LOVE IS A DOG FROM HELL

CHARLES BUKOWSKI

Poems 1974-1977

to Carl Weissner

table of contents

ONE

Sandra

you

the 6 foot goddess

I’ve seen too many glazed-eyed bums

sexpot

sweet music

numb your ass and your brain and your heart—

one of the hottest

ashes

fuck

me

another bed

trapped

tonight

the escape

the drill

texan

the spider

the end of a short affair

moaning and groaning

an almost made up poem

blue cheese and chili peppers

problems about the other woman

T.M.

Bee’s 5th

103 degrees

pacific telephone

225 pounds

turnabout

one for old snaggle-tooth

communion

trying to get even:

Chicago

quiet clean girls in gingham dresses…

we will taste the islands and the sea

TWO

this poet

winter

what they want

Iron Mike

guru

the professors

for Al—

how to be a great writer

the price

alone with everybody

the 2nd novel

Chopin Bukowski

gloomy lady

cockroach

who in the hell is Tom Jones?

defeat

traffic signals

462-0614

photographs

social

one to the breastplate

the worst and the best

coupons

luck

dog

trench warfare

the night I fucked my alarm clock

when I think of myself dead

Christmas eve, alone

there once was a woman who put her head into an oven

beds, toilets, you and me—

this then—

imagination and reality

stolen

the meek have inherited

the insane always loved me

Big Max

trapped

it’s the way you play the game

on the continent

12:18 a.m.

yellow cab

how come you’re not unlisted?

weather report

clean old man

something

a plate glass window

junkies

99 to one

the crunch

a horse with greenblue eyes

THREE

Scarlet

red up and down

like a flower in the rain

light brown

huge ear rings

she came out of the bathroom

a killer

longshot

the promise

waving and waving goodbye

liberty

don’t touch the girls

dark shades

prayer in bad weather

melancholia

a stethoscope case

eat your heart out

the retreat

I made a mistake

FOUR

girls in pantyhose

up your yellow river

artists:

I have shit stains in my underwear too

Hawley’s leaving town

an unkind poem

the bee

the most

ah…

the girl on the bus stop bench

I’m getting back to where I was

a lovely couple

the strangest sight you ever did see—

in a neighborhood of murder

private first class

love is a dog from hell

my groupie

now, if you were teaching creative writing

the good life

the Greek

my comrades

soul

a change of habit

$$$$$$

sitting in a sandwich joint

doom and siesta time

as crazy as I ever was

sex

dead now

twins

the place didn’t look bad

the little girls

rain or shine

cold plums

girls coming home

some picnic

bedpans

the good loser

an art

the girls at the green hotel

a good one

shit time

madness

a 56 year old poem

the beautiful young girl walking past the graveyard—

beer

artist

my old man

fear

little tigers everywhere

after the reading:

about cranes

a gold pocket watch

beach trip

one for the shoeshine man

About the Author

Other books by Charles Bukowski

Cover

Copyright

About the Publisher

1

one more creature
dizzy with love

Sandra

is the slim tall

ear-ringed

bedroom damsel

dressed in a long

gown

she’s always high

in heels

spirit

pills

booze

Sandra leans out of

her chair

leans

toward

Glendale

I wait for her head

to hit the closet

doorknob

as she attempts to

light

a new cigarette on an

almost burnt-out

one

at 32 she likes

young neat

unscratched boys

with faces like the bottoms

of new saucers

she has proclaimed as much

to me

has brought her prizes

over for me to view:

silent blonde zeros of young

flesh

who

a) sit

b) stand

c) talk

at her command

sometimes she brings one

sometimes two

sometimes three

for me to

view

Sandra looks very good in

long gowns

Sandra could probably break

a man’s heart

I hope she finds

one.

you

you’re a beast, she said

your big white belly

and those hairy feet.

you never cut your nails

and you have fat hands

paws like a cat

your bright red nose

and the biggest balls

I’ve ever seen.

you shoot sperm like a

whale shoots water out of the

hole in its back.

beast beast beast,

she kissed me,

what do you want for

breakfast?

the 6 foot goddess

I’m big

I suppose that’s why my women always seem

small

but this 6 foot goddess

who deals in real estate

and art

and flies from Texas

to see me

and I fly to Texas

to see her—

well, there’s plenty of her to

grab hold of

and I grab hold of it

of her,

I yank her head back by the hair,

I’m real macho,

I suck on her upper lip

her cunt

her soul

I mount her and tell her,

“I’m going to shoot white hot

juice into you. I didn’t fly all the

way to Galveston to play

chess.”

later we lay locked like human vines

my left arm under her pillow

my right arm over her side

I grip both of her hands,

and my chest

belly

balls

cock

tangle into her

and through us

in the dark

pass rays

back and forth

back and forth

until I fall away

and we sleep.

she’s wild

but kind

my 6 foot goddess

makes me laugh

the laughter of the mutilated

who still need

love,

and her blessed eyes

run deep into her head

like mountain springs

far in

and

cool and good.

she has saved me

from everything that is

not here.

I’ve seen too many glazed-eyed bums sitting under a bridge drinking cheap wine

you sit on the couch

with me

tonight

new woman.

have you seen the

animal-eater

documentaries?

they show death.

and now I wonder

which animal of

us will eat the

other first

physically and

last

spiritually?

we consume animals

and then one of us

consumes the other,

my love.

meanwhile

I’d prefer you go

first the first way

since if past performance

charts mean anything

I’ll surely go

first the last

way.

sexpot

“you know,” she said, “you were at

the bar so you didn’t see

but I danced with this guy.

we danced and we danced

close.

but I didn’t go home with him

because he knew I was with

you.”

“thanks a bunch,” I

said.

she was always thinking of sex.

she carried it around with her

like something in a paper

bag.

such energy.

she never forgot.

she stared at every man available

in morning cafes

over bacon and eggs

or later

over a noon sandwich or

a steak dinner.

“I’ve modeled myself after

Marilyn Monroe,” she told

me.

“she’s always running off

to some local disco to dance

with a baboon,” a friend once told

me, “I’m amazed that you’ve

stood for it as long as you have.”

she’d vanish at racetracks

then come back and say,

“three men offered to buy me

a drink.”

or I’d lose her in the parking

lot and I’d look up and she’d

be walking along with a strange man.

“well, he came from this direction

and I came from that and we

kind of walked together. I

didn’t want to hurt his

feelings.”

she said that I was a very

jealous man.

one day she just

fell down

inside of her sexual organs

and vanished.

it was like an alarm clock

dropping into the

Grand Canyon.

it banged and rattled and

rang and rang

but I could no longer

see or hear it.

I’m feeling much better

now.

I’ve taken up tap-dancing

and I wear a black felt

hat pulled down low

over my right

eye.

sweet music

it beats love because there aren’t any

wounds: in the morning

she turns on the radio, Brahms or Ives

or Stravinsky or Mozart. she boils the

eggs counting the seconds out loud: 56,

57, 58…she peels the eggs, brings

them to me in bed. after breakfast it’s

the same chair and listen to the classical

music. she’s on her first glass of

scotch and her third cigarette. I tell

her I must go to the racetrack. she’s

been here about 2 nights and 2 days. “when

will I see you again?” I ask. she

suggests that might be up to me. I

nod and Mozart plays.

numb your ass and your brain and your heart—

I was coming off an affair that had gone badly.

frankly, I was sliding down into a pit

really feeling shitty and low

when I lucked into this lady with a large bed

covered with a jeweled canopy

plus

wine, champagne, smokes, pills and

color tv.

we stayed in bed and

drank wine, champagne, smoked, popped pills

by the dozens

as I (feeling shitty and low)

tried to get over this affair that had gone

bad.

I watched the tv trying to dull my senses,

but the thing that really helped

was this very long

(specially written for tv) drama about

spies—

American spies and Russian spies, and

they were all so clever and

cool—

even their children didn’t know

their wives didn’t know, and

in a way

they hardly knew—

and I found out about counter-spies, double-spies:

guys who worked both sides, and

then this one who was a double-spy turned

into a triple-spy, it

got nicely confusing—

I don’t even think the guy who wrote the script

knew what was happening—

it went on for hours!

seaplanes rammed into icebergs,

a priest in Madison, Wisc. murdered his brother,

a block of ice was shipped in a casket to Peru

in lieu of the world’s largest diamond, and

blondes walked in and out of rooms eating

creampuffs and walnuts;

the triple-spy turned into a

quadruple-spy and everybody loved

everybody

and it went on and on

and the hours passed and

it all finally vanished like a paperclip in a

bag of trash and I

reached over and flicked off the set and

slept well for the first time

in a week and a half.

one of the hottest

she wore a platinum blond wig

and her face was rouged and powdered

and she put the lipstick on

making a huge painted mouth

and her neck was wrinkled

but she still had the ass of a young girl

and the legs were good.

she wore blue panties and I got them off

raised her dress, and with the TV flickering

I took her standing up.

as we struggled around the room

(I’m fucking the grave, I thought, I’m

bringing the dead back to life, marvelous

so marvelous

like eating cold olives at 3 a.m.

with half the town on fire)

I came.

you boys can keep your virgins

give me hot old women in high heels

with asses that forgot to get old.

of course, you leave afterwards

or get very drunk

which is the same

thing.

we drank wine for hours and watched tv

and when we went to bed.

to sleep it off.

she left her teeth in all

night long.

ashes

I got his ashes, she said, and I took them

out to sea and I scattered his ashes and

they didn’t even look like ashes

and

the urn was weighted with

green and blue pebbles…

he didn’t leave you any of his

millions?

nothing, she said.

after having to eat all those breakfasts

and lunches and dinners with him? after

listening to all his bullshit?

he was a brilliant man.

you know what I mean.

anyhow, I got the ashes. and you fucked

my sisters.

I never fucked your sisters.

yes, you did.

I fucked one of them.

which one?

the lesbian, I said, she bought me dinner and drinks,

I had very little choice.

I’m going, she said.

don’t forget your bottle.

she went in and got it.

there’s so little to you, she said, that when you die and

they burn you they’ll have to add almost all green and

blue pebbles.

all right, I said.

I’ll see you in 6 months! she screamed and slammed the door.

well, I thought, I guess in order to get rid of her I’ll have

to fuck her other sister. I walked into the bedroom and started

looking for phone numbers. all I remembered was that she

lived in San Mateo and had a very good.

job.

fuck

she pulled her dress off

over her head

and I saw the panties

indented somewhat into the

crotch.

it’s only human.

now we’ve got to do it.

I’ve got to do it

after all that bluff.

it’s like a party—

two trapped

idiots.

under the sheets

after I have snapped

off the light

her panties are still

on. she expects an

opening performance.

I can’t blame her. but

wonder why she’s here with

me? where are the other

guys? how can you be

lucky? having someone the

others have abandoned?

we didn’t have to do it

yet we had to do it.

it was something like

establishing new credibility

with the income tax

man. I get the panties

off. I decide not to

tongue her. even then

I’m thinking about

after it’s over.

we’ll sleep together

tonight

trying to fit ourselves

inside the wallpaper.

I try, fail,

notice the hair on her

head

mostly notice the hair

on her

head

and a glimpse of

nostrils

piglike

I try it

again.

me

women don’t know how to love,

she told me.

you know how to love

but women just want to

leech.

I know this because I’m a

woman.

hahaha, I laughed.

so don’t worry about your breakup

with Susan

because she’ll just leech onto

somebody else.

we talked a while longer

then I said goodbye

hungup

went into the crapper and

took a good beershit

mainly thinking, well,

I’m still alive

and have the ability to expell

wastes from my body.

and poems.

and as long as that’s happening

I have the ability to handle

betrayal

loneliness

hangnail

clap

and the economic reports in the

financial section.

with that

I stood up

wiped

flushed

then thought:

it’s true:

I know how to

love.

I pulled up my pants and walked

into the other room.

another bed

another bed

another woman

more curtains

another bathroom

another kitchen

other eyes

other hair

other

feet and toes.

everybody’s looking.

the eternal search.

you stay in bed

she gets dressed for work

and you wonder what happened

to the last one

and the one before that…

it’s all so comfortable—

this love-making

this sleeping together

the gentle kindness…

after she leaves you get up and use her

bathroom,

it’s all so intimate and so strange.

you go back to bed and

sleep another hour.

when you leave it’s with sadness

but you’ll see her again

whether it works or not.

you drive down to the shore and sit

in your car. it’s almost noon.

—another bed, other ears, other

ear rings, other mouths, other slippers, other

dresses

colors, doors, phone numbers.

you were once strong enough to live alone.

for a man nearing sixty you should be more

sensible.

you start the car and shift,

thinking, I’ll phone Jeanie when I get in,

I haven’t seen her since Friday.

trapped

don’t undress my love

you might find a mannequin;

don’t undress the mannequin

you might find

my love.

she’s long ago

forgotten me.

she’s trying on a new

hat

and looks more the

coquette

than ever.

she is a

child

and a mannequin

and

death.

I can’t hate

that.

she didn’t do

anything

unusual.

I only wanted her

to.

tonight

“your poems about the girls will still be around

50 years from now when the girls are gone,”

my editor phones me.

dear editor:

the girls appear to be gone

already.

I know what you mean

but give me one truly alive woman

tonight

walking across the floor toward me

and you can have all the poems

the good ones

the bad ones

or any that I might write

after this one.

I know what you mean.

do you know what I mean?

the escape

escape from the black widow spider

is a miracle as great as art.

what a web she can weave

slowly drawing you to her

she’ll embrace you

then when she’s satisfied

she’ll kill you

still in her embrace

and suck the blood from you.

I escaped my black widow

because she had too many males

in her web

and while she was embracing one

and then the other and then

another

I worked free

got out

to where I was before.

she’ll miss me—

not my love

but the taste of my blood,

but she’s good, she’ll find other

blood;

she’s so good that I almost miss my death,

but not quite;

I’ve escaped. I view the other

webs.

the drill

our marriage book, it

says.

I look through it.

they lasted ten years.

they were young once.

now I sleep in her bed.

he phones her:

“I want my drill back.

have it ready.

I’ll pick the children up at

ten.”

when he arrives he waits outside

the door.

his children leave with

him.

she comes back to bed

and I stretch a leg out

place it against hers.

I was young once too.

human relationships simply aren’t

durable.

I think back to the women in

my life.

they seem non-existent.

“did he get his drill?” I ask.

“yes, he got his drill.”

I wonder if I’ll ever have to come

back for my bermuda

shorts and my record album

by The Academy of St. Martin in the

Fields? I suppose I

will.

texan

she’s from Texas and weighs

103 pounds

and stands before the

mirror combing oceans

of reddish hair

which falls all the way down

her back to her ass.

the hair is magic and shoots

sparks as I lay on the bed

and watch her combing her

hair. she’s like something

out of the movies but she’s

actually here. we make love

at least once a day and

she can make me laugh

any time she cares

to. Texas women are always

healthy, and besides that she’s

cleaned my refrigerator, my sink,

the bathroom, and she cooks and

feeds me healthy foods

and washes the dishes

too.

“Hank,” she told me,

holding up a can of grapefruit

juice, “this is the best of them

all.”

it says: Texas unsweetened

PINK grapefruit juice.

she looks like Katherine Hepburn

looked when she was

in high school, and I watch those

103 pounds

combing a yard and some change

of reddish hair

before the mirror

and I feel her inside of my

wrists and at the backs of my eyes,

and the toes and legs and belly

of me feel her and

the other part too,

and all of Los Angeles falls down

and weeps for joy,

the walls of the love parlors shake—

the ocean rushes in and she turns

to me and says, “damn this hair!”

and I say,

“yes.”

the spider

then there was the time in

New Orleans

I was living with a fat woman,

Marie, in the French Quarter

and I got very sick.

while she was at work

I got down on my knees

in the kitchen

that afternoon and

prayed. I was not a

religious man

but it was a very dark afternoon

and I prayed:

“Dear God: if you will let me live,

I promise You I’ll never take

another drink.”

I kneeled there and it was just like

a movie—

as I finished praying

the clouds parted and the sun came

through the curtains

and fell upon me.

then I got up and took a crap.

there was a big spider in Marie’s bathroom

but I crapped anyhow.

an hour later I began feeling much

better. I took a walk around the Quarter

and smiled at people.

I stopped at the grocery and got a couple of

6 packs for Marie.

I began feeling so good that an hour later

I sat in the kitchen and opened

one of the beers.

I drank that and then another one

and then I went in and

killed the spider.

when Marie got home from work

I gave her a big kiss,

then sat in the kitchen and talked

as she cooked dinner.

she asked me what had happened that day

and I told her I had killed the

spider. she didn’t get

angry. she was a good

sort.

the end of a short affair

I tried it standing up

this time.

it doesn’t usually

work.

this time it seemed

to…

she kept saying

“o my God, you’ve got

beautiful legs!”

it was all right

until she took her feet

off the ground

and wrapped her legs

around my middle.

“o my God, you’ve got

beautiful legs!”

she weighed about 138

pounds and hung there as I

worked.

it was when I climaxed

that I felt the pain

fly straight up my

spine.

I dropped her on the

couch and walked around

the room.

the pain remained.

“look,” I told her,

“you better go. I’ve got

to develop some film

in my dark room.”

she dressed and left

and I walked into the

kitchen for a glass of

water. I got a glass full

in my left hand.

the pain ran up behind my

ears and

I dropped the glass

which broke on the floor.

I got into a tub full of

hot water and epsom salts.

I just got stretched out

when the phone rang.

as I tried to straighten

my back

the pain extended to my

neck and arms.

I flopped about

gripped the sides of the tub

got out

with shots of green and yellow

and red light

flashing in my head.

the phone kept ringing.

I picked it up.

“hello?”

“I LOVE YOU!” she said.

“thanks,” I said.

