Charles Bukowski – So Now

the words have come and gone,
I sit ill.
the phone rings, the cats sleep.
Linda vacuums.
I am waiting to live,
waiting to die.
I wish I could ring in some bravery.
it's a lousy fix
but the tree outside doesn't know:
I watch it moving with the wind
in the late afternoon sun.
there's nothing to declare here,
just a waiting.
each faces it alone.
Oh, I was once young,
Oh, I was once unbelievably
young!

Charles Bukowski – 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 her 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,

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 poinsettias drip in the sun

I close the door.

Charles Bukowski – 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.

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 that we have not yet
though of.

who put this brain inside of me?

it cries
it demands
it says that there is a chance.

it will not say
"no."

Charles Bukowski – the great slob

I was always a natural slob
I liked to lay upon the bed
in undershirt (stained, of
course) (and with cigarette
holes)
shoes off
beer bottle in hand
trying to shake off a
difficult night, say with a
woman still around
walking the floor
complaining about this and
that,
and I'd work up a
belch and say, "HEY, YOU DON'T
LIKE IT? THEN GET YOUR ASS
OUT OF HERE!"

I really loved myself, I
really loved my slob-
self, and
they seemed to also:
always leaving
but almost
always
coming
back.

Charles Bukowski – Hello, Willie Shoemaker

the Chinaman said don’t take the hardware

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

and there was an ant circling the coffee cup;

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

and outside I gave an old bum who looked about

the way I felt, I gave him a quarter,

and then I went up to see the old man

strong as steel girders, fit for bombers and blondes,

up the green rotten steps that housed rats

and past the secretaries showing leg and doing nothing

and the old man sat there looking at me

through two pairs of glasses and a vacation in Paris,

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

and I said, just to dinner, boss,

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

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

and please remember you are a shipping clerk,

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

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

but he slid my last check across the desk

and I took it and walked out

past

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

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

and I went down to the bar

and George said whatya gonna do now,

and I said go to Russia or Hollywood Park,

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

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

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

and she said

I quit when I found out

and the bastard got down on his knees and cried

and kissed the hem of my skirt and offered me money

and I

walked out

and he blubbered like a baby.

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

the juke

and the sun came out

and I looked outside in time to see the old bum

with my quarter

and a little more luck

that had turned into a happy wine-bottle,

and a bird even flew by cheep cheep,

right there on Eastside downtown, no kidding,

and the Chinaman came in for a quickie

claiming somebody had stolen a spoon and a coffee cup

and I leaned over and bit Marylou on the ear

and the whole joint rocked with music and freedom

and I decided that Russia was too far away

and Hollywood Park just close enough.

Charles Bukowski – the difference between a bad poet and a good one is luck

I suppose so.

I was living in an attic in Philadelphia

It became very hot in the summer and so I stayed in the

bars. I didn’t have any money and so with what was almost left

I put a small ad in the paper and said I was a writer

looking for work . . .

which was a god damned lie; I was a writer

looking for a little time and a little food and some

attic rent.

a couple days later when I finally came home

from somewhere

the landlady said, there was somebody looking for

you. and I said,

there must be some mistake. she said,

no, it was a writer and he said he wanted you to help him write

a history book.

oh, fine, I said, and I knew with that I had another week’s

rent—I mean, on the cuff—

so I sat around drinking wine on credit and watching the hot pigeons

suffer and fuck on my hot roof.

I turned the radio on real loud

drank the wine and wondered how I could make a history book

interesting but true.

but the bastard never came back,

and I had to finally sign on with a railroad track gang

going West

and they gave us cans of food but no

openers

and we broke the cans against the seats and sides of

railroad cars a hundred years old with dust

the food wasn’t cooked and the water tasted like

candlewick

and I leaped off into a clump of brush somewhere in

Texas

all green with nice-looking houses in the

distance

I found a park

slept all night

and then they found me and put me in a cell

and they asked me about murders and

robberies.

they wanted to get a lot of stuff off the books

to prove their efficiency

but I wasn’t that tired

and they drove me to the next big town

fifty-seven miles away

the big one kicked me in the ass

and they drove off.

but I lucked it:

two weeks later I was sitting in the office of the city hall

half-asleep in the sun like the big fly on my elbow

and now and then she took me down to a meeting of the council

and I listened very gravely as if I knew what was happening

as if I knew how the funds of a halfass town were being

dismantled.

later I went to bed and woke up with teethmarks all over

me, and I said, Christ, watch it, baby! you might give me

cancer! and I’m rewriting the history of the Crimean War!

and they all came to her house —

all the cowboys, all the cowboys:

fat, dull and covered with dust.

and we all shook hands.

I had on a pair of old bluejeans, and they said

oh, you’re a writer, eh?

and I said: well, some think so.

and some still think so . . .

others, of course, haven’t quite wised up yet.

two weeks later they

ran me out

of town.

