CHARLES BUKOWSKI

PLAY THE PIANO DRUNK LIKE A PERCUSSION INSTRUMENT UNTIL THE FINGERS BEGIN TO BLEED A BIT

for Linda Lee Beighle,

the best

waiting

in a life full of little stories

for a death to come

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Epigraph

tough company

12-24-78

an ideal

leaning on wood

the souls of dead animals

another argument

the red porsche

some picnic

the drill

40,000 flies

the strangest thing

the paper on the floor

2 flies

through the streets of anywhere

fire station

an argument over Marshal Foch

40 cigarettes

a killer gets ready

I love you

a little atomic bomb

the egg

the knifer

the ladies of summer

I’m in love

the apple

the violin player

5 dollars

cooperation

the night I was going to die

2347 Duane

a radio with guts

Solid State Marty

interviews

face of a political candidate on a street billboard

Yankee Doodle

blue moon, oh bleweeww mooooon how I adore you!

nothing is as effective as defeat

success

Africa, Paris, Greece

the drunk tank judge

claws of paradise

the loner

the sandwich

the happy life of the tired

the proud thin dying

under

hot month

maybe tomorrow

junk

8 rooms

I liked him

the killer smiles

horse and fist

close encounters of another kind

mermaid

hug the dark

59 cents a pound

promenade

metamorphosis

we’ll take them

dow average down

to weep

fair stand the fields of France

art

about the author

other books by charles bukowski

cover

copyright

about the publisher

tough company

poems like gunslingers

sit around and

shoot holes in my windows

chew on my toilet paper

read the race results

take the phone off the

hook.

poems like gunslingers

ask me

what the hell my game is,

and

would I like to

shoot it out?

take it easy, I say,

the race is not to

the swift.

the poem sitting at the

south end of the couch

draws

says

balls off for that

one!

take it easy, pardner, I

have plans for

you.

plans, huh? what

plans?

The New Yorker,

pard.

he puts his iron

away.

the poem sitting in the

chair near the door

stretches

looks at me:

you know, fat boy, you

been pretty lazy

lately.

fuck off

I say

who’s running this

game?

we’re running this

game

say all the

gunslingers

drawing iron:

get

with it!

so

here you

are:

this poem

was the one

who was sitting

on top of the

refrigerator

flipping

beercaps.

and now

I’ve got him

out of the way

and all the others

are sitting around pointing

their weapons at me and

saying:

I’m next, I’m next, I’m

next!

I suppose that when

I die

the leftovers

will jump some other

poor

son of a bitch.

12-24-78

I suck on this beer

in my kitchen

and think about

cleaning my fingernails

and shaving

as I listen to the

classical radio

station.

they play holiday

music.

I prefer to hear Christmas

music in July

while I am being threatened

with death by

a woman.

that’s

when I need it—

that’s

when I need

Bing Crosby and the

elves and

some fast

reindeer.

now I sit here

listening to this

slop in

season—it’s such

a sugar tit—

I’d rather play a game of

ping-pong with

the risen ghost

of Hitler.

amateur drunks run their cheerful

cars into each other

the ambulances sing to each

other outside.

an ideal

the Waxmans, she said,

he starved,

all these builders wanted to

buy him;

he worked in Paris in London and

even in Africa,

he had his own

concept of

design…

what the fuck? I said,

a starving architect,

eh?

yes, yes, he starved and his

wife and his children

but he was true to

his ideals.

a starving architect,

eh?

yes, he finally came through,

I saw him and his wife last

Wednesday night, the Waxmans…

would you care to meet

them?

tell him, I said, to stick 3 fingers up

his ass

and flick-off.

you’re always so fucking nasty, she said,

knocking over her tall-stemmed

glass of scotch and

water.

uh huh, I said, in honor of

the dead.

leaning on wood

there are 4 or 5 guys at the

racetrack bar.

there is a mirror behind the

bar.

the reflections are not

kind

of the 4 or 5 guys at the

racetrack bar.

there are many bottles at the

racetrack bar.

we order different drinks.

there is a mirror behind the

bar.

the reflections are not

kind.

“it don’t take brains to beat

the horses, it just takes money

and guts.”

our reflections are not

kind.

the clouds are outside.

the sun is outside.

the horses are warming up outside.

we stand at the racetrack

bar.

“I’ve been playing the races for

40 years and I still can’t beat

them.”

“you can play the races for another

40 years and you still won’t beat

them.”

the bartender doesn’t like

us.

the 5 minute warning buzzer

sounds.

we finish our drinks and

turn away to make our

bets.

our reflections look better

as we walk away:

you can’t see our

faces.

4 or 5 guys from the racetrack

bar.

what shit. nobody

wins. ask

Caesar.

the souls of dead animals

after the slaughterhouse

there was a bar around the corner

and I sat in there

and watched the sun go down

through the window,

a window that overlooked a lot

full of tall dry weeds.

I never showered with the boys at the

plant

after work

so I smelled of sweat and

blood.

the smell of sweat lessens after a

while

but the blood-smell begins to fulminate

and gain power.

I smoked cigarettes and drank beer

until I felt good enough to

board the bus

with the souls of all those dead

animals riding with

me;

heads would turn slightly

women would rise and move away from

me.

when I got off the bus

I only had a block to walk

and one stairway up to my

room

where I’d turn on my radio and

light a cigarette

and nobody minded me

at all.

another argument

she had an uncle who sniffed her

panties by

firelight while eating

crackerjack and

muffins with honey,

she sat across from me

in that Chinese place

the drinks kept coming and she

talked about Matisse, Iranian

coins, fingerbowls at Cambridge, Pound

at Salerno, Plato at

Madagascar, the death of

Schopenhauer, and the times she and

I had been together and

ebullient.

drunk in the afternoon

I knew she had kept me too long

and when I got back to the other

she was

raving

underprivileged

pissed and

bloody unorthodox burning

mad.

then she said it didn’t matter anymore

and I felt like saying

what do you mean it doesn’t matter anymore?

how can you say it about anything, least of

all us? where are your eyes and your feet and

your head? if the thin blue marching of troops is

correct, we are all about to be

murdered.

the red porsche

it feels good

to be driven about in a red

porsche

by a woman better-

read than I

am.

it feels good

to be driven about in a red

porsche

by a woman who can explain

things about

classical

music to

me.

it feels good

to be driven about in a red

porsche

by a woman who buys

things for my refrigerator

and my

kitchen:

cherries, plums, lettuce, celery,

green onions, brown onions,

eggs, muffins, long

chilis, brown sugar,

Italian seasoning, oregano, white

wine vinegar, pompeian olive oil

and red

radishes.

I like being driven about

in a red porsche

while I smoke cigarettes in

gentle languor.

I’m lucky. I’ve always been

lucky:

even when I was starving to death

the bands were playing for

me.

but the red porsche is very nice

and she is

too, and

I’ve learned to feel good when

I feel good.

it’s better to be driven around in a

red porsche

than to own

one. the luck of the fool is

inviolate.

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

it 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 and weenies

they talked to 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 keep 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.

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.

40,000 flies

torn by a temporary wind

we come back together again

check walls and ceilings for cracks and

the eternal spiders

wonder if there will be one more

woman

now

40,000 flies running the arms of my

soul

singing

I met a million dollar baby in a

5 and 10 cent

store

arms of my soul?

flies?

singing?

what kind of shit is

this?

it’s so easy to be a poet

and so hard to be

a man.

the strangest thing

I was sitting in a chair

in the dark

when horrible sounds of torture

and fear

began in the brush

outside of my window.

it was obviously not a male cat

and a female cat

but a male and a male

and from the sound

one appeared to be much larger

and was attacking with the intent to

kill.

then it stopped.

then it began again

worse this time;

the sounds were so terrible

that I was unable to

move.

then the sounds stopped.

