.

I saw it crawl under a yellow car

with the bird

to bargain it to another place.

summer was over.

ha ha ha ha ha, ha ha

monkey feet

small and blue

walking toward you

as the back of a building falls off

and an airplane chews the white sky,

doom is like the handle of a pot,

it’s there,

know it,

have ice in your tea,

marry,

have children, visit your

dentist,

do not scream at night

even if you feel like screaming,

count ten

make love to your wife,

or if your wife isn’t there

if there isn’t anybody there

count 20,

get up and walk to the kitchen

if you have a kitchen

and sit there sweating

at 3 a.m. in the morning

monkey feet

small and blue

walking toward you.

a fine day and the world looks good

someday the lion will

walk in

he’ll grab an arm

just above the elbow

my old arm

my wrinkled dice-shooting arm

and

I’ll scream

in my bedroom

I won’t understand at all

and he’ll be

too strong for me,

and people will walk in—

a wife, a girlfriend, a bastard son,

a stranger from down the street

and a

doctor

and

they will

watch

and the lion won’t bother them

yet,

and then my arm will be

gone

the doctor will put the

stethoscope to my chest

ask me to cough

then

he will turn to the others and

say

there’s a chance

but I think he’s going

under—shock and loss of

blood.

hell, I know that,

and now the lion has my

other arm

I try to knee him

his tail knocks a picture off the wall

a picture of a Dutch windmill and a

pond

it is a fine day

the world looks good

I feel I’d like to be

swimming or fishing or sleeping

under a tree

but the lion will not

let go

then

my other arm is

gone

the people kneel to

pray

all but the

doctor

the lion is clawing at my

chest

trying to get at the

heart

I ask the doctor to light me a

cigarette and

he does

then the

priest walks

in

the lion does not bother the priest

yet

I’d heard about the

lion

about how sometimes he was fast or sometimes he was

slow

I knew he usually preferred older people

although sometimes he even ate

babies or young men and

girls

god o mighty! save me! save me!

I scream

but the people do not

move

they let the lion

eat me

the priest mumbles incantations I do not

understand

the doctor turns his back and looks

out the window

it is the month of July

with the taste of butter in the air

and I am rapidly becoming a

keepsake thing

as before my eyes I see the

moth, butcherbird, dove, vulture and

angel

burning

the lion eats my heart

and the doctor puts the sheet over my

head

and it is early in the

morning

very early in the

morning

and decent people are still

in bed

most of them asleep with bad breath

and very few of them making

love

and most of them

not like me

yet

vacancy

sun-stroked women

without men

on a Santa Monica monday;

the men are working or in jail

or insane;

one girl floats in a rubber suit,

waiting…

houses slide off the edges of cliffs

and down into the sea.

the bars are empty

the lobster eating houses are empty;

it’s a recession, they say,

the good days are

over.

you can’t tell an unemployed man

from an artist any more,

they all look alike

and the women look the same,

only a little more desperate.

we stop at a hippie hole

in Topanga Canyon…

and wait, wait, wait;

the whole area of the canyon and the beach

is listless

useless

VACANCY, it says, PEOPLE WANTED.

the wood has no fire

the sea is dirty

the hills are dry

the temples have no bells

love has no bed

sun-stroked women without men

one sailboat

life drowned.

3:16 and one half…

here I’m supposed to be a great poet

and I’m sleepy in the afternoon

here I am aware of death like a giant bull

charging at me

and I’m sleepy in the afternoon

here I’m aware of wars and men fighting in the ring

and I’m aware of good food and wine and good women

and I’m sleepy in the afternoon

I’m aware of a woman’s love

and I’m sleepy in the afternoon,

I lean into the sunlight behind a yellow curtain

I wonder where the summer flies have gone

I remember the most bloody death of Hemingway

and I’m sleepy in the afternoon.

some day I won’t be sleepy in the afternoon

some day I’ll write a poem that will bring volcanoes

to the hills out there

but right now I’m sleepy in the afternoon

and somebody asks me, “Bukowski, what time is it?”

and I say, “3:16 and a half.”

I feel very guilty, I feel obnoxious, useless,

demented, I feel

sleepy in the afternoon,

they are bombing churches, o.k., that’s o.k.,

the children ride ponies in the park, o.k., that’s o.k.,

the libraries are filled with thousands of books of knowledge,

great music sits inside the nearby radio

and I am sleepy in the afternoon,

I have this tomb within myself that says,

ah, let the others do it, let them win,

let me sleep,

wisdom is in the dark

sweeping through the dark like brooms,

I’m going where the summer flies have gone,

try to catch me.

the rat

with one punch, at the age of 16 and 1/2,

I knocked out my father,

a cruel shiny bastard with bad breath,

and I didn’t go home for some time, only now and then

to try to get a dollar from

dear momma.

it was 1937 in Los Angeles and it was a hell of a

Vienna.

I ran with these older guys

but for them it was the same:

mostly breathing gasps of hard air

and robbing gas stations that didn’t have any

money, and a few lucky among us

worked part-time as Western Union messenger

boys.

we slept in rented rooms that weren’t rented—

and we drank ale and wine

with the shades down

being quiet quiet

and then awakening the whole building

with a fistfight

breaking mirrors and chairs and lamps

and then running down the stairway

just before the police arrived

some of us soldiers of the future

running through the empty starving streets and alleys of

Los Angeles

and all of us

getting together later

in Pete’s room

a small cube of space under a stairway, there we were,

packed in there

without women

without cigarettes

without anything to drink,

while the rich pawed away at their many

choices and the young girls let

them,

the same girls who spit at our shadows as we

walked past.

it was a hell of a

Vienna.

3 of us under that stairway

were killed in World War II.

another one is now manager of a mattress

company.

me? I’m 30 years older,

the town is 4 or 5 times as big

but just as rotten

and the girls still spit on my

shadow, another war is building for another

reason, and I can hardly get a job now

for the same reason I couldn’t then:

I don’t know anything, I can’t do

anything.

sex? well, just the old ones knock on my door after

midnight. I can’t sleep and they see the lights and are

curious.

the old ones. their husbands no longer want them,

their children are gone, and if they show me enough good

leg (the legs go last)

I go to bed with

them.

so the old women bring me love and I smoke their cigarettes

as they

talk talk talk

and then we go to bed again and

I bring them love

and they feel good and

talk

until the sun comes

up, then we

sleep.

it’s a hell of a

Paris.

hot

I was up under the attic and it was almost summer

and I sat around drinking wine

and watching the hot pigeons suffer and fuck

on the hot roof

and I listened to sounds on my radio and

drank the wine

and I sat there naked and sweating

and wishing I were back in the journalism class

where everybody was a

genius.

it was even hot when I got thrown out of there

for non-payment of rent and I signed on with a

track gang going West—the windows wouldn’t open

and the seats and sides of the cars were 100 years old with

dust. they gave us cans of food but no openers

and we busted the cans against the side of the seats

ate raw hash, raw lima beans

the water tasted like candlewick

and I leaped out under a line of trees in the middle of

Texas, some small town, and the police found me asleep

on a park bench and put me in a cell with only a crapper,

no water, no sink, and they questioned me about robberies and

murders,

under a hot light

and getting nothing

they drove me to the next town 17 miles away

the big one kicked me in the ass

and after a good night’s sleep

I went into the local library

where the young lady librarian seemed to take an interest in my

reading habits

and later we went to bed

and I woke up with teethmarks all over me and I said,

Christ, watch it, baby, you might give me

cancer!

you’re an idiot, she said.

I suppose that I

was.

radio

strange eyes in my head

I’m the coward and the fool and the clown

and I listen to a man telling me that I can get a

restaurant guide and an expanding cultural events calendar

I’m just not here today

I don’t want restaurants and expanding cultural events

I want an old shack in the hills

rent free

with enough to eat and drink until I die

strange eyes in my head

strange ways

no chance

ariel

oh my god, oh my dear god

that we should end up

on the end of a rope

in some slimy bathroom

far from Paris,

far from thighs that care,

our feet hanging down

above the simplicity

of stained tile,

telephone ringing,

letters unopened,

dogs pissing in the street…

greater men than I

have failed to agree with Life.