“is that all you’ve got

to say?”

“yes.”

“eat shit!” she said and

hung up.

love dries up, I thought

as I walked back to the

bathroom, even faster

than sperm.

moaning and groaning

she writes: you’ll

be moaning and groaning

in your poems

about how I fucked

those 2 guys last week.

I know you.

she writes on to

say that my vibe

machine was right—

she had just fucked

a third guy

but she knows I don’t

want to hear who, why

or how. she closes her

letter, “Love.”

rats and roaches

have triumphed again.

here it comes running

with a slug in its

mouth, it’s singing

old love songs.

close the windows

moan

close the doors

groan.

an almost made up poem

I see you drinking at a fountain with tiny

blue hands, no, your hands are not tiny

they are small, and the fountain is in France

where you wrote me that last letter and

I answered and never heard from you again.

you used to write insane poems about

ANGELS AND GOD, all in upper case, and you

knew famous artists and most of them

were your lovers, and I wrote back, it’s all right,

go ahead, enter their lives, I’m not jealous

because we’ve never met. we got close once in

New Orleans, one half block, but never met, never

touched. so you went with the famous and wrote

about the famous, and, of course, what you found out

is that the famous are worried about

their fame—not the beautiful young girl in bed

with them, who gives them that, and then awakens

in the morning to write upper case poems about

ANGELS AND GOD. we know God is dead, they’ve told

us, but listening to you I wasn’t sure. maybe

it was the upper case. you were one of the

best female poets and I told the publishers,

editors, “print her, print her, she’s mad but she’s

magic. there’s no lie in her fire.” I loved you

like a man loves a woman he never touches, only

writes to, keeps little photographs of. I would have

loved you more if I had sat in a small room rolling a

cigarette and listened to you piss in the bathroom,

but that didn’t happen. your letters got sadder.

your lovers betrayed you. kid, I wrote back, all

lovers betray. it didn’t help. you said

you had a crying bench and it was by a bridge and

the bridge was over a river and you sat on the crying

bench every night and wept for the lovers who had

hurt and forgotten you. I wrote back but never

heard again. a friend wrote me of your suicide

3 or 4 months after it happened. if I had met you

I would probably have been unfair to you or you

to me. it was best like this.

blue cheese and chili peppers

these women are supposed to come

and see me

but they never

do.

there’s the one with the long scar along her

belly.

there’s the other who writes poems

and phones at 3 a.m., saying,

“I love you.”

there’s the one who dances with a

boa constrictor

and writes every four

weeks, she’ll

come, she says.

and the 4th who claims she sleeps

always

with my latest book

under her

pillow.

I whack-off in the heat

and listen to Brahms and eat

blue cheese with chili

peppers.

these are women of good mind and

body, excellent in or out of bed,

dangerous and deadly, of

course—

but why do they all have to live

up north?

I know that someday they’ll

arrive, but two or three

on the same day, and

we’ll sit around and talk

and then they’ll all leave

together.

somebody else will have them

and I will walk about

in my floppy shorts

smoking too many cigarettes

and trying to make drama

out of

no damned progress

at all.

problems about the other woman

I had worked my charms on her

for a couple of nights in a bar—

not that we were new lovers,

I had loved her for 16 months

but she didn’t want to come to my place

“because that other woman has been there,”

and I said, “all right, all right, what will we do?”

she had come in from the north and was looking for a

place to stay

meanwhile rooming with her girlfriend,

and she went to her rent-a-trailer

and got out some blankets and said,

“let’s go to the park.”

I told her she was crazy

the cops would get us

but she said, “no, it’s nice and foggy,”

so we went to the park

spread out the equipment and began

working and here came headlights—

a squad car—

she said, “hurry, get your pants on! I’ve got mine

on!”

I said, “I can’t. they’re all twisted-up.”

and they came with flashlights

and asked what we were doing and she said,

“kissing!” one of the cops looked at me and

said, “I don’t blame you,” and after some small

talk they left us alone.

but she still didn’t want the bed where that woman

had been,

so we ended up in a dark hot motel room

sweating and kissing and working

but we made it all right; but I mean,

after all that suffering…

we were at my place finally

that next afternoon

doing the same thing.

those weren’t bad cops though

that night in the park—

and it’s the first time I ever said that

about cops,

and,

I hope,

the last time I ever have

to.

T.M.

she lived in Galveston and was into

T.M.

and I went down to visit her and we made love

continually even though it was very warm

weather

and we took mescalin

and we took the ferry to the island

and drove 200 miles to the nearest

racetrack.

we both won and sat in a redneck bar—

disliked and distrusted by the natives—

and then we went to a redneck motel

and came back a day or two later

and I stayed another week

painted her a couple of good paintings—

one of a man being hanged

and another of a woman being fucked by a wolf.

I awakened one night and she wasn’t in bed

and I got up and walked around saying,

“Gloria, Gloria, where are you?”

it was a large place and I walked around

opening door after door,

and then I opened what looked like a closet door

and there she was on her knees

surrounded by photographs of

7 or 8 men

heads shaved

most of them wearing rimless spectacles.

there was a small candle burning

and I said, “oh, I’m sorry.”

Gloria was dressed in a kimono with flying

eagles on the back of it.

I closed the door and went back to bed.

she came out in 15 minutes.

we began kissing,

her large tongue sliding in and out of my

mouth.

she was a large healthy Texas girl.

“listen, Gloria,” I finally managed to say,

“I need a night off.”

the next day she drove me to the airport.

I promised to write. she promised to write.

neither of us has written.

Bee’s 5th

I heard it first while screwing a blonde

who had the biggest box in

Scranton.

I listened to it again as I wrote a letter

to my mother

asking for 5,000 dollars

and she mailed back

3 bottletops and

the stems of grandpop’s

forefingers.

The 5th will kill you

in the grass or at the track,

the kitten said,

walking across the popinjay

rug.

if the 5th don’t kill you

the tenth will,

said the Caliente hooker.

as they ran up the

beautiful catsup red flag

93 thieves wept in the

purple dust.

the 5th is like an

ant in a breakfastnook full of

swaggersticks and

june bugs

sucking

dawn’s orange juice coming.

and I took the 3 bottletops from my

mother and

ate them

wrapped in pages from

Cosmopolitan

magazine.

but I am tired of the

5th

and I told this to a woman in

Ohio once. I

had just packed coal up 3 flights

of stairs

I was drunk and

dizzy, and she said:

how can you say you don’t care

for something greater than you’ll

ever be?

and I said:

that’s easy.

and she sat in a green chair and

I sat in a red chair

and after that

we never made love

again.

103 degrees

she cut my toenails the night before,

and in the morning she said, “I think I’ll

just lay here all day.”

which meant she wasn’t going to work.

she was at my apartment—which meant another

day and another night.

she was a good person

but she had just told me that she wanted to

have a child, wanted marriage, and

it was 103 degrees outside.

when I thought of another child and

another marriage

I really began to feel bad.

I had resigned myself to dying alone

in a small room—

now she was trying to reshape my master plan.

besides she always slammed my car door too loud

and ate with her head too close to the table.

this day we had gone to the post office, a department

store and then to a sandwich place for lunch.

I already felt married. driving back in I almost

ran into a Cadillac.

“let’s get drunk,” I said.

“no, no,” she answered, “it’s too early.”

and then she slammed the car door.

it was still 103 degrees.

when I opened my mail I found my auto insurance

company wanted $76 more.

suddenly she ran into the room and screamed, “LOOK, I’M

TURNING RED! ALL BLOTCHY! WHAT’LL I DO!”

“take a bath,” I told her.

I dialed the insurance company long distance and

demanded to know why.

she began screaming and moaning from the

bathtub and I couldn’t hear and I said, “just a

moment, please!”

I covered the phone and screamed at her in the bathtub:

“LOOK! I’M ON LONG DISTANCE! HOLD IT DOWN, FOR CHRIST’S

SAKE!”

the insurance people still maintained that I owed them

$76 and would send me a letter explaining why.

I hung up and stretched out on the bed.

I was already married, I felt married.

she came out of the bathroom and said, “can I stretch out

beside you?”

and I said, “o.k.”

in ten minutes her color was normal.

It was because she had taken a niacin tablet.

she remembered that it happened every time.

we stretched out there sweating:

nerves. nobody has soul enough to overcome nerves.

but I couldn’t tell her that.

she wanted her baby.

what the fuck.

pacific telephone

you go for these wenches, she said,

you go for these whores,

I’ll bore you.

I don’t want to be shit on anymore,

I said,

relax.

when I drink, she said, it hurts my

bladder, it burns.

I’ll do the drinking, I said.

you’re waiting for the phone to ring,

she said,

you keep looking at the phone.

if one of those wenches phones you’ll

run right out of here.

I can’t promise you anything, I said.

then—just like that—the phone rang.

this is Madge, said the phone. I’ve

got to see you right away.

oh, I said.

I’m in a jam, she continued, I need ten

bucks—fast.

I’ll be right over, I said, and

hung up.

she looked at me. it was a wench,

she said, your whole face lit up.

what the hell’s the matter with

you?

listen, I said, I’ve got to leave.

you stay here. I’ll be right back.

I’m going, she said. I love you but you’re

crazy, you’re doomed.

she got her purse and slammed the door.

it’s probably some deeply-rooted childhood fuckup

that makes me vulnerable, I thought.

then I left my place and got into my volks.

I drove north up Western with the radio on.

there were whores walking up and down

both sides of the street and Madge looked

more vicious than any of them.

225 pounds

we were in bed and

she started to fight:

“you son of a bitch! you just wait a minute,

I’ll get you!”

I began laughing:

“what’s the matter? what’s the matter?”

“you son of a bitch!” she screamed.

I held her hands as she squirmed.

she was a couple of decades younger than I

a health food freak.

she was very strong.

“you son of a bitch! I’ll get you!”

she screamed.

I rolled on top of her with my 225 pounds and

just layed it there on her.

“uugg, oooo, my God, that’s not fair, oooo, my

God!”

I rolled off and walked into the other room and

sat on the couch.

“I’ll get you, bastard,” she said, “you just

wait!”

“just don’t bite it off,” I said, “or you’ll make

a half dozen women very unhappy.”

she climbed up on the headboard of my bed

(it did have a flat though narrow surface)

and sat perched there watching the news on

tv.

the tv faced the bedroom and it illuminated

her as she sat up there on the

headboard.

“I thought you were sane,” I said, “but you’re

just as crazy as the rest of them.”

“be quiet,” she said, “I want to watch the

news!”

“look,” I said, “I’ll…”

“SHUSH!” she said.

and there she was up on the headboard of my bed

really watching the news. I accepted her that

way.

turnabout

she drives into the parking lot while

I am leaning up against the fender of my car.

she’s drunk and her eyes are wet with tears:

“you son of a bitch, you fucked me when you

didn’t want to. you told me to keep phoning

you, you told me to move closer into town,

then you told me to leave you alone.”

it’s all quite dramatic and I enjoy it.

“sure, well, what do you want?”

“I want to talk to you, I want to go to your

place and talk to you…”

“I’m with somebody now. she’s in getting a

sandwich.”

“I want to talk to you…it takes a while

to get over things. I need more time.”

“sure. wait until she comes out. we’re not

inhuman. we’ll all have a drink together.”

“shit,” she says, “oh shit!”

she jumps into her car and drives off.

the other one comes out: “who was that?”

“an ex-friend.”

now she’s gone and I’m sitting here drunk

and my eyes seem wet with tears.

it’s very quiet and I feel like I have a spear

rammed into the center of my gut.

I walk to the bathroom and puke.

mercy, I think, doesn’t the human race know anything

about mercy?

one for old snaggle-tooth

I know a woman

who keeps buying puzzles

Chinese

puzzles

blocks

wires

pieces that finally fit

into some order.

she works it out

mathematically

she solves all her

puzzles

lives down by the sea

puts sugar out for the ants

and believes

ultimately

in a better world.

her hair is white

she seldom combs it

her teeth are snaggled

and she wears loose shapeless

coveralls over a body most

women would wish they had.

for many years she irritated me

with what I considered her

eccentricities—

like soaking eggshells in water

(to feed the plants so that

they’d get calcium).

but finally when I think of her

life

and compare it to other lives

more dazzling, original

and beautiful

I realize that she has hurt fewer

people than anybody I know

(and by hurt I simply mean hurt).

she has had some terrible times,

times when maybe I should have

helped her more

for she is the mother of my only

child

and we were once great lovers,

but she has come through

like I said

she has hurt fewer people than

anybody I know,

and if you look at it like that,

well,

she has created a better world.

she has won.

Frances, this poem is for

you.

communion

horses running

with her miles away

laughing with a

fool

Bach and the hydrogen bomb

and her miles away

laughing with a

fool

the banking system

bumper jacks

gondolas in Venice

and her miles away

laughing with a

fool

you’ve never quite

seen a stairway before

(each step looking at you

separately)

and outside

the newsboy looking

immortal

as the cars go by

under a sun

like an enemy

and you wonder

why it’s so hard

to go crazy—

if you’re not already

crazy

until now

you’ve never seen a

stairway that looked like

a stairway

a doorknob that looked like

a doorknob

and sounds like these sounds

and when the spider comes out

and looks at you

finally

you don’t hate it

finally

with her miles away

laughing with a

fool.

trying to get even:

we’d had any number of joints and some

beer and I was on the bed stretched out

and she said, “look, I’ve had 3 abortions

in a row, real fast, and I’m sick of

abortions, I don’t want you to stick that

thing in me!”

it was sticking up there and we were both

looking at it.

“ah, come on,” I said, “my girlfriend fucked

2 different guys this week and I’m trying to

get even.”

“don’t get me involved in your domestic

horseshit! now what I want you to do is

to BEAT that thing OFF while I WATCH!

I want to WATCH while you beat that thing

OFF! I want to see it shoot JUICE!”

“o.k. get your face closer.”

she got it closer and I spit on my palm

and began working.

it got bigger. just before I was ready I

stopped, I held it at the bottom

stretching it,

the head throbbed

purple and shiny.

“oooh,” she said.

she ducked her mouth over it, sucked at

it and

pulled away.

“finish it off,” I said.

“no!”

I whacked away and then stopped again

at the last moment and held it at the

bottom and waved it all around the

bedroom.

she eyed it

fell upon it again

sucked

and pulled away.

we alternated the process

back and forth

again and again.

finally I just pulled her off

the chair

onto the bed

rolled on top of her

stuck it in

worked it

worked it

and came.

when she walked back out of

the bathroom she said,

“you son of a bitch, I love you,

I’ve loved you for a long time.

when I get back to Santa Barbara

I’m going to write you. I’m

living with this guy but I hate

him, I don’t even know what I’m

doing with him.”

“o.k.,” I said, “but you’re up

now. can you get me a glass of

water? I’m dry.”

she walked into the kitchen and

I heard her remark that

all my drinking glasses were

dirty.

I told her to use a

coffee cup. I

heard the water running and I

thought, one more fuck

I’ll be even

and I can be in love with my girlfriend again—

that is

if she hasn’t slipped in an

extra

and she probably

has.

Chicago

“I’ve made it,” she said, “I’ve come

through.” she had on new boots, pants

and a white sweater. “I know what I

want now.” she was from Chicago and

had settled in L.A.’s Fairfax district.

“you promised me champagne,”

she said.

“I was drunk when I phoned. how about

a beer?”

“no, pass me your joint.”

she inhaled, let it out:

“this isn’t very good stuff.”

she handed it back.

“there’s a difference,” I said, “between

making it and simply becoming hard.”

“you like my boots?”

“yes, very nice.”

“listen, I’ve got to go. can I use

your bathroom?”

“sure.”

when she came out she had on a

large lipstick mouth. I hadn’t seen

one of those since I was a boy.

I kissed her in the doorway

feeling the lipstick rub off on my

lips.

“goodbye,” she said.

“goodbye,” I said.

she went up the walk toward her car.

I closed the door.

she knew what she wanted and it wasn’t

me.

I know more women like that than any

other kind.

quiet clean girls in gingham dresses…

all I’ve ever known are whores, ex-prostitutes,

madwomen. I see men with quiet,

gentle women—I see them in the supermarkets,

I see them walking down the streets together,

I see them in their apartments: people at

peace, living together. I know that their

peace is only partial, but there is

peace, often hours and days of peace.

all I’ve ever known are pill freaks, alcoholics,

whores, ex—prostitutes, madwomen.

when one leaves

another arrives

worse than her predecessor.

I see so many men with quiet clean girls in

gingham dresses

girls with faces that are not wolverine or

predatory.

“don’t ever bring a whore around,” I tell my

few friends, “I’ll fall in love with her.”

“you couldn’t stand a good woman, Bukowski.”

I need a good woman. I need a good woman

more than I need this typewriter, more than

I need my automobile, more than I need

Mozart; I need a good woman so badly that I

can taste her in the air, I can feel her

at my fingertips, I can see sidewalks built

for her feet to walk upon,

I can see pillows for her head,

I can feel my waiting laughter,

I can see her petting a cat,

I can see her sleeping,

I can see her slippers on the floor.

I know that she exists

but where is she upon this earth

as the whores keep finding me?

we will taste the islands and the sea

I know that some night

in some bedroom

soon

my fingers will

rift

through

soft clean

hair

songs such as no radio

plays

all sadness, grinning

into flow.

2

me, and
that old woman:
sorrow

this
poet

this poet he’d been drinking 2 or 3 days and he walked out on the stage and looked at that audience and he just knew he was going to do it. there was a grand piano on stage and he walked over and lifted the lid and vomited inside the piano. then he closed the lid and gave his reading.

they had to remove the strings from the piano and wash out the insides and restring it.