I got up from my chair

went to bed and

slept.

I had a dream. this small grey and white

cat came to me in my dream

and it was very

sad. it spoke to me,

it said:

“look what the other cat did to me.”

and it rested in my lap

and I saw the slashes and

the raw flesh. then it

jumped off my lap.

then that was all.

I awakened at 8:45 p.m.

put on my clothes and walked outside

and looked around.

there was nothing

there.

I walked back inside and

dropped two eggs

into a pot of water

and turned up the

flame.

the paper on the floor

…the drawing is poor and I know little of the plot:

a man with a stable, world-earned face and the necktie of

respectability, and a satisfied pipe; and his wife—

signified by the quick ink of black hair (just ever so

tousled with having babies and guiding them safely through

the falls): there is a grandmother who sits somewhat like

a flowerpot: allotted an earned space but not really

useful; and a couple of smiling, knee-climbing gamins

two little Jung and Adlers

full of moot, black-type questions,

and, of course,

a young girl troubled with young loves

(they take these things so much more seriously than the

young men who

go behind the barn);

and there is a young man—her, I presume barn-wise, brother

with this great tundra, this shield of black hair;

he is horribly healthy

and dressed in the latest in sport shirts

in the best barn-wise manner;

this big…brother (16? 17? 18? God wot?)

is usually (when I read this, which is not very often)

leaning forward over the car seat

(he sits in the back, like the author)

and makes some…comment on LIFE, capital all-the-way LIFE

that is so VERY true

that it just…upsets everybody

except the poor kiddies who don’t know what the hell it’s

all about in spite of their Jung and Adler

and they just ride along round-eyed and sucking at their

lollypops all up in the pretty pure white clouds;

but, lo, the headman grinds his pipe grey-faced against this

sporty truth that old men let lie like overgrown

gas-meter covers; and the mother (wife wot?) draws down

a long black eyebrow and one more strand of hair becomes

unattached in the cool long struggle; and

Grandma, oh, I don’t know—

by then I have looked away; but I remember the girl,

the young girl with young loves

is always especially angry

because the back of the barn has been blamed on her…

locked with René the Frenchman, the struggling…painter or

wot?

nobody wants to face it but this…fat…sports-wear shirt

character (who is really a nice strong boy who will really

be O.K. some day) keeps bringing the cow out from behind the
barn

with the bull; but he is young

and laughs

and all somehow bear up;

but best is his…explanation of it all,

of the cow and the bull,

with the inherent and instinctive…wiseness of his

youth;

the explanation usually comes in the morning

over the breakfast table—

before all this sickly struggling ordinary mess of common…

humanity has had a chance

to seat itself

the healthy white…face laughs and tells it all;

he’s been sitting there waiting to tell it all,

he’s been sitting there with the little…twins (or wot?)

as they spill porridge so cutely with their little spoons,

this big…happy oaf who’s never had a toothache

has been sitting waiting the entrance of his elders

(Granny who must put in her teeth, and Papa who is worried

about the office, and Mama who isn’t exactly straightened out

yet; and the young girl who loves with faith, anger and…

purity) in they come

and he throws out an arm

and tilting his healthy…carcass madly back in the chair

before the sun-pure kitchen curtains

and the little lovable, struggling bungling group

he says his great say,

and in the balloon above his head are the words

and by the twisted agony of the faces

I am led to believe something has been said,

but I read again

looking carefully at the great happy spewing oaf’s face

the brown great deepness of the eyes

and the young girl’s teeth pushed out sour as if she had

bitten into some lemon of truth,

but there is something wrong

there is some mistake

because the sheet of paper I hold

slants and angles in the electric light

into the open dizziness of my dome

and it huddles and curls itself into a puffy knot

and pushes at the back of my eyes

and pulls my nerves taut-thin from toe to hair-line

and I know then that

the great spewing oaf has said

nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing

nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing

nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing

and now,

on the rug

under the chair

I can see the comic section

folded in half,

I can see the black and white lines

and some faces I don’t care to discern;

but a thin illness overcomes me

at the sight of this portion of paper

and I look away

and try not to think

that much of our living life

is true to the little paper faces

that stare up from our feet

and grin and jump and gesture,

to be wrapped in tomorrow’s garbage

and thrown away.

2 flies

The flies are angry bits of

life;

why are they so angry?

it seems they want more,

it seems almost as if they

are angry

that they are flies;

it is not my fault;

I sit in the room

with them

and they taunt me

with their agony;

it is as if they were

loose chunks of soul

left out of somewhere;

I try to read a paper

but they will not let me

be;

one seems to go in half-circles

high along the wall,

throwing a miserable sound

upon my head;

the other one, the smaller one

stays near and teases my hand,

saying nothing,

rising, dropping

crawling near;

what god puts these

lost things upon me?

other men suffer dictates of

empire, tragic love…

I suffer

insects…

I wave at the little one

which only seems to revive

his impulse to challenge:

he circles swifter,

nearer, even making

a fly-sound,

and one above

catching a sense of the new

whirling, he too, in excitement,

speeds his flight,

drops down suddenly

in a cuff of noise

and they join

in circling my hand,

strumming the base

of the lampshade

until some man-thing

in me

will take no more

unholiness

and I strike

with the rolled-up paper—

missing!—

striking,

striking,

they break in discord,

some message lost between them,

and I get the big one

first, and he kicks on his back

flicking his legs

like an angry whore,

and I come down again

with my paper club

and he is a smear

of fly-ugliness;

the little one circles high

now, quiet and swift,

almost invisible;

he does not come near

my hand again;

he is tamed and

inaccessible; I leave

him be, he leaves me

be;

the paper, of course,

is ruined;

something has happened,

something has soiled my

day,

sometimes it does not

take a man

or a woman,

only something alive;

I sit and watch

the small one;

we are woven together

in the air

and the living;

it is late

for both of us.

through the streets of anywhere

of course it is nonsense to try to patch up an

old poem while drinking a warm beer

on a Sunday afternoon; it is better to simply

exist through the end of a cigarette;

the people are listless and although this is a

poor term of description

Gershwin is on the radio

banging and praying to get out;

I have read the newspapers,

carefully noting the suicides,

I have also carefully noted

the green of some tree

like a nature poet on his last cup,

and

bang bang

there they go outside;

new children, some of them getting ready

to sit here, and do as I am doing—

warm beer, dead Gershwin,

getting fat around the middle,

disbelieving the starving years,

Atlanta frozen like God’s head

holding an apple in the window,

but we are all finally tricked and

slapped to death

like lovers’ vows, bargained

out of any gain,

and the radio is finished

and the phone rings and a female says,

“I am free tonight;” well, she is not much

but I am not much either;

in adolescent fire I once thought I could ride

a horse through the streets of anywhere,

but they quickly shot this horse from under,

“Ya got cigarettes?” she asks. “Yes,” I say,

“I got cigarettes.” “Matches?” she asks.

“Enough matches to burn Rome.” “Whiskey?”

“Enough whiskey for a Mississippi River

of pain.” “You drunk?” “Not yet.”