I wish you could have met my brother, Marty:

vicious, intelligent, endearing,

doing

quite well.

the passing of a dark gray moment

Standing here,

doing what?

as exposed as an azalea

to a bee.

Where’s the axman,

where’s it done?

They tiptoe round

on rotting wood,

peeking into shelves.

Summertime!

Where’s the sun,

where’s the sea?

The god’s are gone!

Everything hums

with humble severity…

they wipe their faces

with cotton and rags

—and wait for morning.

Where’s the fire,

where’s the burn?

Rain-spouts! and rats

printing dirge-notes in ashes…

a voice plows my brain:

“the gods are dead.”

Where’s the time,

where’s the place?

Somewhat eased, extinguished,

I listen behind me

to my bird eating seed,

hoping he’ll chitter

and peep some pink

back into white elbows.

I love that bird,

the simple needing of seed, so clear:

A god can be anything

that’s needed right away.

The sound of aircraft overhead

winging a man…

stronger now, not yet pure,

but moving away the dread.

consummation of grief

I even hear the mountains

the way they laugh

up and down their blue sides

and down in the water

the fish cry

and all the water

is their tears.

I listen to the water

on nights I drink away

and the sadness becomes so great

I hear it in my clock

it becomes knobs upon my dresser

it becomes paper on the floor

it becomes a shoehorn

a laundry ticket

it becomes

cigarette smoke

climbing a chapel of dark vines…

it matters little

very little love is not so bad

or very little life

what counts

is waiting on walls

I was born for this

I was born to hustle roses down the avenues of the dead.

those sons of bitches

the dead come running sideways

holding toothpaste ads,

the dead are drunk on New Year’s eve

satisfied at Christmas

thankful on Thanksgiving

bored on the 4th of July

loafing on Labor Day

confused at Easter

cloudy at funerals

clowning at hospitals

nervous at birth;

the dead shop for stockings and shorts

and belts and rugs and vases and

coffeetables,

the dead dance with the dead

the dead sleep with the dead

the dead eat with the dead.

the dead get hungry looking at hogs’ heads.

the dead get rich

the dead get deader

those sons of bitches

this graveyard above the ground

one tombstone for the mess,

I say:

humanity, you never had it

from the beginning.

the hunt

by god, it was a long day

the 3 horse broke down

the cook burned his hand,

e. pitts was recalled from the sandlots

because the regular back had a

hamstring,

and the grunion ran again

through the oily sea

to plant eggs on shore and be caught

by unemployed drunks

with flopping canvas hats

and no woman at all.

offshore you could see the lights of a

passing yacht

with a party on board,

lots of girls and jokes and the

rest,

and they put the 3 horse in

the truck, carried him away from the

crowd and shot

him, little things like that and other

things

are what sometimes create unemployed drunks

with flopping canvas hats,

sans woman,

trying to grab for

grunion.

the big fire

I’m on fire like the cactus in the desert

I’m on fire like the palms of an acrobat

I’m on fire like the fangs of the spider

I’m on fire with you and me

I’m on fire walking into a drugstore

I’m on fire I’m on fire

the girl hands me my change and

laughs at me

I’m on fire in my bed alone

I’m on fire with you

I’m on fire reading a book

about Trotsky, Hitler, Alexander the Great,

anybody at all, any walking living dead

human once upon the

earth

I’m on fire looking at the grass

I’m on fire looking at birds sitting on telephone wires

I’m on fire answering the phone—

I leap straight up when it rings

I am burning

I’m on fire looking at velvet

I’m on fire looking at a sleeping cat

I am a helpless burning thing

among other helpless burning things

I lay on my left side and look at the tombstones

then I lay on my right side and look at the tombstones—

they are all

burning

I’m on fire putting a stamp on an envelope

I’m on fire wrapping garbage into a newspaper

I’m on fire with heroes and dwarfs and poverty and hope

I’m on fire with love and anger

I’m on fire like a bat hanging upsidedown

like a bellboy hating the rich and smiling at their tips

I’m on fire in a supermarket

watching a most womanly woman

bend over to pick up some potato salad

I’m on fire like a scissors cutting the eyes out of the sky

I’m on fire like onehundredthousand monkeys boiled into one heart

and sobbing through centuries of

hopelessness

I’m on fire like a clean sharp knife in a kitchen drawer

I’m on fire like a beggar in India

a beggar in New York

a beggar in Los Angeles…

the smoke and burning rises

and the ash is crushed under…

I’m on fire like the circus that went away

the champion who quit on one knee

all burning

all alone

all one

ash

I’m on fire like a dirty bathtub in a lonely roominghouse

I’m on fire like the roach I kill with my shoe

I’m on fire with men and woman and animals

who are being tortured and mutilated in dark and

isolated places

I’m on fire with the armies and anti-armies

I’m on fire with the man I hate most in the world

I’m on fire without a chance

the fat is in the fire, the lamb is over it

the sacrifice seems forever

the enduring seems forever

the sun is on fire…

and the glazed horizon is red

and the weeping

and the weeping

and you and me

the sun is burning everything:

the dogs, the clouds, the icecream

the end

the end of the stairway

the end of the ocean

the last scream

the bug in the jar

spouts into flame

and the inside of the skull

gives up

at last

the smoke blows

away.

ww 2

since fact is an artifice of fiction

let’s call this fiction so like all good boys and girls

we can relax

i was in frisco a dandy place with lakes or something

i could see the gold bridge and it wasn’t teeth from my window

enough to drink almost always enough to drink

i wrote the old man down in l.a. you might as well get a story

ready for your god damned neighbors because i am not going to yr

war

if it were not for the war the last war you would not be here

i would not have met your mother and you would not have been born

SON, YOUR COUNTRY IS AT WAR ! ! ! !

the fact that i was born because of circumstances of war

did not seem to me a proper argument to create further circumstances

i went out and got drunk properly

then the next morning i went down to the draft board

a boy fainted when they took blood out of his arm and i looked at the

needle dip into my vein and watched the red of me run up into the tube

and felt rugged

they looked up my ass

and then i went in to see the sike

u have yr shorts on backwards he told me

i got up and switched them

he sat there looking at me

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF PICASSO?

at first i said all right now not much

do you write or paint?

yes

and?

and what? I ASKED IF YOU WROTE OR PAINTED. leave me alone

i told him

WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN PUBLISHED? PAINTINGS HUNG?

nothing accepted

nothing accepted anywhere

do you believe in the war? he asked no i said

ARE YOU WILLING TO GO TO WAR? he asked no i said

WHY DON’T YOU BE A CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTOR? because i said

i am not sure there is a God

NEXT WEDNESDAY NIGHT WE ARE HAVING A MEETING, A PARTY

FOR DOCTORS, WRITERS AND ARTISTS I WANT YOU TO BE

THERE I AM INVITING YOU WILL YOU COME?

no

all right he said u don’t have to go

u mean i asked the party or the war?

either one he said you didn’t think we’d understand did you?

no

he wrote something on a slip of paper and folded it and stuck it to my card

with a paperclip give them this, up the line

he had written a hell of a lot on the slip as i walked i managed

to lift the edge of the slip but all i cd see was

HIDES AN EXTREME,

SENSITIVITY UNDER A POKER FACE

which was news to me

and then some guy in a uniform screamed at me

ALL RIGHT SON UNCLE SAM DOESN’T WANT YOU

and i walked out into

the clear and beautiful air

are you going to war my landlady asked me no i said bad heart

that’s too bad i’m sorry she said and i went upstairs and poured

a good one

bad heart bad heart bad heart have u done the wrong thing

maybe u ought to go maybe you ought to go and walk right into it

hell, friend they turned you down uncle sam does not want you

you are insane

i smiled and poured another one

i don’t know how much later but some time later i am sitting in another

cheap room philly i am drinking a bottle of port have a record

player and i am listening to the 2nd movement of brahms’ 2nd symphony

when there is a knock on the door

it is a very polite knock

and since i do not know anybody much i figure it is either

one of the whores down at the corner in love with me

or somebody come to give me the nobel prize

and i opened the door and 2 big men were there and one of them said

F.B.I. and the other one said yr under arrest

i went over and took the needle out of brahms’ arm

we want to question u they said downtown

all right

u better put on a coat you might be gone some time

we walked down the stairs and out into the street and got into the car

and it seemed as if each window had a face hanging out of it

and there was another guy in the back and he said keep one hand

on each knee and don’t move them

we drove along a while and then

i reached up to scratch my nose

WATCH THAT HAND! one of them screamed

this guy is pretty casual another one said

i think we got a good one yep i think we got a good one

oh lord oh christ i thought i wonder what i done

i wonder what i done

they took me into a room that was mostly empty except for pictures

photos on the walls

you see those one of them pointed voice most serious

yes i said

those are men who died in the service of the fbi

they took me into another room where a man

sat behind his desk with his shirtsleeves rolled up

BUKOWSKI?

yes

HENRY C. JR.?

yes

WHERE THE HELL’S YOUR UNCLE JOHN?

my what?