Charles Bukowski – About My Very Tortured Friend, Peter

he lives in a house with a swimming pool

and says the job is

killing him.

he is 27. I am 44. I can’t seem to

get rid of

him. his novels keep coming

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

“go to New York and pump the hands of the

publishers?”

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

small room and do the

thing.”

“but I need ASSURANCE, I need something to

go by, some word, some sign!”

“some men did not think that way:

Van Gogh, Wagner—”

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

paints whenever he

needed them!”

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

this guy walks in. a salesman. you know

how they talk. drove up in this new

car. talked about his vacation. said he went to

Frisco—saw Fidelio up there but forgot who

wrote it. now this guy is 54 years

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

opera.’ and then I told

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

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

you don’t know anything!’”

“what happened

then?”

“I walked out.”

“you mean you left him there with

her?”

“yes.”

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

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

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

this job, he won’t stay

so there’s really no sense in hiring

him.

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

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

job and they look at you and they think:

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

him he’ll stay a long time and work

HARD!”

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

writer, that you write poetry?”

“no.”

“you never talk about

it. not even to

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

have never known.”

“that’s right.”

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

writer.”

“I’d still like to

tell them.”

“why?”

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

horseplayer and a drunk.”

“I am both of those.”

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

I’m the only friend you

have.”

“yes.”

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

them you write

poetry.”

“leave it alone. I work here like they

do. we’re all the same.”

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

I travel with

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

“forget it.”

“all right, I’ll respect your

wishes. but there’s something else—”

“what?”

“I’ve been thinking about getting a

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

violin too but I can’t make up my

mind!”

“buy a piano.”

“you think

so?”

“yes.”

he walks away

thinking about

it.

I was thinking about it

too: I figure he can always come over with his

violin and more

sad music.

Charles Bukowski – 8 count

from my bed

I watch

3 birds

on a telephone   

wire.

one flies

off.

then   

another.

one is left,

then

it too

is gone.

my typewriter is

tombstone

still.

and I am

reduced to bird

watching.

just thought I'd

let you

know,

fucker.

Charles Bukowski – a 340 dollar horse and a hundred dollar whore

don’t ever get the idea I am a poet; you can see me

at the racetrack any day half drunk

betting quarters, sidewheelers and straight thoroughs,

but let me tell you, there are some women there

who go where the money goes, and sometimes when you

look at these whores these onehundreddollar whores

you wonder sometimes if nature isn’t playing a joke

dealing out so much breast and ass and the way

it’s all hung together, you look and you look and

you look and you can’t believe it; there are ordinary women

and then there is something else that wants to make you

tear up paintings and break albums of Beethoven

across the back of the john; anyhow, the season

was dragging and the big boys were getting busted,

all the non-pros, the producers, the cameraman,

the pushers of Mary, the fur salesman, the owners

themselves, and Saint Louie was running this day:

a sidewheeler that broke when he got in close;

he ran with his head down and was mean and ugly

and 35 to 1, and I put a ten down on him.

the driver broke him wide

took him out by the fence where he’d be alone

even if he had to travel four times as far,

and that’s the way he went it

all the way by the outer fence

traveling two miles in one

and he won like he was mad as hell

and he wasn’t even tired,

and the biggest blonde of all

all ass and breast, hardly anything else

went to the payoff window with me.

that night I couldn’t destroy her

although the springs shot sparks

and they pounded on the walls.

later she sat there in her slip

drinking Old Grandad

and she said

what’s a guy like you doing

living in a dump like this?

and I said

I’m a poet

and she threw back her beautiful head and laughed.

you? you . . . a poet?

I guess you’re right, I said, I guess you’re right.

but still she looked good to me, she still looked good,

and all thanks to an ugly horse

who wrote this poem.

Charles Bukowski – I Am Visited by an Editor and a Poet

I had just won $115 from the headshakers and

was naked upon my bed

listening to an opera by one of the Italians

and had just gotten rid of a very loose lady

when there was a knock upon the wood,

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

I screamed out rather on edge—

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

I’m your publisher! somebody screamed back,

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

try the place next door, and he screamed back,

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

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

and I placed a robe upon my nakedness,

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

an editor and a poet.

only one would drink a beer (the editor)

so I drank two for the poet and one for myself

and they sat there sweating and watching me

and I sat there trying to explain

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

I told them about the stockyards and the slaughterhouse

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

and the editor suddenly pulled five magazines out of a portfolio

and tossed them in between the beercans

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

and what some of the modern poets looked like:

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

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

and pretty soon everybody was yawning

and the editor suddenly stood up and I said,

are you leaving?

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

and then I thought well hell they might not have liked

what they saw

but I’m not selling beercans and Italian opera and

torn stockings under the bed and dirty fingernails,

I’m selling rhyme and life and line,

and I walked over and cracked a new can of beer

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

and wondered what it meant,

wondered if we are writing poetry or all huddling in

one big tent

                  clasping assholes.