I can understand why they never invited him back. but to pass the word on to other universities that he was a poet who liked to vomit into grand pianos was unfair.

they never considered the quality of his reading. I know this poet: he’s just like the rest of us: he’ll vomit anywhere for money.

winter

big sloppy wounded dog

hit by a car and walking

toward the curbing

making enormous

sounds

your body curled

red blowing out of

ass and mouth.

I stare at him and

drive on

for how would it look

for me to be holding

a dying dog on a

curbing in Arcadia,

blood seeping into my

shirt and pants and

shorts and socks and

shoes? it would just

look dumb.

besides, I figure the 2

horse in the first race

and I wanted to hook

him with the 9

in the second. I

figured the daily to

pay around $140

so I had to let that

dog die alone there

just across from the

shopping center

with the ladies looking

for bargains

as the first bit of

snow fell upon the

Sierra Madre.

what they want

Vallejo writing about

loneliness while starving to

death;

Van Gogh’s ear rejected by a

whore;

Rimbaud running off to Africa

to look for gold and finding

an incurable case of syphilis;

Beethoven gone deaf;

Pound dragged through the streets

in a cage;

Chatterton taking rat poison;

Hemingway’s brains dropping into

the orange juice;

Pascal cutting his wrists

in the bathtub;

Artaud locked up with the mad;

Dostoevsky stood up against a wall;

Crane jumping into a boat propeller;

Lorca shot in the road by Spanish

troops;

Berryman jumping off a bridge;

Burroughs shooting his wife;

Mailer knifing his.

—that’s what they want:

a God damned show

a lit billboard

in the middle of hell.

that’s what they want,

that bunch of

dull

inarticulate

safe

dreary

admirers of

carnivals.

Iron Mike

we talk about this film:

Cagney fed this broad

grapefruit

faster than she could

eat it and

then she

loved him.

“that won’t always

work,” I told Iron

Mike.

he grinned and said,

“yeh.”

then he reached down

and touched his belt.

32 female scalps

dangled there.

“me and my big Jewish

cock,” he said.

then he raised his hands

to indicate the

size.

“o, yeh, well,”

I said.

“they come around,” he

said, “I fuck ’em, they

hang around, I tell ’em,

‘it’s time to leave.’”

“you’ve got guts,

Mike.”

“this one wouldn’t leave

so I just got up and

slapped her…she

left.”

“I don’t have your nerve,

Mike. they hang around

washing dishes, rubbing

the shit-stains out of the

crapper, throwing out the

old Racing Forms…”

“they’ll never get me,”

he said,

“I’m invincible.”

look, Mike, no man is

invincible.

some day

you’ll be sent mad by

eyes like a child’s crayon

drawing. you won’t be

able to drink a glass of

water or walk across a

room. there will be the

walls and the sound of

the streets outside, and

you’ll hear machineguns

and mortar shells. that’ll

be when you want it and

can’t have it.

the teeth

are never finally the

teeth of love.

guru

big black beard

tells me

that I don’t feel

terror

I look at him

my gut rattles

gravel

I see his eyes

look upward

he’s strong

has dirty fingernails

and upon the walls:

scabbards.

he knows things:

books

the odds

the best road

home

I like him

but I think he

lies

(I’m not sure

he lies)

his wife sits

in a dark

corner

when I first met

her she was the

most beautiful

woman

I had ever

seen

now she has

become

his twin

perhaps not his

fault:

perhaps the thing

does us all

like that

yet after I leave

their house

I feel terror

the moon looks

diseased

my hands slip

on the

steering wheel

I get my car

out

and down the

hill

almost crash it

into a

blue-green

parked car

clod me forever,

Beatrice

wavering poet, ha

haha

dinky dog of

terror.

the professors

sitting with the professors

we talk about Allen Tate

and John Crow Ransom

the rugs are clean and

the coffeetables shine

and there is talk of

budgets and works in

progress

and there is a

fireplace.

the kitchen floor is

well-waxed

and I have just eaten

dinner

after drinking until

3 a.m.

after reading

the night before

now I’m to read again

at a nearby college.

I’m in Arkansas in

January

somebody even mentions

Faulkner

I go to the bathroom

and vomit up the

dinner

when I come out

they are all in their

coats and overcoats

waiting in the

kitchen.

I ’m to read in

15 minutes.

there’ll be a

good crowd

they tell me.

for Al—

don’t worry about rejections, pard,

I’ve been rejected

before.

sometimes you make a mistake, taking

the wrong poem

more often I make the mistake, writing

it.

but I like a mount in every race

even though the man

who puts up the morning line

tabs it 30 to one.

I get to thinking about death more and

more

senility

crutches

armchairs

writing purple poetry with a

dripping pen

when the young girls with mouths

like barracudas

bodies like lemon trees

bodies like clouds

bodies like flashes of lightning

stop knocking on my door.

don’t worry about rejections, pard.

I have smoked 25 cigarettes tonight

and you know about the beer.

the phone has only rung once:

wrong number.

how to be a great writer

you’ve got to fuck a great many women

beautiful women

and write a few decent love poems.

and don’t worry about age

and/or freshly-arrived talents.

just drink more beer

more and more beer

and attend the racetrack at least once a

week

and win

if possible.

learning to win is hard—

any slob can be a good loser.

and don’t forget your Brahms

and your Bach and your

beer.

don’t overexercise.

sleep until noon.

avoid credit cards

or paying for anything on

time.

remember that there isn’t a piece of ass

in this world worth over $50

(in 1977).

and if you have the ability to love

love yourself first

but always be aware of the possibility of

total defeat

whether the reason for that defeat

seems right or wrong—

an early taste of death is not necessarily

a bad thing.

stay out of churches and bars and museums,

and like the spider be

patient—

time is everybody’s cross,

plus

exile

defeat

treachery

all that dross.

stay with the beer.

beer is continous blood.

a continuous lover.

get a large typewriter

and as the footsteps go up and down

outside your window

hit that thing

hit it hard

make it a heavyweight fight

make it the bull when he first charges in

and remember the old dogs

who fought so well:

Hemingway, Celine, Dostoevsky, Hamsun.

if you think they didn’t go crazy

in tiny rooms

just like you’re doing now

without women

without food

without hope

then you’re not ready.

drink more beer.

there’s time.

and if there’s not

that’s all right

too.

the price

drinking 15 dollar champagne—

Cordon Rouge—with the hookers.

one is named Georgia and she

doesn’t like pantyhose:

I keep helping her pull up

her long dark stockings.

the other is Pam-prettier

but not much soul, and

we smoke and talk and I

play with their legs and

stick my bare foot into

Georgia’s open purse.

it’s filled with

bottles of pills. I

take some of the pills.

“listen,” I say, “one of

you has soul, the other

looks. Can’t I combine

the 2 of you? take the soul

and stick it into the looks?”

“you want me,” says Pam, “it

will cost you a hundred.”

we drink some more and Georgia

falls to the floor and can’t

get up.

I tell Pam that I like her

earrings very much. Her

hair is long and a natural

red.

“I was only kidding about the

hundred,” she says.

“oh,” I say, “what will it cost

me?”

she lights her cigarette with

my lighter and looks at me

through the flame:

her eyes tell me.

“look,” I say, “I don’t think I

can ever pay that price again.”

she crosses her legs

inhales on her cigarette

as she exhales she smiles

and says, “sure you can.”

alone with everybody

the flesh covers the bone

and they put a mind

in there and

sometimes a soul,

and the women break

vases against the walls

and the men drink too

much

and nobody finds the

one

but they keep

looking

crawling in and out

of beds.

flesh covers

the bone and the

flesh searches

for more than

flesh.

there’s no chance

at all:

we are all trapped

by a singular

fate.

nobody ever finds

the one.

the city dumps fill

the junkyards fill

the madhouses fill

the hospitals fill

the graveyards fill

nothing else

fills.

the 2nd novel

they’d come around and

they’d ask

“you finished your

2nd novel yet?”

“no.”

“whatsamatta? whatsamatta

that you can’t

finish it?”

“hemorrhoids and

insomnia.”

“maybe you’ve lost

it?”

“lost what?”

“you know.”

now when they come

around I tell them,

“yeh. I finished

it. be out in Sept.”

“you finished it?”

“yeh.”

“well, listen, I gotta

go.”

even the cat

here in the courtyard

won’t come to my door

anymore.

it’s nice.

Chopin Bukowski

this is my piano.

the phone rings and people ask,

what are you doing? how about

getting drunk with us?

and I say,

I’m at my piano.

what?

I’m at my piano.

I hang up.

people need me. I fill

them. if they can’t see me

for a while they get desperate, they get

sick.

but if I see them too often

I get sick. it’s hard to feed

without getting fed.

my piano says things back to

me.

sometimes the things are

scrambled and not very good.

other times

I get as good and lucky as

Chopin.

sometimes I get out of practice

out of tune. that’s

all right.

I can sit down and vomit on the

keys

but it’s my

vomit.

it’s better than sitting in a room

with 3 or 4 people and

their pianos.

this is my piano

and it is better than theirs.

and they like it and they do not

like it.

gloomy lady

she sits up there

drinking wine

while her husband

is at work.

she puts quite

some importance

upon getting her

poems published

in the little

magazines.

she’s had two or

three of her slim

volumes of poems

done in mimeo.

she has two or

three children

between the ages

of 6 and 15.

she is no longer

the beautiful woman

she was. she sends

photos of herself

sitting upon a rock

by the ocean

alone and damned.

I could have had

her once. I wonder

if she thinks I

could have

saved her?

in all her poems

her husband is

never mentioned.

but she does

talk about her

garden

so we know that’s

there, anyhow,

and maybe she

fucks the rosebuds

and finches

before she writes

her poems

cockroach

the cockroach crouched

against the tile

while I was pissing and as

I turned my head

he hauled his butt

into a crack.

I got the can and sprayed

and sprayed and sprayed

and finally the roach came out

and gave me a very dirty look.

then he fell down into

the bathtub and I watched

him dying

with a subtle pleasure

because I paid the rent

and he didn’t.

I picked him up with

some greenblue toilet

paper and flushed him

away. that’s all there

was to that, except

around Hollywood and

Western we have to

keep doing it.

they say some day that

tribe is going to

inherit the earth

but we’re going to

make them wait a

few months.

who in the hell is Tom Jones?

I was shacked with a

24 year old girl from

New York City for

two weeks—about

the time of the garbage

strike out there, and

one night my 34 year

old woman arrived and

she said, “I want to see

my rival.” she did

and then she said, “o,

you’re a cute little thing!”

next I knew there was a

screech of wildcats—

such screaming and scratching,

wounded animal moans,

blood and piss…

I was drunk and in my

shorts. I tried to

separate them and fell,

wrenched my knee. then

they were through the screen

door and down the walk

and out in the street.

squadcars full of cops

arrived. a police helicopter

circled overhead.

I stood in the bathroom

and grinned in the mirror.

it’s not often at the age

of 55 that such splendid

things occur.

better than the Watts

riots.

the 34 year old

came back in. she had

pissed all over herself

and her clothing

was torn and she was

followed by 2 cops who

wanted to know why.

pulling up my shorts

I tried to explain.

defeat

listening to Bruckner on the radio

wondering why I’m not half mad

over the latest breakup with my

latest girlfriend

wondering why I’m not driving the streets

drunk

wondering why I’m not in the bedroom

in the dark

in the grievous dark

pondering

ripped by half-thoughts.

I suppose

that at last

like the average man:

I’ve known too many women

and instead of thinking,

I wonder who’s fucking her now?

I think

she’s giving some other poor son of a bitch

much trouble right now.

listening to Bruckner on the radio

seems so peaceful.

too many women have gone through.

I am at last alone

without being alone.

I pick up a Grumbacher paint brush

and clean my fingernails with the hard sharp end.

I notice a wall socket.

look, I’ve won.

traffic signals

the old folks play a game

in the park overlooking the sea

shoving markers across cement

with wooden sticks.

four play, two on each side

and 18 or 20 others sit in

the sun and watch

I notice this as I move

toward the public facility

as my car is being repaired.

an old cannon sits in the park

rusted and useless.

six or seven sailboats ride

the sea below.

I finish my duty

come out

and they are still playing.

one of the women is heavily rouged

wearing false eyelashes and smoking

a cigarette.

the men are very thin

very pale

wear wristwatches that hurt

their wrists.

the other woman is very fat

and giggles

each time a score is made

some of them are my age.

they disgust me

the way they wait for death

with as much passion

as a traffic signal.

these are the people who believe advertisements

these are the people who buy dentures on credit

these are the people who celebrate holidays

these are the people who have grandchildren

these are the people who vote

these are the people who have funerals

these are the dead

the smog

the stink in the air

the lepers.

these are almost everybody

finally.

seagulls are better

seaweed is better

dirty sand is better

if I could turn that old cannon

on them

and make it work

I would.

they disgust me.

462-0614

I get many phonecalls now.

They are all alike.

“are you Charles Bukowski,

the writer?”

“yes,” I tell them.

and they tell me

that they understand my

writing,

and some of them are writers

or want to be writers

and they have dull and

horrible jobs

and they can’t face the room

the apartment

the walls

that night—

they want somebody to talk

to,

and they can’t believe

that I can’t help them

that I don’t know the words.

they can’t believe

that often now

I double up in my room

grab my gut

and say

“Jesus Jesus Jesus, not

again!”

they can’t believe

that the loveless people

the streets

the loneliness

the walls

are mine too.

and when I hang up the phone

they think I have held back my

secret.

I don’t write out of

knowledge.

when the phone rings

I too would like to hear words

that might ease

some of this.

that’s why my number’s

listed.

photographs

they photograph you on your porch

and on your couch

and standing in the courtyard

or leaning against your car

these photographers

women with big asses

which look better to you

than do their eyes or their souls

—this playing at author

it’s real Hemingway

James Joyce

stageshit

but look—

there are the books

you’ve written them

you haven’t been to Paris

but you’ve written all those books

there behind you

(and others not there,

lost or stolen)

all you’ve got to do

is look like Bukowski

for the cameras

but

you keep watching

those

astonishingly big asses

and thinking—

somebody else is getting

it

“look into my eyes,”

they say and click their cameras

and flash their cameras

and fondle their cameras

Hemingway used to box or go

fishing or to the bullfights

but after they leave

you jerk-off into the sheets

and take a hot bath

they never send the photos

like they promise to send the photos

and the astonishingly big asses are

gone forever

and you’ve been a fine literary fellow—

now alive

dead soon enough

looking into and at their eyes and souls

and more.

social

the blue pencil of the wave

shots of yellow road

a steering wheel

an insane woman sitting

next to you

complaining as the ocean

creams-off

and people in yellow and

white

campers

block your way

a frantic

time

as you listen

guilty of this and

guilty of that

you admit

this and that

but it’s not

enough

she wants splendid

conquest

and you’re weary of

splendid

conquest

getting there

she climbs out

walks toward the

house

you piss across the

fender of your car

drunk on beer

little spots of you

dripping down into

the dust

the dry

dust

zipping up you

march in to

meet her

friends.

one to the breastplate

I have a saying, “the tough ones always come

back.”

but Vera was kinder than most,

and so I was surprised when

she arrived that night

and said, “let me in.”

“no, no, I’m working on a sonnet.”

“I’ll just stay a minute, then I’ll

leave.”

“Vera, if I let you in you’ll be here

for 3 or 4 days.”

it was night and I hadn’t turned the

porch light on so I couldn’t see it

coming

but

she threw a right that

exploded in the center of my

chest.

“baby, that was a beautiful punch.

now move off.”

then I closed the door.

she was back again in 5 minutes:

“Hank, I can’t find my car, I

swear I can’t find my car. help

me find my car!”

I saw my friend Bobby-the-Riff

walking by. “hey, Bobby, help

this one find her car. we’ll

even it up later.”

they went off together.

later Bobby said they found her

car parked on somebody’s front

lawn, lights on and motor

running.

I haven’t heard from Vera

since

unless she’s the one

who keeps phoning at

2 and 3 and 4 a.m. in the

morning

and doesn’t answer when I

say “hello.”

but Bobby says he

can handle her

so I’ve decided to turn her over

to Bobby.

she lives on a side street somewhere

in Glendale

and I help him unfold the

roadmap as we sip our

diet Schlitz.

the worst and the best

in the hospitals and jails

it’s the worst

in madhouses

it’s the worst

in penthouses

it’s the worst

in skid row flophouses

it’s the worst

at poetry readings

at rock concerts

at benefits for the disabled

it’s the worst

at funerals

at weddings

it’s the worst

at parades

at skating rinks

at sexual orgies

it’s the worst

at midnight

at 3 a.m.

at 5:45 p.m.

it’s the worst

falling through the sky

firing squads

that’s the best

thinking of India

looking at popcorn stands

watching the bull get the matador

that’s the best

boxed lightbulbs

an old dog scratching

peanuts in a celluloid bag

that’s the best

spraying roaches

a clean pair of stockings

natural guts defeating natural talent

that’s the best

in front of firing squads

throwing crusts to seagulls

slicing tomatoes

that’s the best

rugs with cigarette burns

cracks in sidewalks

waitresses still sane

that’s the best

my hands dead

my heart dead

silence

adagio of rocks

the world ablaze

that’s the best

for me.

coupons

cigarettes wetted with beer from

the night before

you light one

gag

open the door for air

and on your doorstep

is a dead sparrow

his head and breast

chewed away.

hanging from the doorknob

is an ad from the All American

Burger

consisting of several coupons

which

say

that with the purchase

of a burger

from Feb. 12 thru Feb. 15

you can get a free

regular size bag of french

fries and one

10 oz. cup of coca cola.

I take the ad

wrap the sparrow

carry him to the trash bin

and dump him

in.

look:

forsaking fries and coke

to help keep

my city

clean.

luck

what’s bad about all

this

is watching people

drinking coffee and

waiting. I would

douse them all

with luck. they need

it. they need it

worse than I do.