WHERE THE HELL’S YOUR UNCLE JOHN?

i thought he meant i had some

kind of secret thing i was murdering people with

YOUR UNCLE: JOHN BUKOWSKI!

oh hell john he’s dead

NO WONDER we can’t find the son of a bitch!

WHY DID YOU DODGE THE DRAFT?

i’m 4f

4f eh?

psycho yes

why did you move without notifying your draft board?

i didn’t bother jesus i thought it was over

why did you move?

i got kicked out for being drunk all the time

landlady said i got blood on the sheets

WHY DIDN’T YOU NOTIFY YOUR DRAFT BOARD?

look are you guys crazy i only moved around the corner 80 yards

away gave the post office my forwarding address if i wanted

to hide i could do better than that

NOW WE DIDN’T BEAT YOU, DID WE?

no

AND WE DIDN’T PUT HANDCUFFS ON YOU, DID WE?

no

WE ARE GOING TO HAVE TO HOLD YOU FOR FURTHER INVESTIGATION….

they took me down to a small cell with toilet and sink

no bunk no chair i stood by the window and looked out the bars

it was Saturday morning and it was one of the main downtown

streets and it was sunny it looked good ouside people

walking along easily unnervous a record shop speakered its

music onto the street i did not feel good you only begin to

miss the simple life after it is taken away from u after u go

into a hospital and u are on a bed maybe to die or go back

or in a jail never knowing when or if you’ll get out

that’s when you think that’s when the sunshine looks good

that’s when just walking down to the corner to buy a paper

is something like beethoven’s 9th

i was transferred to a prison a much larger prison the next day

they put me in a cell with a little fat man who looked like

a businessman

he put out his hand: I am Courtney Taylor

public enemy number one

i shook his hand

what are you in for? he asked

they say i’m a draft dodger

listen he said there’s just one thing we don’t like around here

one kind we have no use for and that’s the draft dodger

honor among thieves

eh?

what do you mean?

I mean u fucker,

leave me alone

leave me alone

if u want to kill yourself i’ll tell you how he said

i don’t want to hear it i said

all you do is take that bucket over there fill it with water

take your shoe off put your foot in it but first bring down

the overhead light i’ll hold you on my shoulders and you can work

the screws loose from the pipe then u bend it down take the

globe out stick your finger in the hole yr foot in the bucket

and yr out of here

it sounded good to me but there was something grotesque and

embarrassing about it somehow so i decided not to do it

i stretched out on the bunk and pretty soon i felt things

biting me bedbugs

look i said do u gamble?

what do u mean?

i mean i said let’s bet a nickel a bed bug i bet i can catch

more than u

they don’t really come out till lights out he said

u mean it gets worse i asked

multiply by 30,

have u told the guard?

the screw? i’ll tell him again

HEY SCREW SCREW !!! WE GOT BUDBUGS IN HERE ! GET

THESE GOD DAMNED BEDBUGS OUT OF HERE HEY SCREW !

nobody showed up

we began playing 21 blackjack and 5 minutes later the screw

walked in

let’s not have so much screaming and you bastards probably

brought those things in here with you

i got hot in a crapgame in the exercise

yard and stayed hot 3, 4, 5 days and began to feel better i was

making more money than i ever made on the outside we were always

hungry there but after lights out the cook would come down with

jello and whipcream and coffee and bits of tenderloin and i’d slip

him a dollar or 2 and my public enemy friend stopped talking about

the evils of celling with a 4f and just when we were beginning to

enjoy our nickel a bedbug bets Taylor being a swindler of grand

order couldn’t resist breaking some of his in half but i being

poetaster and counter of tombstones feeling the blade against my

whimpering brain i i was more agile…and so psycho and public

enemy number one pinched out the souls of bedbugs while the world

grabbed its balls in more agony: ww 2

and we forgot in our small dying to acknowledge the small nobility

of whatever it was

BUTTT as i wuz saying

just as we were beginning to

enjoy our bedbugs they rushed us out of the cell

5 or 6 days after

the original complaint to fumigate

and they put me in with a polack

or something

old old old

he tore up my bedsheet the first time

i went to exercise yard to make a clothesline out of it

and i have a very sensitive skin despite my poker face

and the wool blankets only those who can’t stand rough wool will

know what i mean and so i told the old man

he was always on the crapper

puffiing on an empty pipe and all these makeshift makeshit

clotheslines hanging about dripping polack stockings and rags

(forget my name i am a Prussian nobleman) (this is fiction)

(isn’t it) (i am getting a little bored with this and could use a

hot piece of ass as what man cd not?)

he wuz always on the crapper

puffing and saying

TARA BUBU EAT TARA BUBU SHEET

TARA BUBU EAT TARA BUBU SHEET

over and over

then he’d laugh

he was telling me the facts of life but all i could feel

as the bluebirds were driven away from the white cliffs of dover

was that wool blanket against me all and everywhere

LISTEN YOU OLD FUCK i told him I’VE KILLED TWO

MEN ALREADY AND I’D JUST AS SOON KILL U AS SCRATCH

MY ASS !!!

and the old idiot just laughed at me and for a moment i saw it

it was possible why not my hands about that wrinkled morgue of

flesh hoo says u can’t kill what’s already dead the eyes pop out

the tongue the lungs reach for air like kittens chasing a roll of

yarn but it was too ugly i don’t think what got Dos in

Crime and Punishment was that a single man could not judge what to

eradicate but that he COULD and KNEW IT and it was easier to turn

it over to God because you would finally have to eradicate

everything including self (though u usually began with self and

by eradicating self you eradicated the rest) and that would make God

a failure and that would not do because if you eliminate God

you have to come down to self and Self built in 20 or 30 or 60 years

cannot match a 2000 year backlog of root and tradition and so Dos

did the wise thing in admitting that he could be wrong although he

felt right and i let the old man shit and spew tara bubu and slept

in wool blankets

they broke up the crap game from the tower

the screw pointed his m.g. down

the guy with the dice was taking too big a chunk from

each pot and the losers were getting hot I guess i should have

said it to the old man that way but one guy said to the furnisher

of dice DON’T PUT YOUR HAND IN THERE AGAIN UNTIL I TELL

U TO

and that was that until the screw got busy pointed his

steel nose

they came back for me and put me in some kind of room

they were making out a report

they asked me how to spell some words

like Andernach and so forth

i had a long red beard by then

and they asked me why

and i said

have you ever had the end cell where they

pass out one razorblade at the first cell and that same razor blade is

used by the last man in the last cell, and have you ever celled with an

old man whose only joy in life is eating and shitting and shaving and

wd u take 1/3 of his joy by taking the blade and shaving FIRST?

besides i use this red beard to fight the wool blankets with

i believe the kid is psycho one of them said

anyhow 3 or 4 days later

they let me out

only first i had to go through another physical for the army

but once again

i couldn’t get past the sike

and that same day

when they let me out

even before i tried to get

a room i lay down in that park outside the philly library

i got on

my back and i felt little grass bugs crawling upon me and i let them

crawl they were beautifully clean

and i let the clouds come down

into my head but the sky was a bad color it hurt my eyes it was all

not good i began to fill up with sadness

and i heard some girls come by

talking and laughing and one of them tripped over my ankle

and she said OOOh OOOH and then laughed

and i glared

up at them outa my red wool beard and one of them said

OOOOOH I WANT HIM !!!

