The People Look Like Flowers at Last: New Poems

by Charles Bukowski

  now dreaming

  what?

  a fat mockingbird in his mouth?

  or surrounded by female cats in heat?

  he dreams his daydreams

  and we’ll find out

  tonight.

  good luck, old fellow,

  it doesn’t come easy,

  hung to our balls we are, that’s it,

  we’re captive to our balls,

  and I should use a little restraint myself

  when it comes to the ladies.

  meanwhile I will

  watch their eyes and lead with the left jab

  and run like hell

  when it just isn’t any use

  anymore.

  contributors’ notes

  WENDELL THOMAS teaches creative writing every summer at Ohio State University. His recent credits include Lick, Out of Sight, Entrails and many other important small mags.

  RICHARD KWINT recently moved from South Carolina to Delaware. He is now divorced and is currently working on several one-act plays.

  TALBERT HAYMAN has appeared in over 23 anthologies. His 3rd chapbook of poems Winter Driven Light of Night will be published by the Bogbelly Press later this fall. He is on the faculty of Princeton Day School in N.J.

  WILLIAM PREWIT has been widely published in the little mags. He lives with his aunt, his daughter (Margery-Jean), his wife and his tomcat (Kenyon) in upper New Jersey.

  BLANDING EDWARDS founded the little magazine Roll Them Bones.

  PATRICIA BURNS is a genius. She teaches at Princeton Day School in N.J.

  ALBERT STICHWORT has worked as a dishwasher, veterinarian, lumberjack, hotwalker, stevedore, motorcycle policeman; he studied under Charles Olson and once fought four rounds with Joe Louis. He has lived in Paris, Munich, London, Arabia and Africa. He is presently studying Creative Writing at the University of Southern California.

  NICK DIVIOGONNI rides her horse every day and teaches summer classes at Montclair State Jr. College in N.J.

  PETER PARKS teaches at Princeton Day School in N.J.

  MARCEL RYAN once shaved the hair off the balls of Jean-Paul Sartre.

  PETER FALKENBERG is the father of 3 children and has worked as a janitor, payroll clerk and as an attendant in a mental hospital.

  VICTOR BENNETT has appeared in the North American Review, Southern Poetry Review, Quixote, Meatball, Wormwood Review, Hearse, Harper’s, Evergreen Review, Ramparts, Avant Garde, Northern Poetry Review, The Smith, The New York Times, Chelsea, The New York Quarterly, Atom Mind, Cottonwood Review, Antioch Review, Beloit Quarterly, Sun and Mummy. He committed suicide November 9, 1972.

  DARNBY TEMPLE is part owner of a Turkish bath.

  STUART BELHAM masturbates 4 times a day.

  HARLEY GABRIEL plans to teach English next year at Princeton Day School in N.J.

  WILLIAM COSTWICK was born in 1900 in Yokohama, Japan.

  MASH EDWARDS once raped a girl riding a bicycle. He has studied under Wendell Thomas, Albert Stichwort, Tyrone Douglas, Abbot Boyd, Peter Parks and many others. His main influence is Dame Edith Sitwell.

  TANNER GROSHAWK is wanted for the murder of 4 high school students.

  SASSON VILLON is a former friend of Victor Mature. He teaches at Princeton Day School in N.J.

  VICTOR WALTER writes his poems with flaming fencing swords on the throats of vultures and hates television.

  STUART BELHAM’S wife, Tina, masturbates 4 times a day.

  CARSON CRASWELL asks for no contributor’s note.

  TALBOT DIGGINS douses his 4-year-old daughter in scalding water once or twice a week. He edits the poetry newsletter The Invisible Heart.

  PARKER BRIGGS is presently an “A” student at Montclair State Jr. College in N.J.

  on beer cans and sugar cartons

  the ox, me,

  I am cold tonight

  this morning

  4 a.m.

  down to one can of beer and 2

  cigars;

  woman and child moving out

  Wednesday;

  the radio plays a Scottish air and

  the old stove muffs out

  gas, gas, gas,

  if I could only sleep.

  I can’t seem to sleep.

  death doesn’t always arrive like a bomb

  or a fat whore

  sometimes death crawls inch-by-inch

  like a tiny spider crawling on your belly

  while you

  sleep.

  this is not news to you,

  I know that.

  my skeleton hands pray tonight

  pray for something

  I don’t know

  what.

  my hands hold this cigar

  over my emptied

  dream.