She’ll be over: perfect: a fig

leaf and a small club, and

I look at the poem I am trying to work with:

I say that

the backalleys will arrive upon

the bloodyapes

as noon arrives upon the Salinas

fieldhands….

bullshit. I rip the page once, twice,

three times, then check for matches and

icecubes, hot and cold,

with some men their conversation is better than

their creation

and with other men

it’s a woman

almost any woman

that is their Rodin among park benches;

bird down in road awaiting rats and wheels

I know that I have deserted you,

the icecubes pile like fool’s gold

in the pitcher

and now they are playing

Alex Scriabin

which is a little better

but not much

for me.

fire station

(For Jane, with love)

we came out of the bar

because we were out of money

but we had a couple of wine bottles

in the room.

it was about 4 in the afternoon

and we passed a fire station

and she started to go

crazy:

“a FIRE STATION! oh, I just love

FIRE engines, they’re so red and

all! let’s go in!”

I followed her on

in. “FIRE ENGINES!” she screamed

wobbling her big

ass.

she was already trying to climb into

one, pulling her skirt up to her

waist, trying to jacknife up into the

seat.

“here, here, lemme help ya!” a fireman ran

up.

another fireman walked up to

me: “our citizens are always welcome,”

he told

me.

the other guy was up in the seat with

her. “you got one of those big THINGS?”

she asked him. “oh, hahaha!, I mean one of

those big HELMETS!”

“I’ve got a big helmet too,” he told

her.

“oh, hahaha!”

“you play cards?” I asked my

fireman. I had 43 cents and nothing but

time.

“come on in back,” he

said. “of course, we don’t gamble.

it’s against the

rules.”

“I understand,” I told

him.

I had run my 43 cents up to a

dollar ninety

when I saw her going upstairs with

her fireman.

“he’s gonna show me their sleeping

quarters,” she told

me.

“I understand,” I told

her.

when her fireman slid down the pole

ten minutes later

I nodded him

over.

“that’ll be 5

dollars.”

“5 dollars for

that?”

“we wouldn’t want a scandal, would

we? we both might lose our

jobs. of course, I’m not

working.”

he gave me the

5.

“sit down, you might get it

back.”

“whatcha playing?”

“blackjack.”

“gambling’s against the

law.”

“anything interesting is. besides,

you see any money on the

table?”

he sat down.

that made 5 of

us.

“how was it Harry?” somebody asked

him.

“not bad, not

bad.”

the other guy went on

upstairs.

they were bad players really.

they didn’t bother to memorize the

deck. they didn’t know whether the

high numbers or low numbers were left. and basically they hit too
high,

didn’t hold low

enough.

when the other guy came down

he gave me a

five.

“how was it, Marty?”

“not bad. she’s got…some fine

movements.”

“hit me!” I said. “nice clean girl. I

ride it myself.”

nobody said

anything.

“any big fires lately?” I

asked.

“naw. nothin’

much.”

“you guys need

exercise. hit me

again!”

a big red-headed kid who had been shining an

engine

threw down his rag and

went upstairs.

when he came down he threw me a

five.

when the 4th guy came down I gave him

3 fives for a

twenty.

I don’t know how many firemen

were in the building or where they

were. I figured a few had slipped by me

but I was a good

sport.

it was getting dark outside

when the alarm

rang.

they started running around.

guys came sliding down the

pole.

then she came sliding down the

pole. she was good with the

pole. a real woman. nothing but guts

and

ass.

“let’s go,” I told

her.

she stood there waving goodbye to the

firemen but they didn’t seem

much interested

any more.

“let’s go back to the

bar,” I told

her.

“ooh, you got

money?”

“I found some I didn’t know I

had…”

we sat at the end of the bar

with whiskey and beer

chaser.

“I sure got a good

sleep.”

“sure, baby, you need your

sleep.”

“look at that sailor looking at me!

he must think I’m a…a…”

“naw, he don’t think that. relax, you’ve got

class, real class. sometimes you remind me of an

opera singer. you know, one of those prima d’s.

your class shows all over

you. drink

up.”

I ordered 2

more.

“you know, daddy, you’re the only man I

LOVE! I mean, really…LOVE! ya

know?”

“sure I know. sometimes I think I am a king

in spite of myself.”

“yeah. yeah. that’s what I mean, somethin’ like

that.”

I had to go to the urinal. when I came back

the sailor was sitting in my

seat. she had her leg up against his and

he was talking.

I walked over and got in a dart game with

Harry the Horse and the corner

newsboy.

an argument over Marshal Foch

Foch was a great soldier, he said, Marshal Foch;

listen, I said, if you don’t keep it clean

I’ll have to slap you across the face with

a wet towel.

I’ll write the governor, he said.

the governor is my uncle, I said.

Marshal Foch was my

grandfather, he said.

I warned you, I said. I’m a

gentleman.

And I’m a Foch, he said.

that did it. I slapped him with a wet towel.

he grabbed the phone.

governor’s mansion, he said.

I slapped a wet rubber glove down

his mouth and cut the wire.

outside the crickets were chirping like

mad: Foch, Foch, Foch, Foch!

they chirped.

I got out my sub-machine gun and blasted

the devils

but there were so many of them

I had to give up.

I pulled the wet rubber glove out.

I surrender, I said, it’s too much:

I can’t change the world.

all the so-called ladies in the room

applauded.

he stood up and bowed gallantly as

outside the crickets chirped.

I put on my hat

and stalked out. I still maintain

the French are weak

and no

wonder.

40 cigarettes

I smoked 2 packs of cigarettes today and

my tongue feels like a

caterpillar trying to get out for

rainwater

somebody is working over

Pictures at an Exhibition

while tiny pimples of sweat

work their way down my

fat sides.

too sick today and told the man

over the phone

it was stomach pains.

the pains in the ass too and

the soul?

the gophers are underground

staring at pictures on mudwalls

machineguns are mounted in the

windows.

40 cigarettes.

what’s walking around

chewing grass,

4 legs, no

hands?

it’s not the

politburo.

it could be a

donkey. how’d you like to be in a

donkey’s head for a

while? your body in a donkey’s

body? you’d only last

ten minutes

they’d have to let you

out

you’d be so

scared

but who’s going to

let you out of that

dismal bluepurple notion

of what you are

now? and I’m the one who’s

scared.

a killer gets ready

he was a good one

say 18, 19,

a marine

and everytime

a woman came down the train aisle

he seemed to stand up

so I couldn’t see

her

and the woman smiled at him

but I didn’t smile

at him

he kept looking at himself in the

train window

and standing up and taking off his

coat and then standing up

and putting it back

on

he polished his belt buckle with a

delighted vigor

and his neck was red and

his face was red and his eyes were a

pretty blue

but I didn’t like

him

and everytime I went to the can

he was either in one of the cans

or he was in front of one of the mirrors

combing his hair or

shaving

and he was always walking up and down the

aisles

or drinking water

I watched his Adam’s apple juggle the water

down

he was always in my

eyes

but we never spoke

and I remembered all the other trains

all the other buses

all the other wars

he got off at Pasadena

vainer than any woman

he got off at Pasadena

proud and

dead

the rest of the trainride—

8 or 10 miles—

was perfect.

I love you

I opened the door of this shanty and there she lay

there she lay

my love

across the back of a man in a dirty undershirt.

I was rough tough easy-with-money-Charley (that’s me)

and I awakened both of them

like God

and when she was awake

she started screaming, “Hank, Hank!” (that’s my other name)

“take me away from this son of a bitch!

I hate him I love you!”

of course, I was wise enough not to believe any of

this and I sat down and said,

“I need a drink, my head hurts and I need a

drink.”

this is the way love works, you see, and then we all sat there

drinking the whiskey and I was

perfectly satisfied

and then he reached over and handed me a five,

“that’s all that’s left of what she took, that’s all that’s left

of what she took from you.”