and then i fell back and went back to the clouds

until later

clambering up out of the misery of the tomb

i sat upon a park bench watching traffic go by

and then it came a long caravan of trucks

filled with good young soldiers who only wanted to live

and i was young and watching and for a moment i loved them the crowd

but once again they turned on me and from the first truck

came a hissing and a cursing and then a booing a racket of vile hate

they wanted me with them and the whole avenue filled with hot sound

and more trucks came by slowly and it was an opera it was an

opera of condemnation, but i had not wanted war never will and

the gods the gods the dice had been good and i waved an arm

and smiled somebody screamed YOU BASTARD GET OFF YOUR

DEAD ASS !

but i did not i watched them go where they were going

i imagine the one who fainted he was in there too

we were all

very young i was young they were young

but i imagine

war being swine mob being swine

i was not as young as they

ants

I used to be a great

traveler, even without

money. some cities I’d say in 2

weeks, some 3 days…for years I went through the

cities, sometimes coming up against the same one

2 or 3 times.

now I’m here…not only the same city…

the same apartment…for ten years…

ten years…

the last person in here before me was

crazy, they carried her off

screaming

in a big white

sheet, and I moved

in.

it’s all right…there have been various

jobs, various women, various

ways…

one bungles through, it seems…

but it’s the ants here,

the ants here are crazy, they keep building nests

in the bathtub drain…in the water basin

drain…

it’s delicious and sanitary and ugly:

I turn on the hot water tap

and watch them go spinning to a

burning drowning hell…

it’s neat…

but they keep coming back…

more and more ants…

the ants come back faster than the women.

today I was about to do in a new

batch, both tub and water basin,

the phone rang,

it was my friend Danny. he said,

listen, you are the only real man I know. I’m

going to kill myself…

go, I said, ahead…

she left me, he said, she left me like that,

hardly any notice…I really loved

her. (he began to cry.)

listen, I said, meeting a bitch is an accident,

having one leave you is a basic reality,

be glad you’re coming up against

basic reality…

thanks, he said (sobbing), and hung

up.

I went back to the ants and turned on both water

taps at

once.

I burned and drowned them good.

Then the phone rang,

listen, he said, I’m going to do it,

I’m really going to do it.

I hung up.

he wrote in lonely blood

sitting here

typing

at a friend’s house

I find a black book by the typer:

Jeffers’: Be Angry at the Sun.

I think of Jeffers often,

of his rocks and his hawks and his

isolation.

Jeffers was a real loner.

yes, he had to write.

I try to think of loners who don’t break out

at all

in any fashion,

and I think, no, that’s not strong,

somehow, that’s dead.

Jeffers was alive and a loner and

he made his statements.

his rocks and his hawks and his isolation

counted.

he wrote in lonely blood

a man trapped in a corner

but what a corner

fighting down to the last mark

“I’ve built my rock,” he sent the message to

the lovely girl who came to his door,

“you go build yours.”

this was the same girl who had screwed Ezra,

and she wrote me that Jeffers sent her away

like that.

BE ANGRY AT THE SUN.

Jeffers was a rock who was not dead.

his book sits to my left now as I type.

I think of all his people crashing down

hanging themselves, shooting themselves,

taking poisons…

locked away against an unbearable humanity.

Jeffers was like his people:

he demanded perfection and beauty

and it was not there

in human form. he found it in non-human

forms. I’ve run out of non-human forms,

I’m angry at Jeffers. no,

I’m not. and if the girl comes to my door

I’ll send her away too. after all,

who wants to follow old

Ez?

six chink fishermen

the other night

under a new moon

with the cuckoo clocks wound

tight

they stopped 6 Chinese fishermen

on skidrow

San Pedro

with 28 million dollars worth of

shit

in their boots.

they say it was an old dwarf

on a houseboat

who painted butterflies

on the sleeping body of his wife

in their pitiful

dream.

Artists, they say, sell out cheapest and most

quickly.

meanwhile, a fat man in Hong Kong

hearing,

decided to do away with Art,

and

while irritated

just to make Mr. Justice

soil his new clean sheets

he dialed a number

and arranged

the assassination of the

next-to-last

American

hero.

burning

and the pleasures of the past,

remembering the Goose Girl at Hollywood Park

1950,

red coats and trumpets

and faces cut with knives and mistakes;

I am ready for the final

retreat;

I have an old-time kerosene burner,

candles, 22 cans of Campbell’s soup

and an 80 year old uncle in Andernach,

Germany

who was once the burgermeister of that

town I was born in

so long ago.

I ache all over with the melody of pain

and people knock at my door

come in and drink with me

and talk,

but they don’t realize I’ve quit,

have cleaned up the kitchen

chased the mice out from under the bed

and am making ready

for the tallest flame of them all.

I look at buildings and clouds and ladies,

I read newspapers as my shoelaces break,

I dream of matadors brave and bulls brave

and people brave and cats brave and

can openers brave.

my uncle writes me in trembling hand:

“How is your little girl,

and is your health good? You didn’t answer

my last letter…”

“Dear Uncle Heinrich,” I answer,

“my little girl is very clever and pretty and

also good. I hope that you are

happy and well. I enclose a photo

of Marina. Answer when you are

able. Things here are the same as they

have always

been.

Love,

Henry”

a sound in the brush

the sorrow of Scibelli,

friend,

as he turned at a sound in the brush

and was bayonetted

by a man 5 feet tall who didn’t even know

his name,

who then sliced his jugular vein,

took the gold from his teeth,

both ears,

then opened his wallet

and tore up the photo of a soft-faced

girl named

simply, “Laura,”

who was waiting in Kansas City

for an earless, tooth-ravished

bloody

Scibelli

who just happened to die a little earlier

than most of the rest of us,

also for

Cause

Unknown.

the wild

once in lockup, being fingerprinted and photographed, all

that,

I dropped ashes from my cigarette on the floor

and the cop got mad, he said,

“by god, where the hell do you think you are?”

“County jail,” I said, and he said, “All right, wise guy, now you

walk down

that corridor and then

take a left.”

I walked on down

took my left and

here it came—

they had this beast of a thing

in a huge cellblock, alone, alone,

and there were wires across the bars

it was the L.A. County drunktank

and it was their pet

the thing saw me

came running

and threw itself snarling against the bars and wire

wanting to kill me, and I stood there and watched it,

then spoke:

“Cigarette? how about a smoke?”

the thing rattled the wire and snarled a few more times

and I pulled out a smoke.

the thing grinned at me and I poked a cigarette through the wire

put it in his lips and lit him

up.

“I dislike them too,” I said.

the thing grinned and bobbed its head

yes.

the cop came and took me away

and put me in a cell with

5 less living.

4th of july

it’s amazing

the number of people who can’t feel

pain.

put 40 in a room

squeezed against each other

hours of lethargic talk

and they don’t

faint

scream

go mad or even

wince.

it appears as if they are waiting for

something that will never

arrive.

they are as comfortable as chickens or

pigs in their pens.

one might even consider it wisdom

if you can overlook the faces

and the conversation.

when the 4th is over

and they go back to their separate holes

then the sun will kiss me hello

then the sidewalks will look good again.

back in their cages

they’ll dream of the next great

holiday.

probably Labor Day

smashing together on the freeways

talking together

40 in a room,

cousins, aunts, sisters, mothers, brothers, uncles,

sons, grandfathers, grandmothers, wives, husbands,

lovers, friends, all the rest,

40 in a room

talking about nothing,

talking about themselves.

carnival

he got drunk and went to sleep

in his bed

and the fire started

and he layed in there

burning

until a friend in the next room

smelled it

and ran in

and tried to pull him out of the fire

by his arms

and the skin rolled right off the arms

and he had to grab again

deeper

near the bone,

and he got him out and up

and the guy started screaming

and running blind,

he hit some walls

finally made 2 doorways

and with half a dozen men trying

to hold him

he broke free

and ran into the yeard

screaming

still running

he ran right into some barbed wire

and tangled in the barbed wire

screaming

and they had to go up

and get him loose

from the wire

he lived for 3 nights and 3

days

drinking and smoking

are bad for the

health.

99 degrees

September after Labor Day,

99 degrees in Burbank, Calif.