I sit in cafes

and watch them

waiting. I suppose

there’s not much

else to do. the

flies walk up and

down the windows

and we drink our

coffee and pretend

not to look at

each other. I

wait with them.

between the movement

of the flies

people walk by.

dog

a single dog

walking alone on a hot sidewalk of

summer

appears to have the power

of ten thousand gods.

why is this?

trench warfare

sick with the flu

drinking beer

my radio on loud

enough to overcome

the sounds of the

stereo people who

have just moved

into the court

across the way.

asleep or awake

they play their

set at top volume

leaving their

doors and windows

open.

they are each

18, married, wear

red shoes,

are blonde,

slim.

they play

everything: jazz,

classical, rock,

country, modern

as long as it is

loud.

this is the problem

of being poor:

we must share each

other’s sounds.

last week it was

my turn:

there were two women

in here

fighting each other

and then they

ran up the walk

screaming.

the police came.

now it’s their

turn.

now I am walking

up and down in

my dirty shorts,

two rubber earplugs

stuck deep into

my ears.

I even consider

murder.

such rude little

rabbits!

walking little pieces

of snot!

but in our land

and in our way

there has never

been a chance;

it’s only when

things are not

going too badly

for a while

that we forget.

someday they’ll

each be dead

someday they’ll

each have a

separate coffin

and it will be

quiet.

but right now

it’s Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan Bob

Dylan all the

way.

the night I fucked my alarm clock

once

starving in Philadelphia

I had a small room

it was evening going into night

and I stood at my window on the 3rd floor

in the dark and looked down into a

kitchen across the way on the 2nd floor

and I saw a beautiful blonde girl

embrace a young man there and kiss him

with what seemed hunger

and I stood and watched until they broke

away.

then I turned and switched on the room light.

I saw my dresser and my dresser drawers

and my alarm clock on the dresser.

I took my alarm clock

to bed with me and

fucked it until the hands dropped off.

then I went out and walked the streets

until my feet blistered.

when I got back I walked to the window

and looked down and across the way

and the light in their kitchen was

out.

when I think of myself dead

I think of automobiles parked in a

parking lot

when I think of myself dead

I think of frying pans

when I think of myself dead

I think of somebody making love to you

when I’m not around

when I think of myself dead

I have trouble breathing

when I think of myself dead

I think of all the people waiting to die

when I think of myself dead

I think I won’t be able to drink water anymore

when I think of myself dead

the air goes all white

the roaches in my kitchen

tremble

and somebody will have to throw

my clean and dirty underwear

away.

Christmas eve, alone

Christmas eve, alone,

in a motel room

down the coast

near the Pacific—

hear it?

they’ve tried to do this place up

Spanish, there’s

tapestry and lamps, and

the toilet’s clean, there are

tiny bars of pink

soap.

they won’t find us

here:

the barracudas or the ladies or

the idol

worshippers.

back in town

they’re drunk and panicked

running red lights

breaking their heads open

in honor of Christ’s

birthday. that’s nice.

soon I’ll finish this 5th of

Puerto Rican rum.

in the morning I’ll vomit and

shower, drive back

in, have a sandwich by 1 p.m.,

be back in my room by

2,

stretched on the bed,

waiting for the phone to ring,

not answering,

my holiday is an

evasion, my reasoning

is not.

there once was a woman who put her head into an oven

terror finally becomes almost

bearable

but never quite

terror creeps like a cat

crawls like a cat

across my mind

I can hear the laughter of the masses

they are strong

they will survive

like the roach

never take your eyes off the roach

you’ll never see it again.

the masses are everywhere

they know how to do things:

they have sane and deadly angers

for sane and deadly

things.

I wish I were driving a blue 1952 Buick

or a dark blue 1942 Buick

or a blue 1932 Buick

over a cliff of hell and into the

sea.

beds, toilets, you and me—

think of the beds

used again and again

to fuck in

to die in.

in this land

some of us fuck more than

we die

but most of us die

better than we

fuck,

and we die

piece by piece too—

in parks

eating ice cream, or

in igloos

of dementia,

or on straw mats

or upon disembarked

loves

or

or.

:beds beds beds

:toilets toilets toilets

the human sewage system

is the world’s greatest

invention.

and you invented me

and I invented you

and that’s why we don’t

get along

on this bed

any longer.

you were the world’s

greatest invention

until you

flushed me

away.

now it’s your turn

to wait for the touch

of the handle.

somebody will do it

to you,

bitch,

and if they don’t

you will—

mixed with your own

green or yellow or white

or blue

or lavender

goodbye.

this then—

it’s the same as before

or the other time

or the time before that.

here’s a cock

and here’s a cunt

and here’s trouble.

only each time

you think

well now I’ve learned:

I’ll let her do that

and I’ll do this,

I no longer want it all,

just some comfort

and some sex

and only a minor

love.

now I’m waiting again

and the years run thin.

I have my radio

and the kitchen walls

are yellow.

I keep dumping bottles

and listening

for footsteps.

I hope that death contains

less than this.

imagination and reality

there are many single women in the world

with one or two or three children

and one wonders where the husbands

have gone or where the lovers have

gone

leaving behind

all those hands and eyes and feet

and voices.

as I pass through their homes

I like opening cupboards and

looking in

or under the sink

or in a closet—

I expect to find the husband

or lover and he’ll tell me:

“hey, buddy, didn’t you notice her

stretch-marks, she’s got stretch-marks

and floppy tits and she eats

onions all the time and farts…but

I’m a handy man. I can fix things,

I know how to use a turret-lathe and

I make my own oil changes. I can shoot

pool, bowl, and I can finish 5th or

6th in any cross-country marathon

anywhere. I’ve got a set of golf

clubs, can shoot in the 80’s. I know

where the clit is and what to do about

it. I’ve got a cowboy hat with the brim

turned straight up at the sides.

I’m good with the lasso and the dukes

and I know all the latest dance steps.”

and I’ll say, “look, I was just leaving.”

and I will leave before he can challenge me

to arm-wrestling

or tell a dirty joke

or show me the dancing tattoo on his

right bicep.

but really

all I find in the cupboards are

coffee cups and large cracked brown plates

and under the sink a stack of hardened

rags, and in the closet—more coathangers

than clothes, and it’s not until she shows

me the photo album and the photos of him—

nice enough like a shoehorn, or a cart in

the supermarket whose wheels aren’t stuck—

that the self-doubt leaves, and the

pages turn and there’s one child on a

swing wearing a red outfit and there’s

the other one

chasing a seagull in Santa Monica.

and life becomes sad and not dangerous

and therefore good enough:

to have her bring you a cup of coffee in

one of those coffee cups without him

jumping out.

stolen

I keep thinking it will be outside

now

waiting for me

blue

front bumper twisted

Maltese cross hanging

from the mirror.

rubber floormat

twisted under the pedals.

20 m.p.g.

good old TRV 491

the faithful love of a man,

the way I put her into second

while taking a corner

the way she could dig from a signal

with any other around.

the way we conquered large and

small spaces

rain

sun

smog

hostility

the crush of things.

I came out of last Thursday night’s

fights at the Olympic

and my 1967 Volks was gone

with another lover

to another place.

the fights had been good.

I called a cab at a Standard station

and sat eating a jelly doughnut

with coffee in a cafe and

waited,

and I knew that if I found

the man who stole her

I would kill him.

the cab came. I waved to the

driver, paid for the coffee and

doughnut, got out into the night,

got in, and told him, “Hollywood

and Western,” and that particular

night was just about over.

the meek have inherited

if I suffer at this

typewriter

think how I’d feel

among the lettuce-pickers

of Salinas?

I think of the men

I’ve known in

factories

with no way to

get out—

choking while living

choking while laughing

at Bob Hope or Lucille

Ball while

2 or 3 children beat

tennis balls against

the walls.

some suicides are never

recorded.

the insane always loved me

and the subnormal.

all through grammar school

junior high

high school

junior college

the unwanted would attach

themselves to

me.

guys with one arm

guys with twitches

guys with speech defects

guys with white film

over one eye,

cowards

misanthropes

killers

peep-freaks

and thieves.

and all through the

factories and on the

bum

I always drew the

unwanted. they found me

right off and attached

themselves. they

still do.

in this neighborhood now

there’s one who’s

found me.

he pushes around a

shopping cart

filled with trash:

broken canes, shoelaces,

empty potato chip bags,

milk cartons, newspapers, penholders…

“hey, buddy, how ya doin’?”

I stop and we talk a

while.

then I say goodbye

but he still follows

me

past the beer

parlours and the

love parlours…

“keep me informed,

buddy, keep me informed,

I want to know what’s

going on.”

he’s my new one.

I’ve never seen him

talk to anybody

else.

the cart rattles

along a little bit

behind me

then something

falls out.

he stops to pick

it up.

as he does I

walk through the

front door of the

green hotel on the

corner

pass down through

the hall

come out the back

door and

there’s a cat

shitting there in

absolute delight,

he grins at

me.

Big Max

in junior high school

Big Max was a problem.

we’d be sitting during lunch hour

eating our peanut butter sandwiches

and potato chips.

he was hairy of nostril

and of eyebrow, his lips

glistened with spittle.

he already wore size ten and a half

shoes. his shirts stretched across a

massive chest. his wrists looked like

two by fours. and he walked up

through the shadows behind the gym

where we sat, my friend Eli and I.

“you guys,” he stood there, “you guys

sit with your shoulders slumped!

you walk around with your shoulders

slumped! how are you ever going to

make it?”

we didn’t answer.

then Max would look at me.

“stand up!”

I’d stand up and he’d walk around

behind me and say, “square your

shoulders like this!”

and he’d snap my shoulders back.

“there! doesn’t that feel better?”

“yeah, Max.”

then he’d walk off and I’d resume a

normal posture.

Big Max was ready for the

world. it made us sick

to look at him.

trapped

in the winter walking on my

ceiling my eyes the size of streetlamps.

I have 4 feet like a mouse but

wash my own underwear—bearded and

hungover and a hard-on and no lawyer. I

have a face like a washrag. I sing

love songs and carry steel.

I would rather die than cry. I can’t

stand hounds can’t live without them.

I hang my head against the white

refrigerator and want to scream like

the last weeping of life forever but

I am bigger than the mountains.

it’s the way you play the game

call it love

stand it up in the failing

light

put it in a dress

pray sing beg cry laugh

turn off the lights

turn on the radio

add trimmings:

butter, raw eggs, yesterday’s

newspaper;

one new shoelace, then add

paprika, sugar, salt, pepper,

phone your drunken aunt in

Calexico;

call it love, you

skewer it good, add

cabbage and applesauce,

then heat it from the

left side,

then heat it from the right

side,

put it in a box

give it away

leave it on a doorstep

vomiting as you go

into the

hydrangea.

on the continent

I’m soft. I

dream too.

I let myself dream. I dream of

being famous. I dream of

walking the streets of London and

Paris. I dream of

sitting in cafes

drinking fine wines and

taking a taxi back to a good

hotel.

I dream of

meeting beautiful ladies in the hall

and

turning them away because

I have a sonnet in mind that

I want to write

before sunrise. at sunrise

I will be asleep and there will be a

strange cat curled up on the

windowsill.

I think we all feel like this

now and then.

I’d even like to visit

Andernach, Germany, the place where

I began. then I’d like to

fly on to Moscow to check out

their mass transit system so

I’d have something faintly lewd to

whisper into the ear of the mayor of

Los Angeles upon my return to this

fucking place.

it could happen.

I’m ready.

I’ve watched snails climb over

ten foot walls and

vanish.

you mustn’t confuse this with

ambition.

I would be able to laugh at my

good turn of the cards—

and I won’t forget you.

I’ll send postcards and

snapshots, and the

finished sonnet.

12:18 a.m.

beheaded in the middle of the

night

scratching my sides

I am covered with bites

kick my white legs out of the sheets

as the sirens scream

there is a gun blast.

I go to the kitchen

for a glass of water

destroy the reverie of a roach

destroy the roach.

a gale comes from the North

as the man in the apartment across

from me

inserts his penis into the rump of his

4 year old

daughter.

I hear the screams

light a cigar

stick it into the lips of my

beheaded head.

it is half a cigar

stale

a Medalist Naturáles, No. 7.

I walk back to the bedroom

with a spray can.

I press the button.

it hisses. I

gag,

think of ancient wars

loves dead.

so much happens in the dark

yet tomorrow

the sun will move up and on,

you’ll get a ticket if you park on the

south side of the street on

Thursday

or the north side on

Friday.

the efficiency of the sun and the

law

bulwarks sanity.

something bites me.

I madden

spray half my

bedsheets.

I turn

see the dark mirror—

the cigar

the loose belly

me

old.

I laugh.

it’s good they don’t

know.

I take my head

put it back on my

neck

get between the sheets and

can’t sleep.

yellow cab

the Mexican dancer shook her fans at

me and her ass at me, I

didn’t ask her to and

my woman got mad and ran out of the cafe and

it began raining and you could hear it on the

roof and I didn’t have a job and I had 13 days left

on the rent.

sometimes when a woman runs out on you like

that you wonder if it’s not

economics, you can’t blame them—

if I had to get fucked I’d rather get fucked

by somebody with money.

we’re all scared but when you’re ugly and you

don’t have much left you get

strong, and I called the waiter over and I said,

I think I am going to turn this table over, I’m

bored, I’m insane, I need

action, call in your goon, I’ll piss on his

collarbone.

I got

thrown out swiftly. it was

raining. I picked myself up in the rain and

walked down the empty street

cotton candy sweet

dumb shit for sale, all the little stores locked

with 67¢ Woolworth locks.

I reached the end of the street in time

to see her get into the yellow cab with

another guy.

I fell down by a garbage can, stood up

and pissed against it, feeling sad and not

sad, knowing there was only so much they could do to

you, piss sliding down the corrugated

tin, the philosophers must have had something to

say about this. women. their luck against your

destiny. winner take Barcelona. next

bar.

how come you’re not unlisted?

the men phone and ask me that.

are you really Charles Bukowski

the writer? they ask.

I’m a sometimes writer, I say,

most often I don’t do anything.

listen, they ask, I like your

stuff—do you mind if I come

over and bring a couple of 6

packs?

you can bring them, I say

if you don’t come in…

when the women phone, I say,

o yes, I write, I’m a writer

only I’m not writing right now.

I feel foolish phoning you,

they say, and I was surprised

to find you listed in the phone book.

I have reasons, I say,

by the way why don’t you come over

for a beer?

you wouldn’t mind?

and they arrive

handsome women

good of mind and body and eye.

often there isn’t sex

but I’m used to that

yet it’s good

very good just to look at them—

and some rare times

I have unexpected good luck

otherwise.

for a man of 55 who didn’t get laid

until he was 23

and not very often until he was 50

I think that I should stay listed

via Pacific Telephone

until I get as much as

the average man has had.

of course, I’ll have to keep

writing immortal poems

but the inspiration is there.

weather report

I suppose it’s raining in some Spanish town

now

while I’m feeling bad

like this;

I’d like to think so

now.

let’s go to a Mexican hamlet—

that sounds nice:

a Mexican hamlet

while I’m feeling bad

like this

the walls yellow with age—

that rain

out there,

a pig moving in his pen at night

disturbed by the rain,

little eyes like cigarette-ends,

and his damned tail:

see it?

I can’t imagine the people.

it’s hard for me to imagine the people.

maybe they are feeling bad like this,

almost as bad as this.

I wonder what they do when they feel

bad?

they probably don’t mention it.

they say,

“look, it’s raining.”

that’s the best way.

clean old man

here I’ll be

55 in a

week.

what will I

write about

when it no

longer stands

up in the morning?

my critics

will love it

when my playground

narrows down to

tortoises

and shellstars.

they might even

say

nice things about

me

as if I had

finally

come to my

senses.

something

I’m out of matches.

the springs in my couch

are broken.

they stole my footlocker.

they stole my oil painting of

two pink eyes.

my car broke down.

eels climb my bathroom walls.

my love is broken.

but the stockmarket went up

today.

a plate glass window

dogs and angels are not

very different.

I often go to this place

to eat

about 2:30 in the afternoon

because all the people who eat

there are particularly addled

simply glad to be alive and

eating baked beans

near a plate glass window

which holds the heat

and doesn’t let the cars and

sidewalks inside.

we are allowed as much free

coffee as we can drink

and we sit and quietly drink

the black strong coffee.

it is good to be sitting someplace

in a world at 2:30 in the afternoon

without having the flesh ripped from

your bones. even

being addled, we know this.

nobody bothers us

we bother nobody.

angels and dogs are not

very different

at 2:30 in the afternoon.

I have my favorite table

and after I have finished

I stack the plates, saucers,

the cup, the silverware

neatly—

my offering to the luck—

and that sun

working good

all up and

down

inside the

darkness

here.

junkies

“she shoots up in the neck,” she told

me. I told her to stick it into my

ass and she tried and said, “oh oh,”

and I said, “what the hell’s the matter?”

she said, “nothing, this is New York

style,” and she jammed it in again and said,

“oh shit.” I took it and put it into

my arm, I got part of it.

“I don’t know why people

fuck with the stuff, there’s not that

much to it. I think they’re all losers

and they want to lose real bad. there’s

no other way, it’s like they can’t

get where they’re going or want to go

and there’s no other way.

this has got to be it.

she shoots up in the neck.”