I was no golden-winged angel ripped up through

boxtops

I took the five and left them in there

and I walked up the alley

to Alvarado street

and I turned in left

at the first

bar.

a little atomic bomb

o, just give me a little atomic bomb

not too much

just a little

enough to kill a horse in the street

but there aren’t any horses in the street

well, enough to knock the flowers from a bowl

but I don’t see any

flowers in a

bowl

enough then

to frighten my love

but I don’t have any

love

well

give me an atomic bomb then

to scrub in my bathtub

like a dirty and lovable child

(I’ve got a bathtub)

just a little atomic bomb, general,

with pugnose

pink ears

smelling like underclothes in

July

do you think I’m crazy?

I think you’re crazy

too

so the way you think:

send me one before somebody else

does.

the egg

he’s 17.

mother, he said, how do I crack an

egg?

all right, she said to me, you don’t have to

sit there looking like that.

oh, mother, he said, you broke the yoke.

I can’t eat a broken yoke.

all right, she said to me, you’re so tough,

you’ve been in the slaughterhouses, factories,

the jails, you’re so god damned tough,

but all people don’t have to be like you,

that doesn’t make everybody else wrong and you

right.

mother, he said, can you bring me some cokes

when you come home from work?

look, Raleigh, she said, can’t you get the cokes

on your bike, I’m tired after

work.

but, mama, there’s a hill.

what hill, Raleigh?

there’s a hill,

it’s there and I have to peddle over

it.

all right, she said to me, you think you’re so

god damned tough. you worked on a railroad track

gang, I hear about it every time you get drunk:

“I worked on a railroad track gang.”

well, I said, I did.

I mean, what difference does it make?

everybody has to work somewhere.

mama, said the kid, will you bring me those

cokes?

I really like the kid. I think he’s very

gentle. and once he learns how to crack an

egg he may do some

unusual things. meanwhile

I sleep with his mother

and try to stay out of

arguments.

the knifer

you knifed me, he said, you told Pink Eagle

not to publish me.

oh hell, Manny, I said, get off it.

these poets are very sensitive

they have more sensitivity than talent,

I don’t know what to do with them.

just tonight the phone rang and

it was Bagatelli and Bagatelli said

Clarsten phoned and Clarsten was pissed

because we hadn’t mailed him the

anthology, and Clarsten blamed me

for not mailing the anthology

and furthermore Clarsten

claimed I was trying to do him

in, and he was very

angry. so said

Bagatelli.

you know, I’m really beginning to feel like

a literary power

I just lean back in my chair and roll cigarettes

and stare at the walls

and I am given credit for the life and death of

poetic careers.

at least I’m given credit for the

death part.

actually these boys are dying off without my

help. The sun has gone behind the cloud.

I have nothing to do with the workings.

I smoke Prince Albert, drink Schlitz

and copulate whenever possible. believe in my

innocence and I might consider

yours.

the ladies of summer

the ladies of summer will die like the rose

and the lie

the ladies of summer will love

so long as the price is not

forever

the ladies of summer

might love anybody;

they might even love you

as long as summer

lasts

yet winter will come to them

too

white snow and

a cold freezing

and faces so ugly

that even death

will turn away—

wince—

before taking

them.

I’m in love

she’s young, she said,

but look at me,

I have pretty ankles,

and look at my wrists, I have pretty

wrists

o my god,

I thought it was all working,

and now it’s her again,

every time she phones you go crazy,

you told me it was over

you told me it was finished,

listen, I’ve lived long enough to become a

good woman,

why do you need a bad woman?

you need to be tortured, don’t you?

you think life is rotten if somebody treats you

rotten it all fits,

doesn’t it?

tell me, is that it? do you want to be treated like a

piece of shit?

and my son, my son was going to meet you.

I told my son

and I dropped all my lovers.

I stood up in a cafe and screamed

I’M IN LOVE,

and now you’ve made a fool of me…

I’m sorry, I said, I’m really sorry.

hold me, she said, will you please hold me?

I’ve never been in one of these things before, I said,

these triangles…

she got up and lit a cigarette, she was trembling all

over. she paced up and down, wild and crazy. she had

a small body. her arms were thin, very thin and when

she screamed and started beating me I held her

wrists and then I got it through the eyes: hatred,

centuries deep and true. I was wrong and graceless and

sick. all the things I had learned had been wasted.

there was no living creature as foul as I

and all my poems were

false.

the apple

this is not just an apple

this is an experience

red green yellow

with underlying pits of white

wet with cold water

I bite into it

christ, a white doorway…

another bite

chewing

while thinking of an old witch

choking to death on an apple skin—

a childhood story.

I bite deeply

chew and swallow

there is a feeling of waterfalls

and endlessness

there is a mixture of electricity and

hope.

yet now

halfway through the apple

some depressive feelings begin

it’s ending

I’m working toward the core

afraid of seeds and stems

there’s a funeral march beginning in Venice,

a dark old man has died after a lifetime of pain

I throw away the apple early

as a girl in a white dress walks by my window

followed by a boy half her size

in blue pants and striped

shirt

I leave off a small belch

and stare at a dirty

ashtray.

the violin player

he was in the upper grandstand

at the end

where they made their stretch moves

after coming off the curve.

he was a small man

pink, bald, fat

in his 60’s.

he was playing a violin

he was playing classical music on

his violin

and the horseplayers ignored him.

Banker Agent won the first race

and he played his violin.

Can Fly won the 3rd race and

he continued to play his violin.

I went to get a coffee and when I came back

he was still playing, and he was still playing

after Boomerang won the 4th.

nobody stopped him

nobody asked him what he was doing

nobody applauded.

after Pawee won the 5th

he continued

the music falling over the edge of the

grandstand and into the

wind and sun.

Stars and Stripes won the 6th

and he played some more

and Staunch Hope got up on the inside

to take the 7th

and the violin player worked away

and when Lucky Mike won at 4 to 5 in the 8th

he was still making music.

after Dumpty’s Goddess took the last

and they began their long slow walk to their cars

beaten and broke again

the violin player continued

sending his music after them

and I sat there listening

we were both alone up there and

when he finished I applauded.

the violin player stood up

faced me and bowed.

then he put his fiddle in the case

got up and walked down the stairway.

I allowed him a few minutes

and then I got up

and began the long slow walk to my car.

it was getting into evening.

5 dollars

I am dying of sadness and alcohol

he said to me over the bottle

on a soft Thursday afternoon

in an old hotel room by the train depot.

I have, he went on, betrayed myself with

belief, deluded myself with love

tricked myself with sex.

the bottle is damned faithful, he said,

the bottle will not lie.

meat is cut as roses are cut

men die as dogs die

love dies like dogs die,

he said.

listen, Ronny, I said,

lend me 5 dollars.

love needs too much help, he said.

hate takes care of itself.

just 5 dollars, Ronny.

hate contains truth. beauty is a facade.

I’ll pay you back in a week.

stick with the thorn

stick with the bottle

stick with the voices of old men in hotel rooms.

I ain’t had a decent meal, Ronny, for a

couple of days.

stick with the laughter and horror of death.

keep the butterfat out.

get lean, get ready.

something in my gut, Ronny, I’ll be able

to face it.

to die alone and ready and unsurprised,

that’s the trick.

Ronny, listen—

that majestic weeping you hear

will not be for

us.

I suppose not, Ronny.

the lies of centuries, the lies of love,

the lies of Socrates and Blake and Christ

will be your bedmates and tombstones

in a death that will never end.

Ronny, my poems came back from the

New York Quarterly.

that is why they weep,

without knowing.

is that what all that noise is, I said,

my god shit.

cooperation

she means well.

play the piano

she says

it’s not good for you

not to write.

she’s going for a walk

on the island

or a boatride.