  I am

  kind of like a dirty joke

  told too often told too late

  when people can no longer

  laugh.

  there is a box on the table.

  I read its label, it says:

  sugar measurements: 1 lb. powdered equals

  4 and 3/4 cups sifted; 1 lb. granulated equals

  2 and 1/2 cups, etc.

  now, there’s a new world! I sit and leer at the box,

  forgetting everything:

  General Grant

  pea soup

  etc.

  the ox, me, I am cold tonight.

  tomorrow I will go to the grocery store and get empty cartons

  so they can pack up their

  stuff. the woman saves all kinds of letters, ribbons,

  photographs. the little girl, of course, has her

  little girl toys.

  I need more to read. I read my beer can. it says:

  brewed of pure Rocky Mountain spring water

  which turns to piss; brewed of flesh which

  turns into a meal for maggots;

  brewed of love which turns to nothing; my land and

  your land; my grave and your grave; a taste of

  honey; a night’s dream of gold; I came this way for

  a while and then I left: brewed, screwed,

  borrowed, loaned and lied to in the name of

  Life.

  I drink that beer.

  I paid for

  it.

  it is now 5:30 a.m. and many people have fucked and

  slept and are now coming up out of their small dreams as

  the man on the radio asks me if I want to borrow money on

  my home.

  I can sleep on that. I can sleep thinking

  maybe the next time there are riots in the streets

  maybe they’ll let me join them

  even though my skin is the wrong shade

  and while they are fighting for Cadillacs and

  color tvs

  I’ll be fighting for something else—

  just what

  right now

  isn’t clear to

  me.

  but maybe when I awaken it will all be clear.

  right now

  it’s stub out the cigar

  wait for the grocery store to open and

  change these dirty

  shorts.

  pay your rent or get out

  somewhere the dead princess

  lies with a new lover;

  I have only a few empty packs of

  fags left

  fished back out of nets of yearning

  but everything is fine

  except the c
olor and demeanor

  of the wasp,

  the wax too red

  and a note from the woman

  on the hill

  who buys my paintings:

  “wondering about you. call

  me. love, R.,”

  and another note under the

  door:

  “pay your rent or get out.”

  the heater is on and

  there’s a pot of pure ground

  pepper facing me,

  and typewriter paper

  to fill with poems;

  everything is fine,

  sidewalks echo the click of

  heels,

  engines start,

  and I must wash these bloody

  diseased coffee cups;

  and I ask myself, how are you today, my

  friend?

  how’s it going? disappointed?

  unhappy?

  me? it’s tough. tough as a

  good poem,

  but I feel all right,

  and really,

  essentially, pretty soon I am

  going to eat

  either hash or stew, something

  out of a can.

  I also may lift weights and I

  hope

  I keep feeling o.k., although my

  radio is fuzzy

  and speaks of silly things like

  good jet service;

  it is now 7:30, and this is the

  way men

  live and die: not Eliot’s way

  but

  my way, our way,

  quietly as a folded wing,

  hate burned out like a tube;

  the drapes are coming down

  torn by time

  and there is a knife to my left that

  couldn’t even cut an onion

  but I don’t have any onions to

  cut, and

  I hope you are feeling

  o.k. too.

  note on a door knocker

  yeah? I said, is that

  so?

  yes, he said, she lives in

  Malibu, I’m going to see her

  tonight.

  ah, I said, has it been a

  long-term relationship?

  hell no, he said, I’m not a

  masochist.

  he fingered his gold chain

  and talked about

  poetry. he talked about poetry

  for an

  hour.

  I’m not a masochist either, I said,

  so will you get

  the hell out of

  here?

  he left. but I knew he’d be

  back.

  he talked about

  poetry. I wrote

  it.

  he couldn’t understand

  that it and we

  were not

  alike.

  the American Flag Shirt

  now more and more

  all these people running around

  wearing the American Flag Shirt

  and it was more or less once assumed

  (I think but I’m not sure)

  that wearing an A.F.S. meant to

  say you were pissing on

  it

  but now

  they keep making them

  and everybody keeps buying them

  and wearing them

  and the faces are just like

  the American Flag Shirt—

  this one has this face and that shirt

  that one has that shirt and this face—

  and somebody’s spending money

  and somebody’s making money

  and as the patriots become

  more and more fashionable

  it’ll be nice

  when everybody looks around

  and finds that they are all patriots now

  and therefore

  who is there left to

  persecute

  except their

  children?