“I know,” I said. “I phoned her, she

could hardly talk, said it was

laryngitis. have some of this wine.”

it was white wine and 4:30 a.m. and her

daughter was sleeping in the bedroom. she

had cable tv with no sound and

a large screen young John Wayne watched

us, and we neither kissed nor made

love and I left at 6:15 a.m.

after the beer and wine were gone

so her daughter wouldn’t awaken for

school and find me sitting in

bed with her mother

with John Wayne and the night gone

and not much chance for anybody—

99 to one

the blazing shark

wants my balls

as I walk through the meat section

looking for salami and cheese

purple housewives

fingering 75 cent avocados

know my shopping cart is an

oversized cock

I am a man with a switchball watch

standing in a honky-tonk phonebooth

sucking strawberry red titty

upsidedown in a Philadelphia crowd.

suddenly all about me are screams of

RAPE RAPE RAPE RAPE RAPE

and I am stiffing it to something beneath me

dyed red hair, bad breath, blue teeth

I used to like Monet

I used to like Monet very much

it was funny, I thought, the way he did it

with colors

women are so expensive

dog leashes are expensive

I am going to start selling air in dark orange bags

marked: moon-blooms

I used to like bottles full of blood

young girls in camel-hair coats

Prince Valiant

Popeye’s magic touch

the struggle is in the struggle

like a corkscrew

a good man doesn’t get cork in the wine

the thought has occurred to millions of men

while shaving

the removal of life might be preferred to

the removal of hair

spit out cotton and clean your rearview

mirror, run like you mean it, drunk jock,

the whores will win, the fools will win,

but break like a horse out of the gate.

the crunch

too much

too little

too fat

too thin

or nobody.

laughter or

tears

haters

lovers

strangers with faces like

the backs of

thumb tacks

armies running through

streets of blood

waving winebottles

bayoneting and fucking

virgins.

or an old guy in a cheap room

with a photograph of M. Monroe.

there is a loneliness in this world so great

that you can see it in the slow movement of

the hands of a clock.

people so tired

mutilated

either by love or no love.

people just are not good to each other

one on one.

the rich are not good to the rich

the poor are not good to the poor.

we are afraid.

our educational system tells us

that we can all be

big-ass winners.

it hasn’t told us

about the gutters

or the suicides.

or the terror of one person

aching in one place

alone

untouched

unspoken to

watering a plant.

people are not good to each other.

people are not good to each other.

people are not good to each other.

I suppose they never will be.

I don’t ask them to be.

but sometimes I think about

it.

the beads will swing

the clouds will cloud

and the killer will behead the child

like taking a bite out of an ice cream cone.

too much

too little

too fat

too thin

or nobody

more haters than lovers.

people are not good to each other.

perhaps if they were

our deaths would not be so sad.

meanwhile I look at young girls

stems

flowers of chance.

there must be a way.

surely there must be a way we have not yet

thought of.

who put this brain inside of me?

it cries

it demands

it says that there is a chance.

it will not say

“no.”

a horse with greenblue eyes

what you see is what you see:

madhouses are rarely

on display.

that we still walk about and

scratch ourselves and light

cigarettes

is more the miracle

than bathing beauties

than roses and the moth.

to sit in a small room

and drink a can of beer

and roll a cigarette

while listening to Brahms

on a small red radio

is to have come back

from a dozen wars

alive

listening to the sound

of the refrigerator

as bathing beauties rot

and the oranges and apples

roll away.

3

Scarlet

Scarlet

I’m glad when they arrive

and I’m glad when they leave

I’m glad when I hear their heels

approaching my door

and I’m glad when those heels

walk away

I’m glad to fuck

I’m glad to care

and I’m glad when it’s over

and

since it’s always either

starting or finishing

I’m glad

most of the time

and the cats walk up and down

and the earth spins around the sun

and the phone rings:

“this is Scarlet.”

“who?”

“Scarlet.”

“o.k., get it on over.”

and I hang up thinking

maybe this is it

go in

take a quick shit

shave

bathe

dress

dump the sacks

and cartons of empty

bottles

sit down to the sound of

heels approaching

more an army approaching than

victory

it’s Scarlet

and in my kitchen the faucet

keeps dripping

needs a washer.

I’ll take care of it

later.

red up and down

red hair

real

she whirled it

and she asked

“is my ass still on?”

such comedy.

there is always one woman

to save you from another

and as that woman saves you

she makes ready to

destroy.

“sometimes I hate you,”

she said.

she walked out and sat on

my porch and read my copy

of Catullus, she stayed out

there for an hour.

people walked up and down

past my place

wondering where such an ugly

old man could get

such beauty.

I didn’t know either.

when she walked in I grabbed

her and pulled her to my lap.

I lifted my glass and told

her, “drink this.”

“oh,” she said, “you’ve mixed

wine with Jim Beam, you’re gonna

get nasty.”

“you henna your hair, don’t

you?”

“you don’t look,” she said and

stood up and pulled down her

slacks and panties and

the hair down there was the

same as the hair

up there.

Catullus himself couldn’t have wished

for more historic or

wondrous grace;

then he went

goofy

for tender boys

not mad enough

to become

women.

like a flower in the rain

I cut the middle fingernail of the middle

finger

right hand

real short

and I began rubbing along her cunt

as she sat upright in bed

spreading lotion over her arms

face

and breasts

after bathing.

then she lit a cigarette:

“don’t let this put you off,”

and smoked and continued to rub the

lotion on.

I continued to rub the cunt.

“you want an apple?” I asked.

“sure,” she said, “you got one?”

but I got to her—

she began to twist

then she rolled on her side,

she was getting wet and open

like a flower in the rain.

then she rolled on her stomach

and her most beautiful ass

looked up at me

and I reached under and got the

cunt again.

she reached around and got my

cock, she rolled and twisted,

I mounted

my face falling into the mass

of red hair that overflowed

from her head

and my fattened cock entered

into the miracle.

later we joked about the lotion

and the cigarette and the apple.

then I went out and got some chicken

and shrimp and french fries and buns

and mashed potatoes and gravy and

cole slaw, and we ate. she told me

how good she felt and I told her

how good I felt and we ate

the chicken and the shrimp and the

french fries and the buns and the

mashed potatoes and the gravy and

the cole slaw too.

light brown

light brown stare

that dumb blank marvelous

light brown stare

I’ll take care of

it.

you needn’t carry me

anymore

with your Cleopatra

movie star

tricks

do you realize

that if I were an adding machine

I might break down

tabulating

how many times you’ve used

that light brown stare?

not that you’re not the best

with your light brown stare.

someday some crazy son of a bitch

is going to murder you

and you’ll cry out my name

you’ll finally know

what you should have known

so very long

ago.

huge ear rings

I go to pick her up.

she’s on some errand.

she always has errands

many things to do.

I have nothing to do.

she comes out of her apartment

I see her move toward my car

she is barefooted

dressed casually

except for huge ear rings.

I light a cigarette

and when I look up

she is stretched out on the street

a quite busy street

all 112 pounds of her

as beautiful as anything you might

imagine.

I switch on the radio

and wait for her to get up.

she does.

I flip the car door open.

she gets in. I drive away from the

curb. she likes the song on the radio

she turns the radio up.

she seems to like all the songs

she seems to know all the songs

each time I see her she looks better

and better

200 years ago they would have burned her

at the stake

now she puts on her

mascara as we

drive along.

she came out of the bathroom with her flaming red hair and said—

the cops want me to come down and identify

some guy who tried to rape me.

I’ve lost the key to my car again; I’ve got

the key to open the door but not the one

to start it.

those people are trying to take my child

away from me but I won’t let them.

Rochelle almost o.d.’d, then she went at

Harry with something, and he punched her.

she’s had those cracked ribs, you know,

and one of them punctured her lung. she’s

down at the county under a machine.

where’s my comb?

your comb has all that guck in it.

I told her,

I haven’t seen your

comb.

a killer

consistency is terrific:

shark-mouth

grubby interior with an

almost perfect body,

long blazing hair—

it confuses me

and others

she runs from man to man

offering endearments

she speaks of love

then breaks each man

to her will

shark-mouthed

grubby interior

we see it too late:

after the cock gets swallowed

the heart follows

her long blazing hair,

her almost perfect body

walks down the street

as the same sun

falls upon flowers.

longshot

she’s not for you, man,

she’s not your type,

she’s erased

she’s been used

she’s got all the wrong

habits,

he told me

in between races.

I’m going to bet the 4

horse, I told him.

well, it’s only that I’d

like to turn her around

in mid-stream,

save her, you might say.

you can’t save her, he said,

you’re 55, you need kindness.

I’m going to bet the 6 horse.

you’re not the one to save

her.

who can save her? I asked.

I don’t think the 6 has a

chance, I like the 4.

she needs somebody to beat her

from wall to wall, he said,

kick her ass, she’d love

it. She’d stay home and

wash the dishes.

the 6 horse will be in

the running.

I’m no good at beating women,

I said.

forget her then, he said.

it’s hard to, I said.

he got up and bet the 6

and I got up and bet the 4.

the 5 horse won

by 3 lengths

at 15 to one.

she’s got red hair

like lightning from heaven,

I said.

forget her, he said.

we tore up our tickets

and stared at the lake

in the center of the track.

it was going to be

a long afternoon

for both of us.

the promise

she bent over the side of the bed

and opened the portfolio

along the side of the wall.

we were drinking.

she said, “you promised me these

paintings once, don’t you

remember?”

“what? no, no, I don’t remember.”

“well, you did,” she said, “and you

ought to keep your promises.”

“leave those fucking paintings alone,”

I said.

then I walked into the kitchen for

a beer. I paused to vomit

and when I came out

I saw her through my window

going down the court walk

toward her place in back.

she was trying to hurry

and balanced on top of her head

were 40 paintings:

oils

black and whites

acrylics

water colors.

she stumbled once and almost

fell on her ass.

then she ran up her steps

and was gone through her door

to her place upstairs

running with all those paintings

on top of her head.

it was one of the funniest damned

things I ever did see.

well, I guess I’ll just have to

paint 40 more.

waving and waving goodbye

I paid this one’s fare all the way from Houston

to San Francisco

then flew up to meet her at her brother’s house

and I got drunk

and talked all night about a redhead, and

she finally said, “you sleep up there,”

and I climbed the ladder

up into a bunk and she slept

down there.

the next day they drove me to the airport

and I flew back, thinking, well,

there’s still the redhead and when I got back in

I phoned the redhead and said, “I’m back, baby,

I flew up to see this woman and I talked about

you all night, so here I am…”

“well, why don’t you fly back up and finish

the job?” she said and hung up.

then I got drunk and the phone rang

and they said they were

two ladies from Germany and they’d like

to see me.

so they came over and one was 20 and the

other was 22. I told them that my heart

had been smashed for the last time and

that I was giving up women. they laughed

at me and we drank and smoked and went to

bed together.

I got this thing in front of me and

first I grabbed one and then I grabbed the

other.

I finally settled on the 22 year old and

ate her up.

they stayed 2 days and 2 nights

but I never got to the 20 year old,

she was on tampax.

I finally drove them to Sherman Oaks

and they stood at the foot of a long

driveway

waving and waving goodbye as I backed

my Volks out.

when I got back there was a letter from a

lady in Eureka. she said that she wanted me

to fuck her until she couldn’t

walk anymore.

I stretched out and whacked-off

thinking about a little girl I had seen

on a red bicycle about a week ago.

then I took a bath and put on my green

terrycloth robe just in time to get the fights

on tv from the Olympic.

there was a black and a Chicano in there.

that always made a good fight.

and it was a good idea too:

put them in there and let them kill each

other.

I watched the whole fight

thinking about the redhead all the time.

I think the Chicano won

but I’m not sure.

liberty

she was sitting in the window

of room 1010 at the Chelsea

in New York,

Janis Joplin’s old room.

it was 104 degrees

and she was on speed

and had one leg over

the sill,

and she leaned out and said,

“God, this is great!”

and then she slipped

and almost went out,

just catching herself.

it was very close.

she pulled herself in

walked over and stretched

on the bed.

I’ve lost a lot of women

in a lot of different ways

but that would have been

the first time

that way.

then she rolled off the bed

landed on her back

and when I walked over

she was asleep.

all day she had been wanting

to see the Statue of Liberty.

now she wouldn’t worry me about that

for a while.

don’t touch the girls

she’s up seeing my doctor

trying to get some diet pills;

she’s not fat, she needs the speed.

I go down to the nearest bar and wait.

at 3:30 in the afternoon of a tuesday.

they have a dancer.

there’s only one other man in the bar.

she works out

looking at herself in the mirror.

she’s like a monkey

dark

Korean.

she’s not very good,

skinny and obvious

and she sticks her tongue out at me

then at the other man.

times must be truly hard, I think.

I have a few more beers then get up to leave.

she waves me over.

“you go?” she asks.

“yes,” I say, “my wife has cancer.”

I shake her hand.

she points to a sign behind her:

DON’T TOUCH THE GIRLS.

she points to the sign and says,

“the sign says, ‘DON’T TOUCH THE GIRLS’.”

I go back to the parking lot and wait.

she comes out.

“did you get the pills?” I ask.

“yes,” she says.

“then it’s been a successful day.”

I think of the dancer walking across my

kitchen. I can’t visualize it. I am going

to die alone

just the way I live.

“take me to my place,” she says,

“I’ve got to get ready for night school.”

“sure,” I say and drive her on in.

dark shades

I never wear dark shades

but this red head went to get

a prescription filled on Hollywood Blvd.

and she kept haggling and working at

me, snapping and snarling.

I left her at the prescription counter

and walked around and got a large tube of

Crest and a giant bottle of Joy.

then I walked up to

the dark shade display rack and bought

the most vicious pair of shades

I could find.

we paid for our things

walked down to a Mexican place

and she ordered a taco she couldn’t eat

and sat there

haggling and snapping and snarling at me

and after eating I ordered 3 beers

drank them down

then put on my shades.

“o my God,” she said, “o my God shit!”

and I ripped her up both sides

most excellent riposte

snarling stinking marmalade shots

shit blows

farts from hell,

then I got up

paid

she following me out

both of us in shades

and the sidewalks split.

we found her car

got in and drove off

me sitting there

pushing the shades back against my nose

ripping out her backbone

and waving it out the window

like a broken Confederate flagpole…

dark and vicious shades help.

“o my God shit!” she said,

and the sun was up

and I didn’t know it.

they were a bargain for $4.25

even though I had left the Crest

and the Joy behind

at the taco place.

prayer in bad weather

by God, I don’t know what to

do.

they’re so nice to have around.

they have a way of playing with

the balls

and looking at the cock very

seriously

turning it

tweeking it

examining each part

as their long hair falls on

your belly.

it’s not the fucking and sucking

alone that reaches into a man

and softens him, it’s the extras,

it’s all the extras.

now it’s raining tonight

and there’s nobody

they are elsewhere

examining things

in new bedrooms

in new moods

or maybe in old

bedrooms.

anyhow, it’s raining tonight,

one hell of a dashing, pouring

rain….

very little to do.

I’ve read the newspaper

paid the gas bill

the electric co.

the phone bill.

it keeps raining.

they soften a man

and then let him swim

in his own juice.

I need an old-fashioned whore

at the door tonight

closing her green umbrella,

drops of moonlit rain on her

purse, saying, “shit, man,

can’t you get better music

than that on your radio?

and turn up the heat…”

it’s always when a man’s swollen

with love and everything

else

that it keeps raining

splattering

flooding

rain

good for the trees and the

grass and the air…

good for things that

live alone.

I would give anything

for a female’s hand on me

tonight.

they soften a man and

then leave him

listening to the rain.

melancholia

the history of melancholia

includes all of us.

me, I writhe in dirty sheets

while staring at blue walls

and nothing.

I have gotten so used to melancholia

that

I greet it like an old

friend.

I will now do 15 minutes of grieving

for the lost redhead,

I tell the gods.

I do it and feel quite bad

quite sad,

then I rise

CLEANSED

even though nothing is

solved.

that’s what I get for kicking

religion in the ass.

I should have kicked the redhead

in the ass

where her brains and her bread and

butter are

at…

but, no, I’ve felt sad

about everything:

the lost redhead was just another

smash in a lifelong

loss…

I listen to drums on the radio now

and grin.

there is something wrong with me

besides

melancholia.

a stethoscope case

my doctor has just come into his office

from surgery.

he meets me in the men’s john.

“God damn,” he says to me,

“where did you find her? oh, I just like

to look at girls like that!”

I tell him: “it’s my specialty: cement

hearts and beautiful bodies. If you can find

a heart-beat, let me know.”

“I’ll take good care of her,” he says.

“yes, and please remember all the ethical

codes of your honorable profession,” I tell

him.

he zips up first then washes.

“how’s your health?” he asks.

“physically I’m sound as a tic. mentally I’m

wasted, doomed, on my tiny cross, all that

crap.”

“I’ll take good care of her.”

“yes. and let me know about the heart-beat.”

he walks out.

I finish, zip up and also walk out.

only I don’t wash up.

I’m far beyond all that.

eat your heart out

I’ve come by, she says, to tell you

that this is it. I’m not kidding, it’s

over. this is it.

I sit on the couch watching her arrange

her long red hair before my bedroom

mirror.

she pulls her hair up and

piles it on top of her head—

she lets her eyes look at

my eyes—

then she drops the hair and

lets it fall down in front of her face.

we go to bed and I hold her

speechlessly from the back

my arm around her neck

I touch her wrists and hands

feel up to

her elbows

no further.

she gets up.

this is it, she says,

eat your heart out. You

got any rubber bands?

I don’t know.

here’s one, she says,

this will do. well,

I’m going.

I get up and walk her

to the door

just as she leaves

she says,

I want you to buy me

some high-heeled shoes

with tall thin spikes,

black high-heeled shoes.

no, I want them

red.

I watch her walk down the cement walk

under the trees

she walks all right and

as the poinsettas drip in the sun

I close the door.

the retreat

this time has finished me.