I believe she’s taken a modern novel

and her reading glasses.

I sit at the window

with her electric typewriter

and watch young girls’ asses

which are attached to

young girls.

the final decadence.

I have 20 published books

and 6 cans of beer.

the tourists bob up and down in the water

the tourists walk and talk and take

photographs and

drink soft drinks.

it’s not good for me not to

write.

she’s in a boat now, a

sightseeing tour

and she’s thinking, looking

at the waves—

“it’s 2:30 p.m.

he must be writing

it’s not good for him not to write.

tonight there will be other things to do.

I hope he doesn’t drink

too much beer. he’s a much better

lover than Robert was

and the sea is beautiful.”

the night I was going to die

the night I was going to die

I was sweating on the bed

and I could hear the crickets

and there was a cat fight outside

and I could feel my soul dropping down through the

mattress

and just before it hit the floor I jumped up

I was almost too weak to walk

but I walked around and turned on all the lights

then made it back to the bed

and again my soul dropped down through the mattress

and I leaped up

just before it hit the floor

I walked around and I turned on all the lights

and then I went back to bed

and down it dropped again and

I was up

turning on all the lights

I had a 7 year old daughter

and I felt sure she didn’t want me dead

otherwise it wouldn’t have

mattered

but all that night

nobody phoned

nobody came by with a beer

my girlfriend didn’t phone

all I could hear were the crickets and it was

hot

and I kept working at it

getting up and down

until the first of the sun came through the window

through the bushes

and then I got on the bed

and the soul stayed

inside at last and

I slept.

now people come by

beating on the doors and windows

the phone rings

the phone rings again and again

I get great letters in the mail

hate letters and love letters.

everything is the same again.

2347 Duane

there’s this blue baby and she’s sucking a

blue breast under a green vine that has

grown from the ceiling,

and further to the right

there’s a light brown girl

against a dark brown background

and she’s leaning out over a chair looking

pensive, I suppose.

my cigarette just went out

there are never any matches around here

and I get up and go into the kitchen

and light it on a 30 year old stove.

I get back without accident.

now behind me on a pink chair

is a large old-fashioned shears.

it is 15 minutes past midnight

and the hook is on the door

and over the tall twisted lamp by the bed

is a red floppy hat that is used as a lampshade

and a small dog growls at the tall cold sky outside.

there are two mattresses on the floor

and I have slept on one of those mattresses

many nights.

they say they are going to bulldoze this place

which is owned by a Japanese wrestler called Fuji.

I don’t see how it can be replaced with anything better.

she fixed the bathtub faucet and the faucet in the sink

tonight. she can’t roll a cigarette but she keeps the

plumbing bills down.

we ate some Col. Sanders chicken with coleslaw, mashed spuds,

gravy and biscuits.

it’s 23 minutes past midnight

and they are going to bulldoze this place,

I don’t mean tomorrow, I mean soon,

and the small dog growls at the sky again

and my cigarette is out again;

the love on that one mattress near the door,

the sex and the arguments and the dreams and the

conversations,

that bulldozer is going to come up missing there,

and even when it knocks down the trees and the crapper

and eats holes in the dirt driveway

it’s not going to get it all,

and when I drive by in 6 months and see the highrise

filled with 50 people with good stable incomes,

I will still remember the blue baby sucking the blue breast,

the vine through the roof, the brown girl,

the leaky faucets, the spiders and the termites,

the grey and yellow paint, the tablecloth over the front

window, and that mattress near the door.

a radio with guts

it was on the 2nd floor on Coronado Street

I used to get drunk

and throw the radio through the window

while it was playing, and, of course,

it would break the glass in the window

and the radio would sit out there on the roof

still playing

and I’d tell my woman,

“Ah, what a marvelous radio!”

the next morning I’d take the window

off the hinges

and carry it down the street

to the glass man

who would put in another pane.

I kept throwing that radio through the window

each time I got drunk

and it would sit out there on the roof

still playing—

a magic radio

a radio with guts,

and each morning I’d take the window

back to the glass man.

I don’t remember how it ended exactly

though I do remember

we finally moved out.

there was a woman downstairs who worked in

the garden in her bathing suit

and her husband complained he couldn’t sleep nights

because of me

so we moved out

and in the next place

I either forgot to throw the radio out the window

or I didn’t feel like it

anymore.

I do remember missing the woman who worked in the

garden in her bathing suit,

she really dug with that trowel

and she put her behind up in the air

and I used to sit in the window

and watch the sun shine all over that thing

while the music played.

Solid State Marty

he’s almost 80 and they went to

visit him the other

day. he was sitting in his chair

with a burlap rug over his

lap

and when they walked in

the first thing he said was

“Don’t touch my cock!”

he had a gallon jug of

zinfandel in his

refrigerator, had just gotten off

of

5 days of

tequila.

a new $600 piano was in the center of

the room,

he’d bought it for his

son.

he’s always phoning for me to come over

but when I do

he’s very dull. he agrees with

everything I say and

then he goes to

sleep.

Solid State Marty.

when I’m not there

he does everything:

sets fire to the couch

pisses on his belly

sings the National Anthem.

he gets call girls over and

squirts them with

seltzer water, he

rips the telephone wire out

of the wall

but before he does

he telephones

Paris

Madrid

Tokyo

he beats dogs

cats

people

with his

silver crutch

he tells stories about

how he was a

matador

a boxer

a pimp

a friend of Ernie’s

a friend of Picasso

but when I come over

he goes to sleep

upright in his chair

grey hair rumbling down over

the silent

dumb hawk face

his son starts talking

and then it’s time

for me

to go.

interviews

young men from the underground

newspapers and the small circulation

magazines come

more and more often

to interview me—

their hair is long

they are thin

have tape recorders and

arrive with

much beer.

most

of them

manage to stay some hours and

get intoxicated.

if one of my girlfriends is around

I get her to do the

talking.

go ahead, I say, tell them the

truth about me.

then they tell what they think is

the truth.

they paint me to resemble the

idiot

which is true.

then I’m questioned:

why did you stop writing for ten

years?

I don’t know.

how come you didn’t get into the

army?

crazy.

can you speak German?

no.

who are your favorite modern

writers?

I don’t know.

I seldom see the

interviews, although once one of

the young men wrote back that

my girlfriend had

kissed him

when I was in the bathroom.

you got off easy, I wrote back

and by the way

forget that shit I told you about

Dos Passos. or was it

Mailer? it’s hot tonight

and half the neighborhood is

drunk. the other half is

dead.

if I have any advice about writing

poetry, it’s—

don’t. I’m going to send out for

some fried chicken.

buk

face of a political candidate on a street billboard

there he is:

not too many hangovers

not too many fights with women

not too many flat tires

never a thought of suicide

not more than three toothaches

never missed a meal

never in jail

never in love

7 pairs of shoes

a son in college

a car one year old

insurance policies

a very green lawn

garbage cans with tight lids

he’ll be elected.

Yankee Doodle

I was young

no stomach

arms of wire

but strong

I arrived drunk at the factory

every morning

and out-worked the whole pack of them

without strain

the old guy

his name was Sully

good old Irish Sully

he fumbled with screws

and whistled the same song all day

long:

Yankee Doodle came to town

Ridin’ on a pony

He stuck a feather in his hat

And called it macaroni…

they say he had been whistling that song

for years

I began whistling right along

with him

we whistled together for hours

him counting screws

me packing 8 foot long light fixtures into

coffin boxes

as the days went on

he began to pale and tremble

he’d miss a note now and then

I whistled on

he began to miss days

then he missed a week

next I knew

the word got out

Sully was in a hospital for an

operation

2 weeks later he came in with a cane

and his wife

he shook hands with everybody

a 40 year man

when they had the retirement party for him

I missed it

because of a terrible

hangover

after he was gone

oddly

I kept looking for him,

and I realized that he had

never hated me, that I

had only hated

him

I began drinking more

missing more days

then they let me go

too

I’ve never minded getting

fired but that was the one time

I felt it.

blue moon, oh bleweeww mooooon how I adore you!