I am looking at a fly

a small brown fly on a yellow curtain;

the Mexicans would be wise enough to sleep under trees

on a day like this

but Americans are stricken with ambition

they will survive as powerful and unhappy

neurotics,

right now my tax money is dropping bombs

on starving people in Asia

as I fight the small fly that has arrived from the

curtain by my elbow;

I swing and miss the fly,

neurotic American me,

the boys who pilot those planes are nice boys, gentle,

they kill apathetically

with honor and grace,

without hate.

I know one, he is now a prof who teaches American

Literature at a university in Oregon,

I’ve been drunk with him and his wife, several times,

so he teaches me,

that’s nice.

99 degrees in Burbank

and as I sit here

any number of things are happening,

mostly unhappy things

like swearing mechanics with hangovers climbing under cars

and drunken dentists pulling teeth and cursing

and bald-headed surgeons making too much of a mess,

and the editor of Time magazine backing his car out of the

driveway

after an argument with his wife;

it’s 99 degrees in Burbank

and there’s a jet overhead,

I don’t think it will bomb me,

those Asians don’t have enough tax money,

the only clever Asians are the ones who claim they are

Supremely Blessed, speak good English,

grow grey thick beards plus a heavenly smile topped by

shining eyes and

charge $4 admit at the Shrine to

teach placidity and non-ambition

and screw half the intellectual girls in the city.

it’s 99 degrees in Burbank

and those who will survive will survive

and those who will die will die,

and most will dry up and look like toads eating hamburger

sandwiches at noon,

I don’t know what to do—

send money and the way,

be kind to me,

I like it

effortless, sweet and easy, remember,

I never bombed

anybody, I

can’t even kill this

fly.

happy new year

I have them timed—

first the nurse will arrive in her nice

yellow automobile—4:10 p.m.—

she always shows me a lot of

leg—and I always look—

then think—

keep your leg, baby.

then, after that,

there’s the man who arrives

and takes his bulldog

out to crap

about the time I’m out to mail

my letters. We test each other,

never speak—I live without working,

he works without

living;

I can see us some day

battling on his front lawn—

he screaming, “you bum!”

and myself screaming back:

“lackey! slave!”

as his bulldog chews my leg

and the neighbors pelt me

with stones.

I guess I better get interested in

Mexican jumping beans

and the Rose Bowl

Parade.

the shoelace

a woman, a

tire that’s flat, a

disease, a

desire; fears in front of you,

fears that hold so still

you can study them

like pieces on a

chessboard…

it’s not the large things that

send a man to the

madhouse. death he’s ready for, or

murder, incest, robbery, fire, flood…

no, it’s the continuing series of small tragedies

that send a man to the

madhouse…

not the death of his love

but a shoelace that snaps

with no time left…

the dread of life

is that swarm of trivialities

that can kill quicker than cancer

and which are always there—

license plates or taxes

or expired driver’s license,

or hiring or firing,

doing it or having it done to you, or

constipation

speeding tickets

rickets or crickets or mice or termites or

roaches or flies or a

broken hook on a

screen, or out of gas

or too much gas,

the sink’s stopped-up, the landlord’s drunk,

the president doesn’t care and the governor’s

crazy.

lightswitch broken, mattress like a

porcupine;

$105 for a tune-up, carburetor and fuel pump at

Sears Roebuck;

and the phone bill’s up and the market’s

down

and the toilet chain is

broken,

and the light has burned out—

the hall light, the front light, the back light,

the inner light; it’s

darker than hell

and twice as

expensive.

then there’s always crabs and ingrown toenails

and people who insist they’re

your friends;

there’s always that and worse;

leaky faucet, Christ and Christmas;

blue salami, 9 day rains,

50 cent avocados

and purple

liverwurst.

or making it

as a waitress at Norm’s on the split shift,

or as an emptier of

bedpans,

or as a carwash or a busboy

or a stealer of old lady’s purses

leaving them screaming on the sidewalks

with broken arms at the age of

80.

suddenly

2 red lights in your rear view mirror

and blood in your

underwear;

toothache, and $979 for a bridge

$300 for a gold

tooth,

and China and Russia and America, and

long hair and short hair and no

hair, and beards and no

faces, and plenty of zigzag but no

pot, except maybe one to piss in and

the other one around your

gut.

with each broken shoelace

out of one hundred broken shoelaces,

one man, one woman, one

thing

enters a

madhouse.

so be careful

when you

bend over.

chilled green

what is it?

an old woman, fat, yellow dress,

torn stockings

sitting on the curbing

with a little boy.

98 degrees at 3 in the afternoon

it seems

obscene.

but look, they are calm,

almost happy,

they eat the green jello

and the red roses shine.

life

to be eaten by a hog with

bad breath

as the lemons swing in the wind

yellow and ours.

III

lovers everywhere

clutch like asparagus

leaves

american matador

of course, he still gets his choice

after the bullfights,

but like with any other man

the special one comes along.

you can feel it in the stomach

when they get you there,

and the girl said,

“It’s either bullfighting or me.”

he turned on love

to look at the face of death.

you can see him at Tijuana

working close to the horn

taking chance after

chance. he’s been gored

a number of times.

and you wonder if the thing is

working at his stomach

as he fights

getting him in closer

than he should

the sword is pointed

in the sunlight,

it goes in:

love.

i saw an old-fashioned whore today

at the Thrifty drugstore

buying a 5th of gin and a 5th of vodka

she was a dyed blond

and she was relaxed in a black and white striped dress

that fell just below knee-length

and her breasts were large

and she was a little bit fat

and the salesgirl who served her showed disgust

but the whore was used to all that

and waited for her change

and for the bottles to be bagged

and when the whore walked out

she walked out easily

and people looked up from their magazines

and the boys around the newsstand looked

and the people parking their cars looked

and I walked behind her

and I looked

and she got into a green car

pooltable green

lit a cigarette,

and I’m sure she drove off to someplace

magic

where people were always laughing and

the music was always playing

and the drinks were good

and the furniture and rugs were nice

and the mountains were tall

and there were 3 German shepherds on the lawn,

and when she made love you knew it

and the price was not a lifetime,

the blue cigarette smoke curling in the black

ashtray a little wet with beer and mix,

she’d roll you with the security of a leopard

getting a deer,

and you ought to see her in the bathtub

singing an aria from one of those

Italian operas.

poem for barbara, poem for jane, poem for frances, poem for all or any of them

the fish ate the flower

and the tombs whistled

Dixie

as you told me you didn’t care

anymore

old men in the pawnshops of the world

looked around and killed themselves in my mind

when you said you

didn’t care

anymore

the day I saw you with your new

lover

you and your new lover

walking down my boulevards

past the butcher shop

past the liquor store

past the real estate

agency

ha ha

suddenly I didn’t care

anymore

I went into the store and I bought

a figurine of a fawn

a small cactus

a box of shrimp

a pair of green gloves

a paring knife

some incense

pepper milk eggs

a fifth of

whiskey

and a roadmap of lower

Texas

the clerk put it all in a bag

it bulged and was heavy and

at last I knew that I had

something.

short order

I took my girlfriend to your last poetry reading,

she said.

yes, yes? I asked.

she’s young and pretty, she said.

and? I asked.

she hated your

guts.

then she stretched out on the couch

and pulled off her

boots.

I don’t have very good legs,

she said.

all right, I thought, I don’t have very good

poetry; she doesn’t have very good

legs.

scramble two.

the dwarf

we’d had our icecream cones

been scared by a dog

picked flowers

held hands in the sunlight.

my little girl is 6

and as good a girl as can

be.

we walked back to my place

where two ladies were moving

out of the apartment

next door.

one was a dwarf,

quite squat

with short trunk-like

legs.

“Hank, what’s wrong with that

woman?”

I’m sorry, little lady,

that my child didn’t know

that there wasn’t anything

wrong with you.

merry christmas

There I am

hungover, I’ve just made it in

and sit next to the mother of my child;

she sits there old and grey,

I sit there old and greying…

there’s a 6 year old daughter,

it’s Christmas at Edison Grammar School,

December 17th,

1 p.m.

I sit mostly with women.

ah, there’s a guy, and there’s a guy…

what’s the matter with those bums?

no jobs? too

bad.

first there’s something…

they need 5 nominations for the

P.T.A. board.