I feel like the German troops

whipped by snow and the communists

walking bent

with newspapers stuffed into

worn boots.

my plight is just as terrible.

maybe more so.

victory was so close

victory was there.

as she stood before my mirror

younger and more beautiful than

any woman I had ever known

combing yards and yards of red hair

as I watched her.

and when she came to bed

she was more beautiful than ever

and the love was very very good.

eleven months.

now she’s gone

gone as they go.

this time has finished me.

it’s a long road back

and back to where?

the guy ahead of me

falls.

I step over him.

did she get him too?

I made a mistake

I reached up into the top of the closet

and took out a pair of blue panties

and showed them to her and

asked “are these yours?”

and she looked and said,

“no, those belong to a dog.”

she left after that and I haven’t seen

her since. she’s not at her place.

I keep going there, leaving notes stuck

into the door. I go back and the notes

are still there. I take the Maltese cross

cut it down from my car mirror, tie it

to her doorknob with a shoelace, leave

a book of poems.

when I go back the next night everything

is still there.

I keep searching the streets for that

blood-wine battleship she drives

with a weak battery, and the doors

hanging from broken hinges.

I drive around the streets

an inch away from weeping,

ashamed of my sentimentality and

possible love.

a confused old man driving in the rain

wondering where the good luck

went.

4

popular melodies
in the last of
your mind

girls in pantyhose

schoolgirls in pantyhose

sitting on bus stop benches

looking tired at 13

with their raspberry lipstick.

it’s hot in the sun

and the day at school has been

dull, and going home is

dull, and

I drive by in my car

peering at their warm legs.

their eyes look

away—

they’ve been warned

about ruthless and horny old

studs; they’re just not going

to give it away like that.

and yet it’s dull

waiting out the minutes on

the bench and the years at

home, and the books they

carry are dull and the food

they eat is dull, and even

the ruthless, horny old studs

are dull.

the girls in pantyhose wait,

they await the proper time and

moment, and then they will move

and then they will conquer.

I drive around in my car

peeking up their legs

pleased that I will never be

part of their heaven and

their hell. but that scarlet

lipstick on those sad waiting

mouths! it would be nice to

kiss each of them once, fully,

then give them back.

but the bus will

get them first.

up your yellow river

a woman told a man

when he got off a plane

that I was dead.

a magazine printed

the fact that I was dead

and somebody else said

that they’d heard that I

was dead, and then somebody

wrote an article and said

our Rimbaud our Villon is

dead. at the same time an old

drinking buddy published

a piece stating that I

could no longer write. a

real Judas job. they can’t

wait for me to go, these

farts. well, I’m listening

to Tchaikovsky’s piano

concerto number one and

the announcer said Mahler’s

5th and 10th symphonies

are coming up via

Amsterdam,

and the beerbottles are

on the floor and ash

from my cigarettes

covers my cotton underwear

and my gut, I’ve

told all my girlfriends to

go to hell, and even this

is a better poem than any

of those gravediggers

could write.

artists:

she wrote me for years.

“I’m drinking wine in the kitchen.

it’s raining outside. the children

are in school.”

she was an average citizen

worried about her soul, her typewriter

and her

underground poetry reputation.

she wrote fairly well and with honesty

but only long after others had

broken the road ahead.

she’d phone me drunk at 2 a.m.

at 3 a.m.

while her husband slept.

“it’s good to hear your voice,” she’d

say.

“it’s good to hear your voice too,” I’d

say.

what the hell, you

know.

she finally came down. I think it had

something to do with

The Chapparal Poets Society of California.

they had to elect officers. she phoned me

from their hotel.

“I’m here,” she said, “we’re going to elect

officers.”

“o.k., fine,” I said, “get some good ones.”

I hung up.

the phone rang again.

“hey, don’t you want to see me?”

“sure,” I said, “what’s the address?”

after she said goodbye I jacked-off

changed my stockings

drank a half bottle of wine and

drove on out.

they were all drunk and trying to

fuck each other.

I drove her back to my place.

she had on pink panties with

ribbons.

we drank some beer and

smoked and talked about

Ezra Pound, then we

slept.

it’s no longer clear to

me whether I drove her to

the airport or

not.

she still writes letters

and I answer each one

viciously

hoping to make her

stop.

someday she may luck into

fame like Erica

Jong. (her face is not as good

but her body is better)

and I’ll think,

my God, what have I done?

I blew it.

or rather: I didn’t blow

it.

meanwhile I have her box number

and I’d better inform her

that my second novel will be out

in September.

that ought to keep her nipples hard

while I consider the possibility of

Francine du Plessix Gray.

I have shit stains in my underwear too

I hear them outside:

“does he always type this

late?”

“no, it’s very unusual.”

“he shouldn’t type this

late.”

“he hardly ever does.”

“does he drink?”

“I think he does.”

“he went to the mailbox in

his underwear yesterday.”

“I saw him too.”

“he doesn’t have any friends.”

“he’s old.”

“he shouldn’t type this late.”

they go inside and it begins

to rain as

3 gun shots sound half a block

away and

one of the skyscrapers in

downtown L.A. begins

burning

25 foot flames licking toward

doom.

Hawley’s leaving town

this guy

he’s got a crazy eye

and he’s brown

a dark brown from the sun

the Hollywood and Western sun

the racetrack sun

he sees me and he says,

“hey, Hawley’s leaving town

for a week. he messes up

my handicapping. now

I’ve got a chance.”

he’s grinning, he means it:

with Hawley out of town

he’s going to move toward

that castle in the Hollywood Hills;

dancing girls

six German Shepherds

a drawbridge,

ten year old

wine.

Sam the Whorehouse Man

walks up and I tell Sam that

I am clearing $150 a day

at the track.

“I work right off the

toteboard,” I tell him.

“I need a girl,” he tells me,

“who can belt-buckle a guy

without coming out with all

this Christian moral bullshit

afterwards.”

“Hawley’s leaving town,”

I tell Sam.

“where’s the Shoe?”

he asks.

“back east,” says an old man

who’s standing there.

he has a white plastic shield

over his left eye

with little holes

punched into it.

“that leaves it all to Pinky,”

says dark brown.

we all stand looking at each

other.

then

a silent signal given

we turn away

and start walking,

each

in a different direction:

north south east west.

we know something.

an unkind poem

they go on writing

pumping out poems—

young boys and college professors

wives who drink wine all afternoon

while their husbands work,

they go on writing

the same names in the same magazines

everybody writing a little worse each year,

getting out a poetry collection

and pumping out more poems

it’s like a contest

it is a contest

but the prize is invisible.

they won’t write short stories or articles

or novels

they just go on

pumping out poems

each sounding more and more like the others

and less and less like themselves,

and some of the young boys weary and quit

but the professors never quit

and the wives who drink wine in the afternoons

never ever ever quit

and new young boys arrive with new magazines

and there is some correspondence with lady or men poets

and some fucking

and everything is exaggerated and dull.

when the poems come back

they retype them

and send them off to the next magazine on the list,

and they give readings

all the readings they can

for free most of the time

hoping that somebody will finally know

finally applaud them

finally congratulate and recognize their

talent

they are all so sure of their genius

there is so little self-doubt,

and most of them live in North Beach or New York City,

and their faces are like their poems:

alike,

and they know each other and

gather and hate and admire and choose and discard

and keep pumping out more poems

more poems

more poems

the contest of the dullards:

tap tap tap, tap tap, tap tap tap, tap tap…

the bee

I suppose like any other boy

I had one best friend in the neighborhood.

his name was Eugene and he was bigger

than I was and one year older.

Eugene used to whip me pretty good.

we fought all the time.

I kept trying him but without much

success.

once we leaped off a garage roof together

to prove our guts.

I twisted my ankle and he came up clean

as freshly-wrapped butter.

I guess the only good thing he ever did for me

was when the bee stung me while I was barefoot

and while I sat down and pulled the stinger out

he said,

“I’ll get the son of a bitch!”

and he did

with a tennis racket

plus a rubber hammer.

it was all right

they say they die

anyway.

my foot swelled up double-size

and I stayed in bed

praying for death

and Eugene went on to become an

Admiral or a Commander

or something large in the United States Navy

and he passed through one or two wars

without injury.

I imagine him an old man now

in a rocking chair

with his false teeth

and glass of buttermilk…

while drunk

I fingerfuck this 19 year old groupie

in bed with me.

but the worst part is

(like jumping off the garage roof)

Eugene wins again

because he’s not even thinking

about me.

the most

here comes the fishhead singing

here comes the baked potato in drag

here comes nothing to do all day long

here comes another night of no sleep

here comes the phone ringing the wrong tone

here comes a termite with a banjo

here comes a flagpole with blank eyes

here comes a cat and a dog wearing nylons

here comes a machinegun singing

here comes bacon burning in the pan

here comes a voice saying something dull

here comes a newspaper stuffed with small red birds

with flat brown beaks

here comes a cunt carrying a torch

a grenade

a deathly love

here comes victory carrying

one bucket of blood

and stumbling over the berrybush

and the sheets hang out the windows

and the bombers head east west north south

get lost

get tossed like salad

as all the fish in the sea line up and form

one line

one long line

one very long thin line

the longest line you could ever imagine

and we get lost

walking past purple mountains

we walk lost

bare at last like the knife

having given

having spit it out like an unexpected olive seed

as the girl at the call service

screams over the phone:

“don’t call back! you sound like a jerk!”

ah…

drinking German beer

and trying to come up with

the immortal poem at

5 p.m. in the afternoon.

but, ah, I’ve told the

students that the thing

to do is not to try.

but when the women aren’t

around and the horses aren’t

running

what else is there to do?

I’ve had a couple of

sexual fantasies

had lunch out

mailed three letters

been to the grocery store.

nothing on tv.

the telephone is quiet.

I’ve run dental floss

between my teeth.

it won’t rain and I listen

to the early arrivals from the

8 hour day as they

drive in and park their cars

behind the apartment

next door.

I sit drinking German beer

and trying to come up with the

big one

and I’m not going to make it.

I’m just going to keep drinking

more and more German beer

and rolling smokes

and by 11 p.m.

I’ll be spread out

on the unmade bed

face up

asleep under the electric

light

still waiting on the immortal

poem.

the girl on the bus stop bench

I saw her when I was in the left lane

going east on Sunset.

she was sitting

with her legs crossed

reading a paperback.

she was Italian or Indian or

Greek

and I was stopped at a red signal

as now and then a wind

would lift her skirt,

I was directly across from her

looking in,

and such perfect immaculate legs

I had never seen.

I am essentially bashful

but I stared and kept staring

until the person in the car behind

me honked.

it had never happened quite like that

before.

I drove around the block

and parked in the supermarket

lot

directly across from her

in my dark shades

I kept staring

like a schoolboy in his first

excitement.

I memorized her shoes

her dress

her stockings

her face.

cars came by and blocked my

view.

then I saw her again.

the wind flipped her skirt

high along her thighs

and I began rubbing myself.

just before her bus came

I climaxed.

I smelled my sperm

felt it wet against my shorts

and pants.

it was an ugly white bus

and it took her away.

I backed out of the parking lot

thinking, I’m a peep-freak

but at least I didn’t expose

myself.

I’m a peep-freak

but why do they do that?

why do they look like that?

why do they let the wind do

that?

when I got home

I undressed and bathed

got out

toweled

turned on

the news

turned off the news

and

wrote this poem.

I’m getting back to where I was

I used to take the back off

the telephone and stuff it with rags

and when somebody knocked

I wouldn’t answer and if they persisted

I’d tell them in terms vulgar

to vanish.

just another old crank

with wings of gold

flabby white belly

plus

eyes to knock out

the sun.

a lovely couple

I had to take a shit

but instead I went

into this shop to

have a key made.

the woman was dressed

in gingham and smelled

like a muskrat.

“Ralph,” she hollered

and an old swine in a

flowered shirt and

size 6 shoes, her

husband, came out and

she said, “this man

wants a key.”

he started grinding

as if he really didn’t

want to.

there were slinking

shadows and urine

in the air.

I moved along the

glass counter,

pointed and called

to her,

“here, I want this

one.”

she handed it to

me: a switchblade

in a light purple

case.

$6.50 plus tax.

the key cost

practically

nothing.

I got my change and

walked out on

the street.

sometimes you need

people like that.

the strangest sight you ever did see—

I had this room in front on DeLongpre

and I used to sit for hours

in the daytime

looking out the front

window.

there were any number of girls who would

walk by

swaying;

it helped my afternoons,

added something to the beer and the

cigarettes.

one day I saw something

extra.

I heard the sound of it first.

“come on, push!” he said.

there was a long board

about 2½ feet wide and

8 feet long;

nailed to the ends and in the middle

were roller skates.

he was pulling in front

two long ropes attached to the board

and she was in back

guiding and also pushing.

all their possessions were tied to the

board:

pots, pans, bedquilts, and so forth

were roped to the board

tied down;

and the skatewheels were grinding.

he was white, red-necked, a

southerner—

thin, slumped, his pants about to

fall from his

ass—

his face pinked by the sun and

cheap wine,

and she was black

and walked upright

pushing;

she was simply beautiful

in turban

long green ear rings

yellow dress

from

neck to

ankle.

her face was gloriously

indifferent.

“don’t worry!” he shouted, looking back

at her, “somebody will

rent us a place!”

she didn’t answer.

then they were gone

although I still heard the

skatewheels.

they’re going to make it,

I thought.

I’m sure they

did.

in a neighborhood of murder

the roaches spit out

paperclips

and the helicopter circles and circles

smelling for blood

searchlights leering down into our

bedroom

5 guys in this court have pistols

another a

machete

we are all murderers and

alcoholics

but there are worse in the hotel

across the street

they sit in the green and white doorway

banal and depraved

waiting to be institutionalized

here we each have a small green plant

in the window

and when we fight with our women at 3 a.m.

we speak

softly

and on each porch

is a small dish of food

always eaten by morning

we presume

by the

cats.

private first class

they took my man off the street

the other day

he wore an L.A. Rams sweatshirt with

the sleeves cut

off

and under that

an army shirt

private first class

and he wore a green beret

walked very straight

he was black in brown walking shorts

hair dyed blonde

he never bothered anybody

he stole a few babies

and ran off cackling

but he always returned the infants

unharmed

he slept in the back of the

Love Parlor

the girls let him.

compassion is found in

strange places.

one day I didn’t see him

then another.

I asked around.

my taxes are going to go up

again. the state’s got to

house and feed

him. the cops took him

in. no

good.

love is a dog from hell

feet of cheese

coffeepot soul

hands that hate poolsticks

eyes like paperclips

I prefer red wine

I am bored on airliners

I am docile during earthquakes

I am sleepy at funerals

I puke at parades

and am sacrificial at chess

and cunt and caring

I smell urine in churches

I can no longer read

I can no longer sleep

eyes like paperclips

my green eyes

I prefer white wine

my box of rubbers is getting

stale

I take them out

Trojan-Enz

lubricated

for greater sensitivity

I take them out

and put three of them on

the walls of my bedroom are blue

Linda where did you go?

Katherine where did you go?

(and Nina went to England)

I have toenail clippers

and Windex glass cleaner

green eyes

blue bedroom

bright machinegun sun

this whole thing is like a seal

caught on oily rocks

and circled by the Long Beach Marching Band

at 3:36 p.m.

there is a ticking behind me

but no clock

I feel something crawling along

the left side of my nose:

memories of airliners

my mother had false teeth

my father had false teeth

and every Saturday of their lives

they took up all the rugs in their house

waxed the hardwood floors

and covered them with rugs again

and Nina is in England

and Irene is on ATD

and I take my green eyes

and lay down in my blue bedroom.

my groupie

I read last Saturday in the

redwoods outside of Santa Cruz

and I was about 3/4’s finished

when I heard a long high scream

and a quite attractive

young girl came running toward me

long gown & divine eyes of fire

and she leaped up on the stage

and screamed: “I WANT YOU!

I WANT YOU! TAKE ME! TAKE

ME!”

I told her, “look, get the hell

away from me.”

but she kept tearing at my

clothing and throwing herself

at me.

“where were you,” I

asked her, “when I was living

on one candy bar a day and

sending short stories to the

Atlantic Monthly?”

she grabbed my balls and almost

twisted them off. her kisses

tasted like shitsoup.

2 women jumped up on the stage

and

carried her off into the

woods.

I could still hear her screams

as I began the next poem.

maybe, I thought, I should have

taken her on the stage in front

of all those eyes.

but one can never be sure

whether it’s good poetry or

bad acid.

now, if you were teaching creative writing, he asked, what would you tell them?

I’d tell them to have an unhappy love

affair, hemorrhoids, bad teeth

and to drink cheap wine,

avoid opera and golf and chess,

to keep switching the head of their

bed from wall to wall

and then I’d tell them to have

another unhappy love affair

and never to use a silk typewriter

ribbon,

avoid family picnics

or being photographed in a rose

garden;

read Hemingway only once,

skip Faulkner

ignore Gogol

stare at photos of Gertrude Stein

and read Sherwood Anderson in bed

while eating Ritz crackers,

realize that people who keep

talking about sexual liberation

are more frightened than you are.

listen to E. Power Biggs work the

organ on your radio while you’re

rolling Bull Durham in the dark

in a strange town

with one day left on the rent

after having given up

friends, relatives and jobs.

never consider yourself superior and/

or fair

and never try to be.

have another unhappy love affair.

watch a fly on a summer curtain.

never try to succeed.

don’t shoot pool.

be righteously angry when you

find your car has a flat tire.

take vitamins but don’t lift weights or jog.

then after all this

reverse the procedure.

have a good love affair.

and the thing

you might learn

is that nobody knows anything—

not the State, nor the mice

the garden hose or the North Star.

and if you ever catch me

teaching a creative writing class

and you read this back to me

I’ll give you a straight A

right up the pickle

barrel.

the good life

a house with 7 or 8 people

living in it

getting up the rent.

there’s a stereo never used

and a set of bongos

never used

and there are rugs over the

windows

and you smoke

as the living roaches

stumble over buttons on your

shirt and tumble

off.

it’s dark and somebody sends

out for food. you eat the food

and sleep. everybody sleeps at

once: on floors, coffeetables,

couches, beds, in bathtubs. there’s

even one in the brush outside.

then somebody wakes up and

says, “come on, let’s roll

one!”

a few others wake up.