I care for you, darling, I love you,

the only reason I fucked L. is because you fucked

Z. and then I fucked R. and you fucked N.

and because you fucked N. I had to fuck

Y. But I think of you constantly, I feel you

here in my belly like a baby, love I’d call it,

no matter what happens I’d call it love, and so

you fucked C. and then before I could move

you fucked W., so then I had to fuck D. But

I want you to know that I love you, I think of you

constantly, I don’t think I’ve ever loved anybody

like I love you.

bow wow bow wow wow

bow wow bow wow wow.

nothing is as effective as defeat

always carry a notebook with you

wherever you go, he said,

and don’t drink too much, drinking dulls

the sensibilities,

attend readings, note breath pauses,

and when you read

always understate

underplay, the crowd is smarter than you

might think,

and when you write something

don’t send it out right away,

put it in a drawer for two weeks,

then take it out and look

at it, and revise, revise,

REVISE again and again,

tighten lines like bolts holding the span

of a 5 mile bridge,

and keep a notebook by your bed,

you will get thoughts during the night

and these thoughts will vanish and be wasted

unless you notate them.

and don’t drink, any fool can

drink, we are men of

letters.

for a guy who couldn’t write at all

he was about like the rest

of them: he could sure

talk about

it.

success

I had a most difficult job

starting my 14 year old car today

in 100 degree heat

I had to take the carburetor off

leap back and forth

adjusting the set-screw,

a 2 by 4 jammed against the gas pedal

to hold it down.

I got it going—after 45 minutes—

I mailed 4 letters

purchased something cool

came back

got into my place

and listened to Ives

had dreams of empire

my great white belly against

the fan.

Africa, Paris, Greece

there are these 2 women

I know who are

quite similar

almost the same

age

well-read

literary

I once slept with both of

them

but that’s all

over

we’re friends

they’ve been to Africa

Paris

Greece

here and there

fucked some famous men

one is now living with a

millionaire

some few miles

from here

goes to breakfast and

dinner with him

feeds his fish his cats and

his dog

when she gets drunk she phones

me

the other is having it

more difficult living

alone in a small apartment in

Venice (Calif.)

listening to the bongo

drums

famous men seem to want

young women

a young woman is easier

to get rid

of: they have more

places to

go

it is difficult for women who

were once beautiful

to get

old

they have to become more

intelligent (if they want to

hold their men) and do

more things

in bed and out of

bed

these 2 women I know

they’re good both

in and out of

bed

and they’re intelligent

intelligent enough to know

they can’t come see me

and stay

more than an

hour or two

they are quite

similar

and I know

if they read this poem

they’ll understand

it

just as well as they

understand

Rimbaud or Rilke

or Keats

meanwhile I have met a

young blonde from the

Fairfax district

as she looks at my paintings

on the walls

I rub the bottoms of

her feet.

the drunk tank judge

the drunk tank judge is

late like any other

judge and he is

young

well-fed

educated

spoiled and

from a good

family.

we drunks put out our cigarettes and await his

mercy.

those who couldn’t make bail are

first. “guilty,” they say, they all say,

“guilty.”

“7 days.” “14 days.” “14 days and then you will be

released to the Honor Farm.” “4 days.” “7 days.”

“14 days.”

“judge, these guys beat hell out of a man

in there.”

“next.”

“judge, they really beat hell out of me.”

“next case, please.”

“7 days.” “14 days and then you will be released to the

Honor Farm.”

the drunk tank judge is

young and

overfed, he has

eaten too many meals. he is

fat.

the bail-out drunks are

next. they put us in long lines and

he takes us

quickly. “2 days or 40 dollars.” “2 days or 40

dollars.” “2 days or 40 dollars.” “2 days or

40 dollars.”

there are 35 or

40 of us.

the courthouse is on San Fernando Road among the

junkyards.

when we go to the bailiff he

tells us,

“your bail will apply.”

“what?”

“your bail will apply.”

the bail is $50. the court keeps the

ten.

we walk outside and get into our

old automobiles.

most of our automobiles look worse than

the ones in the

junkyards. some of us

don’t have any

automobiles, most of us are

Mexicans and poor whites.

the trainyards are across the

street. the sun is up

good.

the judge has very

smooth

delicate

skin, the judge has

fat

jowls.

we walk and we drive away from the

courthouse.

justice.

claws of paradise

wooden butterfly

baking soda smile

sawdust fly—

I love my belly

and the liquor store man

calls me,

“Mr. Schlitz.”

the cashiers at the race track

scream,

“THE POET KNOWS!”

when I cash my tickets.

the ladies

in and out of bed

say they love me

as I walk by with wet

white feet.

albatross with drunken eyes

Popeye’s dirt-stained shorts

bedbugs of Paris,

I have cleared the barricades

have mastered the

automobile

the hangover

the tears

but I know

the final doom

like any schoolboy viewing

the cat being crushed

by passing traffic.

my skull has an inch and a

half crack right at the

dome.

most of my teeth are

in front. I get

dizzy spells in supermarkets

spit blood when I drink

whiskey

and become saddened to

the point of

grief

when I think of all the

good women I have known

who have

dissolved

vanished

over trivialities:

trips to Pasadena,

children’s picnics,

toothpaste caps down

the drain.

there is nothing to do

but drink

play the horse

bet on the poem

as the young girls

become women

and the machineguns

point toward me

crouched

behind walls thinner

than eyelids.

there’s no defense

except all the errors

made.

meanwhile

I take showers

answer the phone

boil eggs

study motion and waste

and feel as good

as the next while

walking in the sun.

the loner

16 and one-half inch

neck

68 years old

lifts weights

body like a young

boy (almost)

kept his head

shaved

and drank port wine

from half-gallon jugs

kept the chain on the

door

windows boarded

you had to give

a special knock

to get in

he had brass knucks

knives

clubs

guns

he had a chest like a

wrestler

never lost his

glasses

never swore

never looked for

trouble

never married after the death

of his only

wife

hated

cats

roaches

mice

humans

worked crossword

puzzles

kept up with the

news

that 16 and one-half inch

neck

for 68 he was

something

all those boards

across the windows

washed his own underwear

and socks

my friend Red took me up

to meet him

one night

we talked a while

together

then we left

Red asked, “what do you

think?”

I answered, “more afraid to die

than the rest of us.”

I haven’t seen either of them

since.

the sandwich

I walked down the street for a submarine

sandwich

and this guy pulled out of the driveway

of The Institute of Sexual Education

and almost ran over my toes

with his bike;

he had a black dirty beard

eyes like a Russian pianist

and the breath of an East Kansas City whore;

it irritated me to be almost murdered by a

fool in a sequin jacket;

I looked upstairs and the girls sat in their chairs

outside their doors

dreaming old Greta Garbo movies;

I put a half a buck into one of the paper racks

and got the latest sex paper;

then I went into the sandwich shop

and ordered the submarine

and a large coffee.

they were all sitting in there talking about

how to lose weight.

I asked for a sideorder of

french fries.

the girls in the sex paper ads

looked like girls in sex paper ads.

they told me not to be lonely

that they could fix me up:

I could beat them with chains or whips

or they could beat me

with chains or whips, whichever way

I wanted it.