4 old dames nominate each other,

like sneaky Hitlers.

nobody wants the 5th nomination…

“Will everybody in favor of the nominations

being closed, please Yea in the

affirmative?”

there’s a dog in there…somebody

steps on his

tail:

“YEA-IKE!” he goes…

everybody laughs, the nominations are closed.

Jesus Christ,

by a dog…

o.k., trot them on.

no wait. the orchestra. tiny little people with

tiny little violins, most serious little

people. they are the string section.

they play “Christmas Songs” under the direction

of Mr. Plepler and Mr. Mettler.

Mettler? oh well, it’s not

very good.

“Five Little Christmas Bells,” courtesy A.M. & P.M. Kindergarten,

has been changed to “Rocking The Child.”

no reason is

given.

the dog has been

kicked out. I am still there

with hangover.

next the Kindergartens sing

“Jingle Bells.” they’ve been taught by

Mrs. Bowers, Miss Lemon, Miss Lieberman.

I check my program…

how much longer?

I notice that the children are black, white,

oriental, brown…it’s integration

but it’s easy, they show us how easy.

2nd, 3rd, 4th grades…

“Twelve Days of Christmas,” they hold up paintings,

take them down; up down, up down, and back to

the Partridge in the Pear Tree.

they’ve done it. perfect. even with the

mistakes. courtesy Mrs. La Brache, Mrs. Bitticks.

next comes

“Pine Cones and Holly Berries,” not so

good.

now here are the 5th and 6th graders…

“Santa and the Mouse”…

it’s garbled, nobody can hear what they are

saying. it’s under the direction of

Mr. Doerflinger. and he flings ’em.

he sits them down and sits right down with them

and all you can hear is

Mr. Doerflinger’s beautiful voice.

Doerflinger seems everywhere. there he is in the center.

there he is showing his

buttocks. he likes to leap and run

about. he sings and sings and gives his 5th and 6th

graders the minor parts to back his

singular chorus. I try to force myself to get jealous

of Doerflinger but I

can’t. I’m very happy that I am not

Mr. Doerflinger. a woman across the aisle turns to me:

“He has a beautiful voice,” she says.

“Yes,” I smile back,

“he has.”

“Christmas Tree,” 3rd, 4th, 5th graders.

then, of course, we have

“Deck the Halls.”

courtesy of Mrs. Homes.

o, my god, it’s the 1st and 2nd graders

now! I’m nervous as shit.

I’m sick, I

don’t know what to

do. I’ve done time, lain in alleys drunk,

slept with 50 women, I can’t take

it…the mother of my child seems

quite calm. I’m the

coward…where is she?

all of a sudden they bring them through the

back door—

they’ve been bringing them

through the front.

what’s going on?

there’s my kid, she’s walking

past. “hi!” I say, “hi!”

she smiles and puts a finger to her

lips. “shhh…”

they file onto the

platform. 1st and 2nd graders,

c/o Mr. Garnes, Miss McCormick, Mrs. Nagata, Mrs.

Samarge. o.k.

“Too Fat for the Chimney”…

not too good,

but she keeps looking at me and grinning,

singing, waving;

I smile back, wave, all

grins…the old jailbird…

then “Toy Trains.”

much better. we applaud. they file out in order,

each waiting their

turn.

she’s gone…

somewhere.

the remainder of the program loses

some meaning,

except a very sexy young

chicano teacher

in a yellow dress

comes out and sings

“Silent Night”

in Spanish.

meanwhile Mr. Doerflinger is seen running about,

in this door, out that

one, showing his buttocks,

racing across the stage in some

great

urgency…

“Doerflinger,” says somebody.

he will not be forgotten by

anybody. he will not allow himself to be,

especially by the ladies.

it goes on.

“Let There Be Peace On Earth”

we all sing together. the last number on the

program.

taxpayers forget Christmas, remember instead how nice your

children are.

we get back to the mother’s apartment

and there is a notice that they will shut off

the gas that

day. the mother claims no previous

notice has been

received.

I drive them down to 5th street

in Santa Monica

to the gas co.

I wave

goodbye. they stand on the corner.

my daughter has a hole

in her black

tights,

right

knee…

“Let there be peace on earth

And let it begin with me.

Let there be peace on earth,

The peace that was meant to be.

With God as our Father,

Brothers all are we—

Let me walk with my brother

In perfect harmony.”

marina:

majestic, magic

infinite

my little girl is

sun

on the carpet—

out the door

picking a

flower, ha!,

an old man,

battle-wrecked,

emerges from his

chair

and she looks at me

but only sees

love,

ha!, and I become

quick with the world

and love right back

just like I was meant

to do.

one with dante

I have lost it in Paradise Valley

with 4 women sitting in a kitchen

talking and laughing about men and love and life and

sex,

I have lost it in Paradise Valley

I have lost the word and the way and the light,

4 women sitting in the kitchen

drinking gallons of

coffee, and now

I sit in front of a window

looking at the desert,

one with Dante,

I wonder what the Paradise Valley ladies want.

these 3 sisters and a friend.

through this small window,

I see children dogs cattle horses flies sand

chickens ducks,

I hear the names of men now from the kitchen

and the girls laugh, and

I wonder, what am I

doing here?

these girls…this continual examination of the senses

and the ideas and the reasons and the facts and the

moods

destroys, destroys…

I have lost it in Paradise Valley.

you have to lose it somewhere:

I chose Arizona; although the love

last night was

good, I am lost in the desert

I have given it up.

an interesting night

my girlfriend

she started smashing

all my bottles

my whiskey bottle and my

beer bottles,

meanwhile

yelling and screaming,

then she ran

out the door.

3 police arrived 5 minutes

later,

one holding shotgun,

and they asked

various questions,

one of them being:

what do you

do?

I’m a writer,

I said.

the cop smirked at

me, walked over to the

typewriter,

picked up some papers

and started

reading.

it was my 2,000 word essay

on the meaning of

suicide.

he didn’t seem much

interested.

after they left

I went all the way to

Altadena

and slept with a fine

22 year old girl

some pot

3 cats

3 homosexuals

a 7 year old boy

a dog, and

a 24 by 20 photo

of me

hanging over the fireplace,

looking

wise.

a threat to my immortality

she undressed in front of me

keeping her pussy to the front

while I layed in bed with a bottle of

beer.

where’d you get that wart on

your ass? I asked.

that’s no wart, she said,

that’s a mole, a kind of

birthmark.

that thing scares me, I said,

let’s call

it off.

I got out of bed and

walked into the other room and

sat on the rocker

and rocked.

she walked out. now, listen, you

old fart. you’ve got warts and scars and

all kinds of things all over

you. I do believe you’re the ugliest

old man

I’ve ever seen.

forget that, I said, tell me some more

about that

mole on your butt.

she walked into the other room

and got dressed and then ran past me

slammed the door

and was

gone.

and to think,

she’d read all my books of

poetry too.

I just hoped she wouldn’t tell

anybody that

I wasn’t pretty.

climax

I was somewhere…somewhere in Europe

act II, scene II

Siegfried…

the whole building shook

there was flame

world ending,

bodies hurled through air

like mad

clowns…

the orchestra quit

playing.

“It’s the BOMB! THE

BOMB!” somebody

screamed. the bomb the bomb the bomb

the bomb.

I grabbed a fat blonde

tore her dress away,

gotterdammerung!

“I don’t want to

die!” said the

blonde. the whole opera house was

coming down. blood on the

floor. more flame.

smoke. smoke. screaming. it was

terrible. I stuck it

in.

a man’s woman

the dream of a man

is a whore with a gold tooth

and a garter belt,

perfumed

with false eyebrows

mascara

earrings

light pink panties

salami breath

high heels

long stockings with a very slight

run on back of left stocking,

a little bit fat,

a little bit drunk,

a little bit silly and a little bit crazy

who doesn’t tell dirty jokes

and has 3 warts on her back

and pretends to enjoy symphony music

and who will stay a week

just one week

and wash the dishes and cook and fuck and suck

and scrub the kitchen floor

and not show any photos of her children

or talk about her x-husband or husband

or where she went to school or where she was born

or why she went to jail last time

or who she’s in love with,

just stay one week

just one week

and do the thing and go and never come

back

for that one earring on the dresser.

tight pink dress

I read where this 44 year old soprano of some fame

fell out of a 4 story window

and killed herself, well, I suppose this is all right

for sopranos of some fame, but

I think that 8 stories is more

reasonable.