  age

  the decency of sweating in a rocker

  is reserved for old generals or ancient

  statesmen as afternoons ripe with young

  girls who have nothing to do but laugh and

  walk by.

  for me

  when the fingers go the brain will go,

  there will be nothing to lift the

  glass and I will sit around thinking of

  white nightgowns and hookers

  and blocks of night with mice for eyes.

  when the fingers fail the cup I have

  failed

  and the soul

  in an old brown bag

  will say goodbye

  like hedges say goodbye

  like cannons sit in parks wondering what

  next.

  the dogs bark knives

  jesus christ the dogs bark knives

  and on the elevators

  tinkertoy men

  decide my life and my death;

  the falcons are cross-eyed

  and there is nothing to save;

  let us know the impossible

  let us know that strong men die in packs,

  let us know that love is bought and kept

  like a pet dog—a dog that barks knives

  or a dog that barks love;

  let us know that living out a life

  among billions of idiots with molecule feelings

  is an art in itself;

  let us know mornings and nights and

  perfidy;

  let us be gone with the swallow

  let us lynch the last hope

  let us find the graveyard of elephants

  and the graveyard of the mad;

  let those who sing songs of their own

  let them sing to the idiots and the liars

  and the planners of strategies

  in a game too dull for children;

  there is only one way to live

  and that is alone,

  and only one way to die, and that the same;

  I’ve heard the marching of their armies

  all these years;

  how tiresome—

  what they want and what they’ve won;

  how tiresome that they are my masters

  and will probably follow me into death

  bringing more death to death;

  the whole way is hollow—

  I touch a small ring on my finger

  and breathe the beaten

  air.

  the hog in the hedge

  you know, driving through this town or any town

  walking through this town or any town I see

  people with nostrils, fingers, feet,

  eyes, mouths, ears, chins, eyebrows and so forth.

  I go into a café, sit down and order breakfast,

  look around and I am conscious of skulls and skeletons

  as I watch a man stick

  a piece of bacon into his mouth and die a little

  and I don’t like to contemplate death because

  there might be someplace else we have to go later on

  and I’ve had enough trouble right here just being right here

  but

  maybe it’s the fault of all the snakes in glass cages,

  they can’t move, breathe or kill and they

  ought to let them out and they ought to empty the

 
jails too just as soon as I get my luger in order and

  my dogs unleashed.

  the buildings are all poorly constructed and the human

  body is too; I sometimes watch dancers leaping

  about and I think, that’s ugly and awkward,

  the human body is constructed wrong, it’s ungainly and

  stupid…compared to what? compared to the cactus

  and the leopard. well,

  my women have always said, “you’re so negative!”

  and I’ve looked at them and replied, “I find reality

  negative.” compared to what? unreality.

  yet for all that I have had more joy than any of

  them, they were positive and depressed, and I am negative

  and happy. well,

  it all could be the fault of firemen sitting around waiting

  for a fire, it could be the fault of some guy in Moscow raping

  a 6-year-old girl, or it could be because fog is no

  longer fog the way it used to be—fresh, wet, cooling,

  but everything’s hurting now. they found some guy playing

  football at U.C.L.A. who couldn’t read or write

  but Christ he had strength, what a body, he might have

  slipped by but he got upset and murdered his drug

  dealer and they found out after all that he wasn’t

  much of a college boy, just kind of a kept goldfish

  which reminds me

  hardly anybody keeps goldfish anymore; you know when

  I was a kid, one household out of 3 had goldfish.

  what happened to that? some even had

  goldfish ponds in the backyard with slimy moss and

  dozens of goldfish, small, medium, large,

  they lived on bread crumbs and some of those fuckers got

  so fat and stupid they just rose to the top and flattened

  out, one eye to the sun, quits, like a bad message

  from God, but people also quit when they shouldn’t.

  once there

  was a prizefighter, got $5 million for a championship fight,

  the Macho Man, had never been defeated but he ran into

  a guy who could handle him and after a few rounds he

  turned his back and said,

  “no mas.”

  you’d figure for $5 million a man could stand a little