I finished, paid up, left a tip,

left the sex paper on the seat.

then I walked back up Western Avenue

with my belly hanging out over

my belt.

the happy life of the tired

neatly in tune with

the song of a fish

I stand in the kitchen

halfway to madness

dreaming of Hemingway’s

Spain.

it’s muggy, like they say,

I can’t breathe,

have crapped and

read the sports pages,

opened the refrigerator

looked at a piece of purple

meat,

tossed it back

in.

the place to find the center

is at the edge

that pounding in the sky

is just a water pipe

vibrating.

terrible things inch in the

walls; cancer flowers grow

on the porch; my white cat has

one eye torn

away and there are only 7 days

of racing left in the

summer meet.

the dancer never arrived from the

Club Normandy

and Jimmy didn’t bring the

hooker,

but there’s a postcard from

Arkansas

and a throwaway from Food King:

10 free vacations to Hawaii,

all I got to do is

fill out the form.

but I don’t want to go to

Hawaii.

I want the hooker with the pelican eyes

brass belly-button

and

ivory heart.

I take out the piece of purple

meat

drop it into the

pan.

then the phone rings.

I fall to one knee and roll under the

table. I remain there

until it

stops.

then I get up and

turn on the

radio.

no wonder Hemingway was a

drunk, Spain be damned,

I can’t stand it

either.

it’s so

muggy.

the proud thin dying

I see old people on pensions in the

supermarkets and they are thin and they are

proud and they are dying

they are starving on their feet and saying

nothing. long ago, among other lies,

they were taught that silence was

bravery. now, having worked a lifetime,

inflation has trapped them. they look around

steal a grape

chew on it. finally they make a tiny

purchase, a day’s worth.

another lie they were taught:

thou shalt not steal.

they’d rather starve than steal

(one grape won’t save them)

and in tiny rooms

while reading the market ads

they’ll starve

they’ll die without a sound

pulled out of roominghouses

by young blond boys with long hair

who’ll slide them in

and pull away from the curb, these

boys

handsome of eye

thinking of Vegas and pussy and

victory.

it’s the order of things: each one

gets a taste of honey

then the knife.

under

I can’t pick anything up

off the floor—

old socks

shorts

shirts

newspapers

letters

spoons bottles beercaps

can’t make the bed

hang up the toilet paper

brush my teeth

comb my hair

dress

I stay on the bed

naked

on the soiled sheets

which are half on the

floor

the buttons on the mattress

press into my

back

when the phone rings

when somebody comes to the door

I anger

I’m like a bug under a rock

with that fear too

I stay in bed

notice the mirror on the dresser

it is a victory to scratch

myself.

hot month

got 3 women coming down in

July, maybe more

they want to suck my blood-

vibes

do I have enough

clean towels?

I told them that I was feeling

bad

(I didn’t expect all these

mothers

arriving with their tits

distended)

you see

I am too good

with the drunken letter

and the drunken phonecall

screaming for love

when I probably don’t

have it

I am going out to buy more

towels

bedsheets

Alka-Seltzer

washrags

mop handles

mops

swords

knives

bombs

vaseline flowers of yearning

the works of

De Sade.

maybe tomorrow

looked like

Bogart

sunken cheeks

chain smoker

pissed out of windows

ignored women

snarled at landlords

rode boxcars through the badlands

never missed a chance to duke it

full of roominghouse and skidrow stories

ribs showing

flat belly

walking in shoes with nails driving into his heels

looking out of windows

cigar in mouth

lips wet with beer

Bogart’s

got a beard now

he’s much older

but don’t believe the gossip:

Bogie’s not dead

yet.

junk

sitting in a dark bedroom with 3 junkies,

female.

brown paper bags filled with trash are

everywhere.

it is one-thirty in the afternoon.

they talk about madhouses,

hospitals.

they are waiting for a fix.

none of them work.

it’s relief and foodstamps and

Medi-Cal.

men are usable objects

toward the fix.

it is one-thirty in the afternoon

and outside small plants grow.

their children are still in school.

the females smoke cigarettes

and suck listlessly on beer and

tequila

which I have purchased.

I sit with them.

I wait on my fix:

I am a poetry junkie.

they pulled Ezra through the streets

in a wooden cage.

Blake was sure of God.

Villon was a mugger.

Lorca sucked cock.

T. S. Eliot worked a teller’s cage.

most poets are swans,

egrets.

I sit with 3 junkies

at one-thirty in the afternoon.

the smoke pisses upward.

I wait.

death is a nothing jumbo.

one of the females says that she likes

my yellow shirt.

I believe in a simple violence.

this is

some of it.

8 rooms

my dentist is a drunk.

he rushes into the room while I’m

having my teeth cleaned:

“hey, you old fuck! you still

writing dirty stories?”

“yes.”

he looks at the nurse:

“me and this old fuck, we both used

to work for the post office down at

the terminal annex!”

the nurse doesn’t answer.

“look at us now! we got out of

there; we got out of that place,

didn’t we?”

“yes, yes…”

he runs off into another room.

he hires beautiful young girls,

they are everywhere.

they work a 4 day week and he drives

a yellow Caddy.

he has 8 rooms besides the waiting

room, all equipped.

the nurse presses her body against

mine, it’s unbelievable

her breasts, her thighs, her body

press against me. she picks at my teeth

and looks into my eyes:

“am I hurting you?”

“no no, go ahead!”

in 15 minutes the dentist is back:

“hey, don’t take too long!

what’s going on, anyhow?”

“Dr., this man hasn’t had his teeth

cleaned for 5 years. they’re filthy!”

“all right, finish him off! give him

another appointment!”

he runs out.

“would you like another appointment?”

she looks into my eyes.

“yes,” I tell her.

she lets her body fall full against mine

and gives me a few last scrapes.

the whole thing only costs me forty dollars

including x-rays.

but she never told me her

name.

I liked him

I liked D. H. Lawrence

he could get so indignant

he snapped and he ripped

with wonderfully energetic sentences

he could lay the word down

bright and writhing

there was the stink of blood and murder

and sacrifice about him

the only tenderness he allowed

was when he bedded down his large German

wife.

I liked D. H. Lawrence—

he could talk about Christ

like he was the man next door

and he could describe Australian taxi drivers

so well you hated them

I liked D. H. Lawrence

but I’m glad I never met him

in some bistro

him lifting his tiny hot cup of

tea

and looking at me

with his worm-hole eyes.

the killer smiles

the old girl friends still phone

some from last year

some from the year before

some from the years before that.

it’s good to have things done with

when they don’t work

it’s also good not to hate

or even forget

the person you’ve failed

with.

and I like it when they tell me

they are having luck with a man

luck with their life.

after surviving me

they have many joys due them.

I make their lives seem better

after me.

now I have given them

comparisons

new horizons

new cocks

more peace

a good future

without me.

I always hang up,

justified.

horse and fist

boxing matches and the racetracks

are where the guts are extracted and

rubbed into the cement

into the substance and stink of

being.

there is no peace either for the

flower or the tiger.

that’s obvious.

what is not obvious are the rules.

there are no rules.

some attempt to find rules in the teachings of

others

and adjust to that

sight.

for me

obedience to another is the decay

of self.

for though every being is similar

each being is different

and to herd our differences

under one law

degrades each

self.

the boxing matches and the racetracks are

temples of learning

as the same horse and the same man

do not always win or lose

for the same reason

so does learning

sometimes

stand still

pause or

reverse itself.

there are very very

few

guidelines.

no rules

but a hint:

watch for the lead right

and the last flash of the

tote.

close encounters of another kind

are we going to the movies or not?

she asked him.

all right, he said, let’s go.