I know this woman, a sister of the mother of my

child, some years back

her husband divorced her

and she jumped out of a 4 story window

and broke both legs

and other assorted parts.

maybe that soprano just wasn’t as tough as she was;

well, Helen got over the broken leg and parts,

and she came around one day to my place in a nice tight

pink dress, and we were alone but

nothing happened, I didn’t want it to,

and we talked

and now she is really married to something,

one of the most obnoxious souls

that I know…

“he plays the flute,” says the mother of my child,

“they get along…”

he came to see me one time and I ran him out the door:

he packed death around with him like breath chasers.

I’ve advised her to go 12 stories high

when this one fails…

I should have taken her the day she arrived in her

tight pink dress…

this guy and his flute…

he probably shits flutes…

and Helen with all that money, you think she might have

done better.

more or less, for julie:

on the Hammond or through the bomb-shadowed window,

through steak turned blue with the rot of drunken days,

through signature and saliva

through Savannah,

dark running streets like veins

caught in a juniper brush, through love spilled

behind a broken shade on an October day;

through forms and windows and lines,

through a book by Kafka stained with wine,

through wives and friends and jails,

standing young once

hearing Beethoven or Bruckner,

or even riding a bicycle,

young as that,

impossible,

coming across the bridge

in Philadelphia

and meeting your first whore,

falling on the ice, drunk and numbed,

you picking up she, she picking up he,

until at last, laughing across all barriers,

no marriage was ever more innocent or blessed,

and I remember her name and yes her eyes,

and a small mole on her left shoulder,

and so we go down, down in sadness, sadness,

sitting in a grease-stained room

listening to the corn boil.

this is the way it goes and goes and goes

“All your writing about pain and suffering is a bunch of bullshit.”—

just because I told you that rock music

hurts my head

just because we have slept and awakened and

eaten together

just because we’ve been in cars and at racetracks

together

in parks in bathtubs in rooms

together

just because we’ve seen the same swan and the same

dog at the same time

just because we’ve seen the same wind blow the same

curtain

you have suddenly become a literary critic

just because you have sculpted my head

and read my books

and told me of your loves and your flirtations and

your travels

just because I know the name of your daughter

and have changed a flat tire for you

you have suddenly become a literary critic

just because you’ve had 3 poems accepted by a mimeo mag

just because you’re writing a novel about your own madness

just because you shake your ass and have long brown hair

you have suddenly become a literary critic

just because I have fucked you 144 times

you have suddenly become a literary critic

well, then, tell me,

of all these writers…who’s pain is real?

what? yes, I might have

guessed—your pain is

real. so, in the best interest of us all

wave goodbye to the living who have lost the strength

to weep, and

as white ladies in pink rooms put on

blue and green earrings,

wave goodbye to me.

left with the dog

men in white t-shirts (unbothered

by life) are walking their

dogs

outside

as I watch a professional basketball

game on

t.v. and

I have no interest

in who will win but I do notice

a lady in the grandstand crossing

her legs (my editor phoned me last night at 10:15 p.m. and

found me asleep—

maybe that’s why he has to

print the unpublished works of

Gertrude Stein).

very bad

symphony music now

(I mean bad for me)

the violin sings of dank life and the

grave and I am a student of

both.

here now

my love has gone looking

for an apartment in Venice,

California and

she has left me with her

dog (a not quite immaculate creature named

Stubby

who sits behind my chair listening to a violin and

a typewriter).

they say

fire-eaters, traffic cops, boxers and

clerks in department stores

sometimes know the

truth. (I do what I

can.)

the best one can settle for

is an afternoon

with the rent paid, some food in the refrigerator,

and death something like

a bad painting by a bad painter

(that you finally buy because there’s not

anything else

around).

my love has gone looking for an apartment

in Venice, California across the top of the sky

something marches upsidedown;

praying for a best seller

waiting for my novelist friend to put the

word down

she sits in the kitchen

thinking about the madhouse

thinking about her x-husband

while I entertain her 3 year old child

who is now in the bathtub;

well, listen, I guess after a madhouse or

2 you need a few breaks…

my novelist friend may be crazy now

or she wouldn’t be in the same house

with me,

or maybe I’m the one who’s crazy:

she’s told me a couple of times she’s going to

cut off my balls if I do this thing or

that thing.

well, taking a chance with my balls on the line

that way

it had better be a good novel

or at least a bad one that is a best seller.

I sit here rolling cigarette after cigarette

while listening to her

type.

I suppose that for each genius launched

5 or 6 people must suffer for

it

them

him

her.

very well.

that one

your child has no name

your hair has no color

your face has no flesh

your feet have no toes

your country has ten flags

your voice has no tongue

your ideas slide like snakes

your eyes do not match

you eat bouquets of flowers

throw poisoned meat to the dogs

I see you linger in alleys with a club

I see you with a knife for anybody

I see you peddling a fishhead for a heart

and when the sun comes churning down

you’ll come walking in from the kitchen

with a drink in your hand

humming the latest tune

and smiling at me in your red tight dress

extraordinary…

have you ever kissed a panther?

this woman thinks she’s a panther

and sometimes when we are making love

she’ll snarl and spit

and her hair comes down

and she looks out from the strands

and shows me her fangs

but I kiss her anyhow and continue to love.

have you ever kissed a panther?

have you ever seen a female panther enjoying

the act of love?

you haven’t loved, friend.

you with your squirrels and chipmunks

and elephants and sheep.

you ought to sleep with a panther

you’ll never again want

squirrels, chipmunks, elephants, sheep, fox,

wolverines,

never anything but the female panther

the female panther walking across the room

the female panther walking across your soul,

all other love songs are lies

when that black smooth fur moves against you

and the sky falls down against your back,

the female panther is the dream arrived real

and there’s no going back

or wanting to—

the fur up against you,

the search over

and you are locked against the eyes of a panther.

2 carnations

my love brought me 2 carnations

my love brought me red

my love brought me her

my love told me not to worry

my love told me not to die

my love is 2 carnations on a table

while listening to Schoenberg

on an evening darkening into night

my love is young

the carnations burn in the dark;

she is gone leaving the taste of almonds

her body tastes like almonds

2 carnations burning red

as she sits far away

now dreaming of china dogs

tinkling through her fingers

my love is ten thousand carnations burning

my love is a hummingbird sitting that quiet moment

on the bough

as the cat

crouches.

man and woman in bed at 10 p.m.

I feel like a can of sardines, she said.

I feel like a band-aid, I said,

I feel like a tuna fish sandwich, she said.

I feel like a sliced tomato, I said.

I feel like it’s gonna rain, she said.

I feel like the clock has stopped, I said.

I feel like the door’s unlocked, she said.

I feel like an elephant’s gonna walk in, I said.

I feel like we ought to pay the rent, she said.

I feel like we oughta get a job, I said.

I feel like you oughta get a job, she said.

I don’t feel like working, I said.

I feel like you don’t care for me, she said.

I feel like we oughta make love, I said.

I feel like we’ve been making too much love, she said.

I feel like we oughta make more love, I said.

I feel like you oughta get a job, she said.

I feel like you oughta get a job, I said.

I feel like a drink, she said.

I feel like a 5th of whiskey, I said.

I feel like we’re going to end up on wine, she said.

I feel like you’re right, I said.

I feel like giving up, she said.

I feel like I need a bath, I said.

I feel like you need a bath too, she said.

I feel like you ought to bathe my back, I said.

I feel like you don’t love me, she said.

I feel like I do love you, I said.

I feel that thing in me now, she said.

I feel that thing in you now too, I said.

I feel like I love you now, she said.

I feel like I love you more than you do me, I said.

I feel wonderful, she said, I feel like screaming.

I feel like going on forever, I said.

I feel like you can, she said.

I feel, I said.

I feel, she said.

the answer

she runs into the front room from outside

laughing,

well, you always wanted a CRAZY woman,

didn’t you?

hahahaha, ha.

you’ve always been fascinated with CRAZY women,

haven’t you?

hahahaha, ha.

sit down, I say, I have the coffee water

on.

we sit by the kitchen window on a Los Angeles

Sunday,

and I say,

see that man walking by?

yes, she says.

know what he’s thinking?