“sure. yea. o.k.”

“all right. come on, somebody

roll a couple. let’s get it

on!”

“yeah! Let’s get it on!”

we smoke a few joints and then

we’re asleep again

except we reverse positions:

bathtub to couch, coffeetable to

rug, bed to floor, and a new one

falls into the brush

outside, and they haven’t yet

found Patty Hearst and Tim doesn’t

want to speak to

Allan.

the Greek

the guy in the front court can’t

speak English, he’s Greek, a

rather stupid-looking and

fairly ugly man.

now my landlord does some painting,

it’s not very good.

he showed the Greek one of his paintings.

the Greek went out and purchased

paper, brushes, paints.

the Greek started painting in his front

court. he leaves the paintings outside to

dry.

the Greek had never painted before—

here it comes:

a blue guitar

a street

a horse.

he’s good

in his mid-forties he’s

good.

he’s found a

toy.

he’s happy

now.

then I think, I wonder if he will get

very good?

and I wonder if I will have to watch

the rest?

the glory and the women and the women and

the women and the women and

the decay.

I can almost smell the bloodsuckers forming

to the left.

you see,

I have fastened to him already.

my comrades

this one teaches

that one lives with his mother.

and that one is supported by a red-faced alcoholic father

with the brain of a gnat.

this one takes speed and has been supported by

the same woman for 14 years.

that one writes a novel every ten days

but at least pays his own rent.

this one goes from place to place

sleeping on couches, drinking and making his

spiel.

this one prints his own books on a duplicating

machine.

that one lives in an abandoned shower room

in a Hollywood hotel.

this one seems to know how to get grant after grant,

his life is a filling-out of forms.

this one is simply rich and lives in the best

places while knocking on the best doors.

that one had breakfast with William Carlos

Williams.

and this one teaches.

and that one teaches.

and this one puts out textbooks on how to do it

and speaks in a cruel and dominating voice.

they are everywhere.

everybody is a writer.

and almost every writer is a poet.

poets poets poets poets poets poets

poets poets poets poets poets poets

the next time the phone rings

it will be a poet.

the next person at the door

will be a poet.

this one teaches

and that one lives with his mother

and that one is writing the story of

Ezra Pound.

oh, brothers, we are the sickest and the

lowest of the breed.

soul

oh, how worried they are about my

soul!

I get letters

the phone rings…

“are you going to be all right?”

they ask.

“I’ll be all right,” I tell them.

“I’ve seen so many go down the drain,”

they tell me.

“don’t worry about me,” I say.

yet, they make me nervous.

I go in and take a shower

come out and squeeze a pimple on my

nose.

then I go into the kitchen and make

a salami and ham sandwich.

I used to live on candy bars.

now I have imported German mustard

for my sandwich. I might be in danger

at that.

the phone keeps ringing and the letters keep

arriving.

if you live in a closet with rats and

eat dry bread

they like you.

you’re a genius

then.

or if you’re in the madhouse or

the drunktank

they call you a genius.

or if you’re drunk and shouting

obscenities and

vomiting your life-guts on

the floor

you’re a genius.

but get the rent paid up a month in

advance

put on a new pair of stockings

go to the dentist

make love to a healthy clean girl

instead of a whore

and you’ve lost your

soul.

I’m not interested enough to ask about

their souls.

I suppose I

should.

a change of habit

Shirley came to town with a broken leg

and met the Chicano who smoked

long slim cigars

and they got a place together

on Beacon street

5th floor;

the leg didn’t get in the way

too much and

they watched television together

and Shirley cooked, on her

crutches and all;

there was a cat, Bogey,

and they had some friends

and talked about sports and Richard Nixon

and how the hell to

make it.

it worked for some months,

Shirley even got the cast off,

and the Chicano, Manuel,

got a job at the Biltmore,

Shirley sewed all the buttons back on

Manuel’s shirts, mended and matched his

socks, then

one day Manuel returned to the place, and

she was gone—

no argument, no note, just

gone, all her clothes

all her stuff, and

Manuel sat by the window and looked out

and didn’t make his job

the next day or the

next day or

the day after, he

didn’t phone in, he

lost his job, got a

ticket for parking, smoked

four hundred and sixty cigarettes, got

picked up for common drunk, bailed

out, went

to court and pleaded

guilty.

when the rent was up he

moved from Beacon street, he

left the cat and went to live with

his brother and

they’d get drunk

every night

and talk about how

terrible

life was.

Manuel never again smoked

long slim cigars

because Shirley always said

how

handsome he looked

when he did.

$$$$$$

I’ve always had trouble with

money.

this one place I worked

everybody ate hot dogs

and potato chips

in the company cafeteria for

3 days before each

payday.

I wanted steaks,

I even went to see the manager

of the cafeteria and

demanded that he serve

steaks. he refused.

I’d forget payday.

I had a high rate of absenteeism and

payday would arrive and everybody would

start talking about

it.

“payday?” I’d say, “hell, is this

payday? I forgot to pick up my

last check…”

“stop the bullshit, man…”

“no, no, I mean it…”

I’d jump up and go down to payroll

and sure enough there’d be a

check and I’d come back and show it

to them. “Jesus Christ, I forgot all about

it…”

for some reason they’d get

angry. then the payroll clerk would come

around. I’d have two

checks. “Jesus,” I’d say, “two checks.”

and they were

angry.

some of them were working

two jobs.

the worst day

it was raining very hard,

I didn’t have a raincoat so

I put on a very old coat I hadn’t worn for

months and

I walked in a little late

while they were working.

I looked in the coat for some

cigarettes

and found a 5 dollar bill

in the side pocket:

“hey, look,” I said, “I just found a 5 dollar

bill I didn’t know I had, that’s

funny.”

“hey, man, knock off the

shit!”

“no, no, I’m serious, really, I remember

wearing this coat when

I got drunk at the

bars. I’ve been rolled too often,

I’ve got this fear…I take money out of

my wallet and hide it all

over me.”

“sit down and get to

work.”

I reached into an inside pocket:

“hey, look, here’s a TWENTY! God, here’s a

TWENTY I never knew I

had! I’m

RICH!”

“you’re not funny, son of

a bitch…”

“hey, my God, here’s ANOTHER

twenty! too much, too too

much…I knew I didn’t spend all that

money that night. I thought I’d been

rolled again…”

I kept searching the

coat. “hey! here’s a ten and

here’s a fiver! my God…”

“listen, I’m telling you to sit down

and shut up…”

“my God, I’m RICH…I don’t even need

this job…”

“man, sit down…”

I found another ten after I sat down

but I didn’t say

anything.

I could feel waves of hatred and

I was confused,

they believed I had

plotted the whole thing

just to make them

feel bad. I didn’t want

to. people who live on hot dogs and

potato chips for

3 days before payday

feel bad

enough.

I sat down

leaned forward and

began to go to

work.

outside

it continued to

rain.

sitting in a sandwich joint

my daughter is most

glorious.

we are eating a takeout

snack in my car

in Santa Monica.

I say, “hey, kid,

my life has been

good, so good.”

she looks at me.

I put my head down

on the steering wheel,

shudder, then I

kick the door open,

put on a

mock-puke.

I straighten up.

she laughs

biting into her

sandwich.

I pick up four

french fries

put them into my mouth,

chew them.

it’s 5:30 p.m.

and the cars run up

and down past us.

I sneak a look:

we’ve got all the

luck we need:

her eyes are brilliant with the

remainder of the

day, and she’s

grinning.

doom and siesta time

my friend is worried about dying

he lives in Frisco

I live in L.A.

he goes to the gym and

works with the iron and hits

the big bag.

old age diminishes him.

he can’t drink because of

his liver.

he can do

50 pushups.

he writes me

letters

telling me

that I’m the only one

who listens to him.

sure, Hal, I answer him

on a postcard.

but I don’t want to pay

all those gym fees.

I go to bed

with a liverwurst and

onion sandwich at

one p.m.

after I eat I

nap

with the helicopters

and vultures

circling over my

sagging mattress.

as crazy as I ever was

drunk and writing poems

at 3 a.m.

what counts now

is one more

tight

pussy

before the light

tilts out

drunk and writing poems

at 3:15 a.m.

some people tell me that I’m

famous.

what am I doing alone

drunk and writing poems at

3:18 a.m.?

I’m as crazy as I ever was

they don’t understand

that I haven’t stopped hanging out of 4th floor

windows by my heels—

I still do

right now

sitting here

writing this down

I am hanging by my heels

floors up:

68, 72, 101,

the feeling is the

same:

relentless

unheroic and

necessary

sitting here

drunk and writing poems

at 3:24 a.m.

sex

I am driving down Wilton Avenue

when this girl of about 15

dressed in tight blue jeans

that grip her behind like two hands

steps out in front of my car

I stop to let her cross the street

and as I watch her contours waving

she looks directly through my windshield

at me

with purple eyes

and then blows

out of her mouth

the largest pink globe of

bubble gum

I have ever seen

while I am listening to Beethoven

on the car radio.

she enters a small grocery store

and is gone

and I am left with

Ludwig.

dead now

I always wanted to ball

Henry Miller, she said,

but by the time I got there

it was too late.

damn it, I said, you girls

always arrive too late.

I’ve already masturbated

twice today.

that wasn’t his problem,

she said. by the way,

how come you flog-off

so much?

it’s the space, I said,

all that space between

poems and stories, it’s

intolerable.

you should wait, she said,

you’re impatient.

what do you think of Celine?

I asked.

I wanted to ball him too.

dead now, I said.

dead now, she said.

care to hear a little

music? I asked.

might as well, she said.

I gave her Ives.

that’s all I had left

that night.

twins

hey, said my friend, I want you to meet

Hangdog Harry, he reminds me of you,

and I said, all right, and we went to

this cheap hotel.

old men sitting around watching

some program on the tv in the lobby

as we went up the stairway

to 209 and there was Hangdog

sitting in a straight strawback chair

bottle of wine at his feet

last year’s calendar on the wall,

“you guys sit down,” he said,

“that’s the problem:

man’s inhumanity to man.”

we watched him slowly roll a

Bull Durham cigarette.

“I’ve got a 17 inch neck and I’ll kill

anybody who fucks with me.”

he licked his cigarette

then spit on the rug.

“just like home here. feel free.”

“how you feeling, Hangdog?” asked

my friend.

“terrible. I’m in love with a whore,

haven’t seen her in 3 or 4 weeks.”

“what you think she’s doing, Hang?”

“well, right now about now I’d say

she’s sucking some turkeyneck.”

he picked up his wine bottle

took a tremendous drain.

“look,” my friend said to Hangdog,

“we’ve got to get going.”

“o.k., time and tide, they don’t

wait…”

he looked at me:

“whatcha say your name was?”

“Salomski.”

“pleased to meet cha, kid.”

“likewise.”

we went down the stairway

they were still in the lobby

looking at t.v.

“what did you think of him?”

my friend asked.

“shit,” I said, “he was really

all right. yes.”

the place didn’t look bad

she had huge thighs

and a very good laugh

she laughed at everything

and the curtains were yellow

and I finished

rolled off

and before she went to the bathroom

she reached under the bed and

threw me a rag.

it was hard

it was stiff with other men’s

sperm.

I wiped off on the sheet.

when she came out

she bent over

and I saw all that behind

as she put Mozart

on.

the little girls

up in northern California

he stood in the pulpit

and had been reading for some time

he had been reading poems about

nature and the goodness

of man.

he knew that everything was all

right and you couldn’t blame him:

he was a professor and had never

been in jail or in a whorehouse

had never had a used car die

in a traffic jam;

had never needed more than

3 drinks during his wildest

evening;

had never been rolled, flogged,

mugged,

had never been bitten by a dog

he got nice letters from Gary

Snyder, and his face was

kindly, unmarked and

tender.

his wife had never betrayed him,

nor had his luck.

he said, “I’m just going to read

3 more poems and then I’m going

to step down and let

Bukowski read.”

“oh no, William,” said all the

little girls in their pink and blue

and white and orange and lavender

dresses, “oh no, William,

read some more, read some

more!”

he read one more poem and then he said,

“this will be the last poem that

I will read.”

“oh no, William,” said all the little

girls in their red and green see-through

dresses, “oh no, William,” said

all the little girls in their tight blue

jeans with little hearts sewn on them,

“oh no, William,” said all the little girls,

“read more poems, read more poems!”

but he was good to his word.

he got the poem out and he climbed down and

vanished. as I got up to read

the little girls wiggled in

their seats and some of them hissed and

some of them made remarks to me

which I will use at some later date.

two or three weeks later

I got a letter from William

saying that he did enjoy my reading.

a true gentleman.

I was in bed in my underwear with a

3 day hangover. I lost the envelope

but I took the letter and folded it

into a paper airplane such as

I had learned to make in grammar

school. it sailed about the room

before landing between an old Racing Form

and a pair of shit-stained shorts.

we have not corresponded since.

rain or shine

the vultures at the zoo

(all 3 of them)

sit very quietly in their

caged tree

and below

on the ground

are chunks of rotting meat.

the vultures are over-full.

our taxes have fed them

well.

we move on to the next

cage.

a man is in there

sitting on the ground

eating

his own shit.

I recognize him as

our former mailman.

his favorite expression

had been:

“have a beautiful day.”

that day, I did.

cold plums

eating cold plums in bed

she told me about the German

who owned everything on the block

except the custom drapery shop

and he tried to buy

the custom drapery shop

but the girls said, no.

the German had the best grocery store in

Pasadena, his meats were high

but worth the price

and his vegetables and produce were

very cheap and

he also sold flowers. people came

from all over Pasadena to go to his

store

but he wanted to buy the custom drapery shop

and the girls kept saying, no.

one night somebody was seen running

out the back door of the drapery shop

and there was a fire

and almost everything was destroyed—

they’d had a tremendous inventory,

they tried to save what was left

had a fire sale

but it didn’t work

they had to sell, finally,

and then the German owned the drapery shop

but it just sits there, vacant,

the German’s wife tried to make a go of it

she tried to sell little baskets and things

but it didn’t work.

we finished the plums.

“that was a sad story,” I told her.

then she bent down and began sucking me off.

the windows were open and you could hear me

hollering all over the neighborhood

at 5:30 in the evening.

girls coming home

the girls are coming home in their cars

and I sit by the window and

watch.

there’s a girl in a red dress

driving a white car

there’s a girl in a blue dress

driving a blue car.

there’s a girl in a pink dress

driving a red car.

as the girl in the red dress

gets out of the white car

I look at her legs

as the girl in the blue dress

gets out of the blue car

I look at her legs

as the girl in the pink dress

gets out of the red car

I look at her legs.

the girl in the red dress

who got out of the white car

had the best legs

the girl in the pink dress

who got out of the red car

had average legs

but I keep remembering the girl in the blue dress

who got out of the blue car

I saw her panties

you don’t know how exciting life can get

around here

at 5:35 p.m.

some picnic

which reminds me

I shacked with Jane for 7 years

she was a drunk

I loved her

my parents hated her

I hated my parents

we made a nice

foursome

one day we went on a picnic

together

up in the hills

and we played cards and drank beer and

ate potato salad

they treated her as if she were a living person

at last

everybody laughed

I didn’t laugh.

later at my place

over the whiskey

I said to her,

I don’t like them

but it’s good they treated you

nice.

you damn fool, she said,

don’t you see?

see what?

they kept looking at my beer-belly,

they think I’m pregnant.

oh, I said, well here’s to our beautiful

child.

here’s to our beautiful child,

she said.

we drank them down.

bedpans

in the hospitals I’ve been in

you see the crosses on the walls

with the thin palm leaves behind them

yellowed and browned

it is the signal to accept the inevitable

but what really hurts

are the bedpans

hard under your ass

you’re dying

and you’re supposed to sit up on this

impossible thing

and urinate and

defecate

while in the bed

next to yours

a family of 5 brings good cheer

to an incurable

heart-case

cancer-case

or a case of general rot.

the bedpan is a merciless rock

a horrible mockery

because nobody wants to drag your failing body

to the crapper and back.

you’d drag it

but they’ve got the bars up:

you’re in your crib

your tiny death-crib

and when the nurse comes back

an hour and a half later

and there’s nothing in the bedpan

she gives you a most

intemperate look

as if when nearing death

one should be able to do

the common common things

again and again.

but if you think that’s bad

just relax

and let it go

all of it

into the sheets

then you’ll hear it

not only from the nurse

but from

all the other patients…

the hardest part of dying

is that they expect you

to go out

like a rocket shot into the

night sky.

sometimes that can be done

but when you need the bullet and the gun

you’ll look up

and find

that the wires above your head

connected to the button

years ago

have been cut

snipped

eliminated

been

made

useless as

the bedpan.

the good loser

red face

Texas

and age

he’s at an L.A.

racetrack

been talking to

a group of folks.

it’s the 4th race

and he’s ready to

leave:

“well, goodbye,

folks and God bless,

see you around

tomorrow…”

“nice fellow.”