I’m not going to put any panties on

so you can finger-fuck me in the

dark, she said.

should we get buttered popcorn?

he asked.

sure, she said.

leave your panties on,

he said.

what is it? she asked.

I just want to watch the movie,

he answered.

look, she said, I could go out on

the street, there are a hundred men

out there who’d be delighted to have

me.

all right, he said, go ahead out there.

I’ll stay home and read the National

Enquirer.

you son of a bitch, she said, I am

trying to build a meaningful

relationship.

you can’t build it with a hammer,

he said.

are we going to the movies or not?

she asked.

all right, he said, let’s

go…

at the corner of Western and

Franklin he put on the blinker

to make his left turn

and a man in the on-coming lane

speeded-up

as if to cut him off.

brakes grabbed. there wasn’t a

crash but there almost was one.

he cursed at the man in the other

car. the man cursed back. the

man had another person in the car with

him. it was his wife.

they were going to the movies

too.

mermaid

I had to come to the bathroom for something

and I knocked

and you were in the tub

you had washed your face and your hair

and I saw your upper body

and except for the breasts

you looked like a girl of 5, of 8

you were gently gleeful in the water

Linda Lee.

you were not only the essence of that

moment

but of all my moments

up to then

you bathing easily in the ivory

yet there was nothing

I could tell you.

I got what I wanted in the bathroom

something

and I left.

hug the dark

turmoil is the god

madness is the god

permanent living peace is

permanent living death.

agony can kill

or

agony can sustain life

but peace is always horrifying

peace is the worst thing

walking

talking

smiling,

seeming to be.

don’t forget the sidewalks

the whores,

betrayal,

the worm in the apple,

the bars, the jails,

the suicides of lovers.

here in America

we have assassinated a president and his brother,

another president has quit office.

people who believe in politics

are like people who believe in god:

they are sucking wind through bent

straws.

there is no god

there are no politics

there is no peace

there is no love

there is no control

there is no plan

stay away from god

remain disturbed

slide.

59 cents a pound

I like to prowl ordinary places

and taste the people—

from a distance.

I don’t want them too near

because that’s when attrition

starts.

but in supermarkets

laundromats

cafés

street corners

bus stops

eating places

drug stores

I can look at their bodies

and their faces

and their clothing—

watch the way they walk

or stand

or what they are doing.

I’m like an x-ray machine

I like them like that:

on view.

I imagine the best things

about them.

I imagine them brave and crazy

I imagine them beautiful.

I like to prowl the ordinary places.

I feel sorry for us all or glad for us

all

caught alive together

and awkward in that way.

there’s nothing better than the joke

of us

the seriousness of us

the dullness of us

buying stockings and carrots and gum

and magazines

buying birth control

candy

hair spray

and toilet paper.

we should build a great bonfire

we should congratulate ourselves on our

endurance

we stand in long lines

we walk about

we wait.

I like to prowl ordinary places

the people explain themselves to me

and I to them

a woman at 3:35 p.m.

weighing purple grapes on a scale

looking at that scale very

seriously

she is dressed in a simple green dress

with a pattern of white flowers

she takes the grapes

puts them carefully into a white paper

bag

that’s lightning enough

the generals and the doctors may kill us

but we have

won.

promenade

each night

well, almost every night

early in the evening

I see the old man

and his small black and white dog.

it’s dark on these streets

and no matter how often he has seen me

he always gives me

a look that is frightened

and yet bold—

bold because his small brittle dog is

with him.

he wears old clothing

a wrinkled cap

cotton gloves

large square-toed shoes.

we never speak.

he is my age but I feel younger.

I neither like nor dislike the man and his

dog.

I have never seen either of them

defecate but I know that they

must.

he and his dog give me a feeling of

peace.

they belong

like the street signs

the lawns

the yellow windows

the sidewalks

the sirens and the telephone

wires.

the driveways

the parked cars

the moon when there is a

moon.

metamorphosis

a girlfriend came in

built me a bed

scrubbed and waxed the kitchen floor

scrubbed the walls

vacuumed

cleaned the toilet

the bathtub

scrubbed the bathroom floor

and cut my toenails and

my hair.

then

all on the same day

the plumber came and fixed the kitchen faucet

and the toilet

and the gas man fixed the heater

and the phone man fixed the phone.

now I sit here in all this perfection.

it is quiet.

I have broken off with all 3 of my girlfriends.

I felt better when everything was in

disorder.

it will take me some months to get back to

normal:

I can’t even find a roach to commune with.

I have lost my rhythm.

I can’t sleep.

I can’t eat.

I have been robbed of

my filth.

we’ll take them

those lobsters

those 2 lobsters…

yes, those bastards there.

we’ll take them…

so pink-red.

they say if you put them

in warm water first

they’ll sleep

and when you boil them

they won’t feel it.

how can we know?

no matter the burning tanks outside

Stalingrad

no matter that Hitler was a

vegetarian

no matter that the house I was born in

is now a brothel

in Andernach

no matter that my Uncle Heinrich

aged 92 and living in that same town

dislikes my novels and short stories.

we’ll take those 2

bastards there

flowers of the sea.

dow average down

when you

first meet them their eyes

are all under-

standing; laughter abounds

like sand fleas. then, Jesus,

time tinkles on and

things leak. they

start making DEMANDS.

what they

demand is contrary to what-

ever you are, or could be.

strange is the

thought that they’ve never

read anything you’ve writ-

ten, not really read it at

all. or worse, if they have,

they’ve come to SAVE

you. which mainly means

making you like everybody

else. meanwhile they’ve sucked

you up and wound you tight

in a million webs, and

being something of a

feeling person you can’t

help but remember the

good parts or the parts

that seemed to be good.

you find yourself

alone again in your

bedroom grabbing your

guts and saying, o, shit

no, not again.

we should have known.

maybe we wanted cotton

candy luck. maybe we

believed. what trash.

we believed like dogs

believe.

to weep

sweating in the kitchen

trying to hit one out of here

56 years old

fear bounding up my arms

toenails much too long

growth on side of leg

the difference in the factories was

we all felt pain

together

the other night I went to see the

great soprano

she was still beautiful

still sensual

still in personal mourning

but she missed note after note

drunk

she murdered art

sweating in the kitchen

I don’t want to murder art

I should see the doctor and get that thing

cut off my leg

but I am a coward

I might scream and frighten a child

in the waiting room

I would like to fuck the great soprano

I’d like to weep in her hair

and there’s Lorca down in the road

eating Spanish bullets in the dust

the great soprano has never read my poems

but we both know how to murder art

drink and mourn

sweating in this kitchen

the formulas are gone

the best poet I ever knew is dead

the others write me letters

I tell them that I want to fuck

the great soprano

but they write back about other

things

useless things

dull things

vain things

I watch a fly land on my radio

he knows what it is

but he can’t talk to me

the soprano is dead.

fair stand the fields of France

in the awesome strumming of no

guitars

I can never get too high

in places where giraffes run like

hate

I can never get too lonely

in bars where celluloid bartenders

serve poisoned laughter

I can never get too drunk

at the bottom of mountains

where suicides flow into the streams

I smile better than the Mona Lisa

high lonely drunken grin of grief

I love you.

art

as the

spirit

wanes

the

form

appears.

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 A way 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

PLAY THE PIANO DRUNK LIKE A PERCUSSION INSTRUMENT UNTIL THE FINGERS BEGIN TO BLEED A BIT. Copyright © 1970, 1973, 1975, 1976, 1977, 1978, 1979, by Charles Bukowski. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

Mobipocket Reader August 2007 ISBN 978-0-06-149204-4

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