I ask.

what’s he thinking?

she asks.

he’s thinking, I say, he’s thinking

that he wants a loaf of bread for

breakfast.

a loaf of bread for breakfast?

yes, can you imagine some crazy son of a bitch

wanting a loaf of bread for

breakfast?

I can’t imagine it.

I get up and pour the coffees. then

we look at each

other. something has gone wrong the

night before and we want to find out

if it was her upset stomach

or my diarrhea

or something worse.

we lift our coffees, touch them in toast,

our eyes spark the question

and we sit by a kitchen window on a Los Angeles

Sunday,

waiting.

a split

death, he said, let it come,

it was after the races,

zipper on pants broken,

$80 winner

out one woman

he drove through stop signs and

red lights

at 70 m.p.h. on a side street

and then he heard the noise—

he was smashing through a barricade of

street obstructions

boards and lights flying

things jumping on the hood,

the car was thrown against the curbing

and he straightened it just in time

to miss a parked car,

he was drunk but it was the first time in

35 years he had hit anything,

and he ran up a dead end street,

turned, came on out,

took two rights

and 5 minutes later he was inside his

apartment. He got on the phone

and an hour later there were 14 people

drinking with him,

all but the right one,

and the next day he was sick

and she was there

and she said she had lost her purse out of

town ($55 and all her i.d.), 100 miles out of town,

she had gotten tired of waiting for him to phone

or not to phone;

she said, let’s not have any more splits, I can’t

bear them,

and he vomited, and she said,

all you want to do is kill yourself.

he said, all right, no more splits,

but he knew it would happen again and again

right down to the last split,

and he got up and cleaned his mouth and washed

and got back into bed with her

and she held him like a baby,

and he thought, hell, what kind of man am I?

and then he didn’t care

and they kissed

and it was all right until

next time.

power failure

was all set to write an immortal poem,

it was 9:30 p.m.,

had taken me all day to get the juices

properly aligned,

I sat down to the typewriter

reached for the keys and then

all the lights in the neighborhood went out.

she was working on her novel.

well, she said, we might as well go to

bed.

we went to bed.

since we had fucked 5 times in 2 nights

we decided it might be a better time to

tell eerie stories.

she told me one about the 2 sisters lost in the woods

who came upon the madman’s house, but it was

cold and dark and he was nowhere about

so they decided to go in, and one sister slept in

one bed and the other slept in the other,

and later in the night one sister was awakened by

this squeeking sound

and she looked up and here was the madman

rocking back and forth in this rocker

with her sister’s head in his lap,

and I told one

about how these two bums were in a skidrow room

and one bum sat on the floor and stuck his hand in his

mouth and ate his hand and then his arm and then ate the

other hand and soon ate himself up while the other bum

watched, and then the other bum sat on the floor and did

the same thing, and the story ends with this neon sign

blinking color off and on across the vacant floor…

well, we went to sleep

and then we were awakened when all the lights came on

plus the radio and the t.v.,

and I said, oh god, life is back again,

and she said, well, we might as well sleep now,

and so I got up and turned everything off

and we closed our eyes

and she thought, there goes my immortal novel,

and I thought, there goes my immortal poem,

everything depends upon some type of electricity,

the street lights kept me awake for 30 minutes,

then I dreamed that I ate matchsticks and lightbulbs

for a living and I was the best in my trade.

snake in the watermelon

we french kissed in the bathtub

then got up and rode the merrygoround

I fell over backwards in the chair

then we ate 2 cheese sandwiches

watered the plants and

read the New York Times.

the essence is in the action

the action is the essence,

between the moon and the sea and the ring

in the bathtub

the tame rats become more beautiful

than long red hair,

my father’s hands cut steak again

I roller skate before pygmies with green eyes,

the snake in the watermelon shakes the shopping cart,

we entered between the sheets which were as

delicious as miracles and walks in the park,

the hawk smiled daylight and nighttime,

we rode past frogs and elephants

past mines in mountains

past cripples working ouija boards,

she had toes on her feet

I had toes on my feet

we rode up and down and away

around,

it was sensible and pliable and holy

and felt very good

very very good,

the red lights blinked

the zepplin flew away

the war ended,

we stretched out then

and looked at the ceiling

a calm sea of a ceiling,

it was all right,

then we got back in the bathtub together

and french kissed

some more.

style

style is the answer to everything—

a fresh way to approach a dull or a

dangerous thing.

to do a dull thing with style

is preferable to doing a dangerous thing

without it.

Joan of Arc had style

John the Baptist

Christ

Socrates

Caesar,

Garcia Lorca.

style is the difference,

a way of doing,

a way of being done.

6 herons standing quietly in a pool of water

or you walking out of the bathroom naked

without seeing

me.

the shower

we like to shower afterwards

(I like the water hotter than she)

and her face is always soft and peaceful

and she’ll wash me first

spread the soap over my balls

lift the balls

squeeze them,

then wash the cock:

“hey, this thing is still hard!”

then get all the hair down there,—

the belly, the back, the neck, the legs,

I grin grin grin,

and then I wash her…

first the cunt, I

stand behind her, my cock in the cheeks of her ass

I gently soap up the cunt hairs,

wash there with a soothing motion,

I linger perhaps longer than necessary,

then I get the backs of the legs, the ass,

the back, the neck, I turn her, kiss her,

soap up the breasts, get them and the belly, the neck,

the fronts of the legs, the ankles, the feet,

and then the cunt, once more, for luck…

another kiss, and she gets out first,

toweling, sometimes singing while I stay in

turn the water on hotter

feeling the good times of love’s miracle

I then get out…

it is usually mid-afternoon and quiet,

and getting dressed we talk about what else

there might be to do,

but being together solves most of it,

in fact, solves all of it

for as long as those things stay solved

in the history of woman and

man, it’s different for each

better and worse for each—

for me, it’s splendid enough to remember

past the marching of armies

and the horses that walk the streets outside

past the memories of pain and defeat and unhappiness:

Linda, you brought it to me,

when you take it away

do it slowly and easily

make it as if I were dying in my sleep instead of in

my life, amen.

if we take—

if we take what we can see—

the engines driving us mad,

lovers finally hating;

this fish in the market

staring upward into our minds;

flowers rotting, flies web-caught;

riots, roars of caged lions,

clowns in love with dollar bills,

nations moving people like pawns;

daylight thieves with beautiful

nighttime wives and wines;

the crowded jails,

the commonplace unemployed,

dying grass, 2-bit fires;

men old enough to love the grave.

These things, and others, in content

show life swinging on a rotten axis.

But they’ve left us a bit of music

and a spiked show in the corner,

a jigger of scotch, a blue necktie,

a small volume of poems by Rimbaud,

a horse running as if the devil were

twisting his tail

over bluegrass and screaming, and then,

love again

like a streetcar turning the corner

on time,

the city waiting,

the wine and the flowers,

the water walking across the lake

and summer and winter and summer and summer

and winter again.

About the Author

CHARLES BUKOWSKI is one of America’s best-known contemporary writers of poetry and prose, and, many would claim, its most influential and imitated poet. He was born in Andernach, Germany, to an American soldier father and a German mother in 1920, and brought to the United States at the age of three. He was raised in Los Angeles and lived there for fifty years. He published his first story in 1944 when he was twenty-four and began writing poetry at the age of thirty-five. He died in San Pedro, California, on March 9, 1994, at the age of seventy-three, shortly after completing his last novel, Pulp (1994).

During his lifetime he published more than forty-five books of poetry and prose, including the novels Post Office (1971), Factotum (1975), Women (1978), Ham on Rye (1982), and Hollywood (1989). Among his most recent books are the posthumous editions of What Matters Most Is How Well You Walk Through the Fire (1999), Open All Night: New Poems (2000), Beerspit Night and Cursing: The Correspondence of Charles Bukowski and Sheri Martinelli 1960—1967 (2001), and The Night Torn Mad with Footsteps: New Poems (2001).

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
AVAILABLE FROM ECCO

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

MOCKINGBIRD WISH ME LUCK. Copyright © 1972 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.

Mobipocket Reader August 2007 ISBN 978-0-06-147200-8

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