“yeh.”

he’s going to the

parking lot to

get into a 12 year

old car

from there he’ll

drive to a roominghouse

his room will neither

have a toilet nor a

bath

his room will have

one window with a

torn paper shade

and outside will be

a crumbling cement wall

spray-can graffiti courtesy

of a Chicano youth gang

he’ll take off his

shoes and

get on the bed

it will be dark

but he won’t turn

on the light

he’s got nothing

to do.

an art

all the way from Mexico

straight from the fields

to 14 wins

13 by k.o.

he was ranked #3

and in a tune-up fight

he was k.o’d by an unranked

black fighter who hadn’t fought

in 2 years.

all the way from Mexico

straight from the fields

the drink and the women had gotten

to him.

in the rematch he was k.o’d again

and suspended for 6 months.

all that way

for the bottle and 2 cases of

v.d.

he came back in a year

swearing he was clean, he’d

learned.

and he earned a draw with the

9th ranked in his division.

he came back for the rematch

and the fight was stopped in

the 3rd round because he

couldn’t protect

himself.

and he went all the way back

to Mexico

straight to the fields.

it takes a damned good poet

like me

to handle drink and women

evade v.d.

write about failures

like him

and hold my ranking in the

top 10:

all the way from Germany

straight from the factories

among beerbottles

and the ringing of the

phone.

the girls at the green hotel

are more beautiful than

movie stars

and they lounge on the

lawn

sunbathing

and one sits in a short

dress and high

heels, legs crossed

exposing miraculous

thighs.

she has a bandanna

on her head

and smokes a

long cigarette.

traffic slows

almost stops.

the girls ignore

the traffic.

they are half

asleep in the afternoon

they are whores

they are whores without

souls

and they are magic

because they lie

about nothing.

I get in my car

wait for traffic to

clear,

drive across the street

to the green hotel

to my favorite:

she is

sun-bathing on the

lawn nearest the

curb.

“hello,” I say.

she turns eyes like

imitation diamonds

up at me.

her face has no

expression.

I drop my latest

book of poems

out the car

window.

it falls

by her side.

I shift into

low,

drive off.

there’ll be some

laughs

tonight.

a good one

I get too many

phone calls.

they seek the

creature out.

they shouldn’t.

I never phoned

Knut Hamsun or

Ernie or

Celine.

I never phoned

Salinger

I never phoned

Neruda.

tonight I got

a call:

“hello. you

Charles Bukowski?”

“yes.”

“well, I got a

house.”

“yes?”

“a bordello.”

“I understand.”

“I’ve read your

books. I’ve got a

houseboat in

Sausalito.”

“all right.”

“I want to give you

my phone number. you

ever come to San Francisco

I’ll buy you a drink.”

“o.k. give me the

number.”

I took it down.

“we run a class joint. we’re

after lawyers and state senators,

upper class citizens, muggers,

pimps, the like.”

“I’ll phone you when I

get up there.”

“lots of the girls

read your books. they

love you.”

“yeah?”

“yeah.”

we said goodbye.

I liked that

phone call.

shit time

half drunk

I left her place

her warm blankets

and I was hungover

didn’t even know what town

it was.

I walked along and

I couldn’t find my car.

but I knew it was somewhere.

and then I was lost

too.

I walked around. it was a

Wednesday morning and I could

see the ocean to the south.

but all that drinking:

the shit was about to pour

out of me.

I walked towards the

sea.

I saw a brown brick

structure at the edge

of the sea.

I walked in. there was an

old guy groaning on one of

the pots.

“hi, buddy,” he said.

“hi,” I said.

“it’s hell out there,

isn’t it?” the old guy

asked.

“it is,” I answered.

“need a drink?”

“never before noon.”

“what time you got?”

“11:58.”

“we got two minutes.”

I wiped, flushed, pulled up my

pants and walked over.

the old man was still on his pot,

groaning.

he pointed to a bottle of wine

at his feet

it was almost done

and I picked it up and took about

half what remained.

I handed him a very old and wrinkled

dollar

then walked outside on the lawn

and puked it up.

I looked at the ocean and the

ocean looked good, full of blues and

greens and sharks.

I walked back out of there

and down the street

determined to find my automobile.

it took me one hour and 15 minutes

and when I found it

I got in and drove off

pretending that I knew just as much

as the next

man.

madness

I don’t beat the walls with my fists

I just sit

but it rushes in

a tide of it.

the woman in the court behind me howls,

weeps every night.

sometimes the county comes

and takes her away for a day or two.

I believed she was suffering the loss

of a great love

until one day she came over and told me about

it—

she had lost 8 apartment houses

to a gigolo who had swindled her out

of them.

she was howling and weeping over loss of property.

she began weeping as she told me

then with a mouth lined with stale lipstick

and smelling of garlic and onions

she kissed me and told me:

“Hank, nobody loves you if you don’t have money.”

she’s old, almost as old as I am.

she left, still weeping…

the other morning at 7:30 a.m. two black

attendants came with their stretcher,

only they knocked on my door.

“come on, man,” said the tallest

one.

“wait,” I said, “there’s a mistake.”

I was terribly hungover

standing in my torn bathrobe

hair hanging down over my eyes.

“this is the address they gave us, man,

this is 5437 and 2/5’s isn’t it?”

“yes.”

“come on, man, don’t give us no shit.”

“the lady you want is in the back there.”

they both walked around back.

“this door here?”

“no, no, that’s my back door. look go up those steps behind

you there. it’s the door to the east, the one with the mailbox

hanging loose.”

they went up and banged on the door. I watched them take her

away. they didn’t use the stretcher. she walked between them.

and the thought occurred to me that they were taking the wrong

one but I wasn’t sure.

a 56 year old poem

I went with two ladies

down to Venice

to look for antique furniture.

I parked in back of the store

and went in with them.

$125 for a clock, $700 for 6 chairs.

I stopped looking.

the ladies moved around

looking at everything.

the ladies had class.

I waved goodbye to one of the ladies

and walked out.

it was Sunday and the bar

wasn’t much better,

everybody was nervous and young

and blonde and pale.

I finished my drink, got 4 beers

at the liquor store

and sat in my car drinking them.

finishing the 4th beer

the ladies came out.

they asked me if I was all right.

I told them that every experience

meant something

and that they had pulled me out of

my usual murky

current.

the one I knew best had bought a table

with a marble top for $100.

she owned her own business and was a

civilized person.

she was civilized enough to know a neighbor

who had a van

and while I sat in her apartment drinking

1974 Zeller Schwarze Katz

they went down and got the table.

later she wanted to know what I thought about

the table and I said I thought it was all right,

sometimes I lost one hundred dollars at the

racetrack. we watched tv in bed and later

that night I couldn’t come. I think it was

because I was thinking about that marble table.

I’m sure it was. I don’t have any antique marble

tables at my place, I almost never have any sex trouble at

my place. sometimes but

very seldom.

I don’t understand the whole antique

business

I’m sure it’s a giant

con.

the beautiful young girl walking past the graveyard—

I stop my car at the signal

I see her walking past the graveyard—

as she walks past the iron fence

I can see through the iron fence

and I see the headstones

and the green lawn.

her body moves in front of the iron fence

the headstones do not move.

I think,

doesn’t anybody else see this?

I think,

does she see those headstones?

if she does

she has wisdom that I don’t have

for she appears to ignore them.

her body moving in its

magic fluid

and her long hair is lighted

by the 3 p.m. sun.

the signal changes

she crosses the street to the west

I drive west.

I drive my car down to the ocean

get out

and run up and down

in front of the sea for 35 minutes

seeing people here and there

with eyes and ears and toes

and various other parts.

nobody seems to care.

beer

I don’t know how many bottles of beer

I have consumed while waiting for things

to get better.

I don’t know how much wine and whiskey

and beer

mostly beer

I have consumed after

splits with women—

waiting for the phone to ring

waiting for the sound of footsteps,

and the phone never rings

until much later

and the footsteps never arrive

until much later.

when my stomach is coming up

out of my mouth

they arrive as fresh as spring flowers:

“what the hell have you done to yourself?

it will be 3 days before you can fuck me!”

the female is durable

she lives seven and one half years longer

than the male, and she drinks very little beer

because she knows it’s bad for the

figure.

while we are going mad

they are out

dancing and laughing

with horny cowboys.

well, there’s beer

sacks and sacks of empty beer bottles

and when you pick one up

the bottles fall through the wet bottom

of the paper sack

rolling

clanking

spilling grey wet ash

and stale beer,

or the sacks fall over at 4 a.m.

in the morning

making the only sound in your life.

beer

rivers and seas of beer

beer beer beer

the radio singing love songs

as the phone remains silent

and the walls stand

straight up and down

and beer is all there is.

artist

all of a sudden I’m a painter.

a girl from Galveston gives me

$50 for a painting of a man

holding a candycane while

floating in a darkened sky.

than a young man with a black beard

comes over

and I sell him three for $80.

he likes rugged stuff

where I write across the painting—

“shoot shit” or “GRATE ART IS

HORSESHIT, BUY TACOS.”

I can do a painting in 5 minutes.

I use acrylics, paint right out of

the tube.

I do the left side of the painting

first with my left hand and then

finish the right side with my

right hand.

now the man with the black beard

comes back with a friend whose hair

sticks out and they have a young blonde

girl with them.

black beard is still a sucker:

I sell him a hunk of shit—

an orange dog with the word

“DOG” written on his side.

stick-out hair wants 3 paintings

for which I ask $70.

he doesn’t have the money.

I keep the paintings but

he promises to send me a

girl called Judy

in garter belt and high heels.

he’s already told her about me:

“a world-renowned writer,” he said

and she said, “oh no!” and pulled

her dress up over her head.

“I want that,” I told him.

then we haggled over terms

I wanted to fuck her first

then get head later.

“how about head first and

fuck later?” he asked.

“that doesn’t work,” I

said.

so we agreed:

Judy will come by and

afterwards

I will hand her the

3 paintings.

so there we are:

back to the barter system,

the only way to beat

inflation.

never the less,

I’d like to

start the Men’s Liberation Movement:

I want a woman to hand me 3 of her

paintings after I have

made love to her,

and if she can’t paint

she can leave me

a couple of golden earrings

or maybe a slice of ear

in memory of one who

could.

my old man

16 years old

during the depression

I’d come home drunk

and all my clothing—

shorts, shirts, stockings—

suitcase, and pages of

short stories

would be thrown out on the

front lawn and about the

street.

my mother would be

waiting behind a tree:

“Henry, Henry, don’t

go in…he’ll

kill you, he’s read

your stories…”

“I can whip his

ass…”

“Henry, please take

this…and

find yourself a room.”

but it worried him

that I might not

finish high school

so I’d be back

again.

one evening he walked in

with the pages of

one of my short stories

(which I had never submitted

to him)

and he said, “this is

a great short story.”

I said, “o.k.,”

and he handed it to me

and I read it.

it was a story about

a rich man

who had a fight with

his wife and had

gone out into the night

for a cup of coffee

and had observed

the waitress and the spoons

and forks and the

salt and pepper shakers

and the neon sign

in the window

and then had gone back

to his stable

to see and touch his

favorite horse

who then

kicked him in the head

and killed him.

somehow

the story held

meaning for him

though

when I had written it

I had no idea

of what I was

writing about.

so I told him,

“o.k., old man, you can

have it.”

and he took it

and walked out

and closed the door.

I guess that’s

as close

as we ever got.

fear

he walks up to my Volks

after I have parked

and rocks it back and

forth

grinning around his

cigar.

“hey, Hank, I notice

all the women around your

place lately…good looking

stuff; you’re doing all

right.”

“Sam,” I say, “that’s not

true; I am one of God’s most

lonely men.”

“we got some nice girls at

the parlor, you oughta try

some of them.”

“I’m afraid of those places,

Sam, I can’t walk into them.”

“I’ll send you a girl then,

real nice stuff.”

“Sam, don’t send me a whore,

I always fall in love with

whores.”

“o.k., friend,” he says,

“let me know if you change

your mind.”

I watch him walk away.

some men are always on

top of their game.

I am mostly always

confused.

he can break a man

in half

and doesn’t know who

Mozart is.

who wants to listen

to music

anyhow

on a rainy Wednesday

night?

little tigers everywhere

Sam the whorehouse man

has squeaky shoes

and he walks up and down

the court

squeaking and talking to

the cats.

he’s 310 pounds,

a killer

and he talks to the cats.

he sees the women at the massage

parlor and has no girlfriends

no automobile

he doesn’t drink or dope

his biggest vices are

chewing on a cigar and

feeding all the cats in

the neighborhood.

some of the cats get

pregnant

and so finally there are

more and more cats and

everytime I open my door

one or two cats will

run in and sometimes I’ll

forget they are there and

they’ll shit under the bed

or I’ll awaken at night

hearing sounds

leap up with my blade

sneak into the kitchen and

find one of Sam the whorehouse

man’s cats walking around on

the sink or sitting on top

of the refrigerator.

Sam runs the love parlor

around the corner

and his girls stand in the

doorway in the sun

and the traffic signals go

red and green and red and green

and all of Sam’s cats

possess some of the meaning

as do the days and the nights.

after the reading:

“…I’ve seen people in front of

their typewriters in such a bind

that it would blow their intestines

right out of their assholes if they

were trying to shit.”

“ah hahaha hahaha!”

“…it’s a shame to work that

hard to try to write.”

“ah hahaha hahaha!”

“ambition rarely has anything to

do with talent. luck is best, and

talent limps along a little

bit behind luck.”

“ah haha.”

he rose and left with an 18 year old virgin, the most

beautiful co-ed of them

all.

I closed my notebook

got up and limped a

little bit behind

them.

about cranes

sometimes after you get your ass

kicked real good by the forces

you often wish you were a crane

standing on one leg

in blue water

but there’s

the

old up-bringing

you know:

you don’t want to be

a crane

standing on one leg

in blue water

the distress is not

enough

and

the victory

limps

a crane can’t

buy a piece of ass

or

hang itself at noon

in Monterey

those are some of

the things

humans can do

besides

stand on one leg

a gold pocket watch

my grandfather was a tall German

with a strange smell on his breath.

he stood very straight

in front of his small house

and his wife hated him

and his children thought him odd.

I was six the first time we met

and he gave me all his war medals.

the second time I met him

he gave me his gold pocket watch.

it was very heavy and I took it home

and wound it very tight

and it stopped running

which made me feel bad.

I never saw him again

and my parents never spoke of him

nor did my grandmother

who had long ago

stopped living with him.

once I asked about him

and they told me

he drank too much

but I liked him best

standing very straight

in front of his house

and saying, “hello, Henry, you

and I, we know each

other.”

beach trip

the strong men

the muscle men

there they sit

down at the beach

cocoa tans

with the weights

scattered about them

untouched

they sit as the

waves go in and

out

they sit as the

stock market

makes and breaks

men and families

they sit while

one punch of a button

could turn their

turkeynecks to

black and shriveled

matchsticks

they sit while

suicides in green rooms

trade it in for space

they sit while former

Miss Americas

weep before wrinkled

mirrors

they sit

they sit with less

life-flow than apes

and my woman stops and

looks at them:

“oooh oooh oooh,” she

says.

I walk off with

my woman as the waves

go in and out.

“there’s something wrong

with them,” she said, “what

is it?”

“their love only runs in

one direction.”

the seagulls whirl and

the sea runs in and out

and we left them

back there

wasting themselves

time

this moment

the seagulls

the sea

the sand.

one for the shoeshine man

the balance is preserved by the snails climbing the

Santa Monica cliffs;

the luck is in walking down Western Avenue

and having the girls in a massage

parlor holler at you, “Hello, Sweetie!”

the miracle is having 5 women in love

with you at the age of 55,

and the goodness is that you are only able

to love one of them.

the gift is having a daughter more gentle

than you are, whose laughter is finer

than yours.

the peace comes from driving a

blue 67 Volks through the streets like a

teenager, radio tuned to The Host Who Loves You

Most, feeling the sun, feeling the solid hum

of the rebuilt motor

as you needle through traffic.

the grace is being able to like rock music,

symphony music, jazz…

anything that contains the original energy of

joy.

and the probability that returns

is the deep blue low

yourself flat upon yourself

within the guillotine walls

angry at the sound of the phone

or anybody’s footsteps passing;

but the other probability—

the lilting high that always follows—

makes the girl at the checkstand in the

supermarket look like

Marilyn

like Jackie before they got her Harvard lover

like the girl in high school that we

all followed home.

there is that which helps you believe

in something else besides death:

somebody in a car approaching

on a street too narrow,

and he or she pulls aside to let you

by, or the old fighter Beau Jack

shining shoes

after blowing the entire bankroll

on parties

on women

on parasites,

humming, breathing on the leather,

working the rag

looking up and saying:

“what the hell, I had it for a

while. that beats the

other.”

I am bitter sometimes

but the taste has often been

sweet, it’s only that I’ve

feared to say it. it’s like

when your woman says,

“tell me you love me,” and

you can’t.

if you see me grinning from

my blue Volks

running a yellow light

driving straight into the sun

I will be locked in the

arms of a

crazy life

thinking of trapeze artists

of midgets with big cigars

of a Russian winter in the early 40’s

of Chopin with his bag of Polish soil

of an old waitress bringing me an extra

cup of coffee and laughing

as she does so.

the best of you

I like more than you think.

the others don’t count

except that they have fingers and heads

and some of them eyes

and most of them legs

and all of them

good and bad dreams

and a way to go.

justice is everywhere and it’s working

and the machine guns and the frogs

and the hedges will tell you

so.

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 (2001), and Night Torn Mad with Footsteps: New Poems (2001).

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

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

BY CHARLES BUKOWSKI

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

Post Office (1971)

Mockingbird Wish Me Luck (1972)

South of No North (1973)

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

Factotum (1975)

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

Women (1978)

You Kissed Lilly (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 (Volume 1) (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)

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

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

Sifting Through the Madness for the Word, the Line, the Way: New Poems (2002)

Copyright

LOVE IS A DOG FROM HELL. Copyright © 1977 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 July 2007 ISBN 978-0-06-147741-6

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