Screams From the Balcony

by Charles Bukowski

  But she was fairly sharp. “You like the violin, or some of the horns, don’t you?”

  “Yes, at times,” I said.

  “But don’t you realize that these instruments are played by human beings and that the human voice is just another instrument?”

  Which is a pretty damning argument, but I still say the voice is more direct, and that something is gained (not lost) by letting it come down through the fingers (violin or piano). Which is essentially why I am ashamed of the one or 2 drunken phone calls g.d. put through to you: because I had only the voice and the voice could not say, never damn can. [* * *]

  And what my bottle bloody knife fireblast friend said was right: I am glad there is space between us, so that if I am a phoney or a coward or a rotten human being you will jes. christ never know it

  because all you see is a sheet of ape ass paper

  and you don’t see me

  or what I really am—

  which is not much,

  but which is me and which is working toward some saliva and red end of everywhere, and which is repeat the rift of the wind and I am tired, shit, and you are tired, listening…

  Only the boy who came in and spewed his venom on me, I have, for a long time, been trying to get rid of but did not want to hurt his feelings. I hope this does it. But I sense that he will be back. It is too good this way.

  But life does not always hold the Brutus within its sleeve. I was walking out toward the parking lot after the 9th race and somebody shoved 50 cents at me and said, “Can you give me a ride, my friend pulled out without me.” I asked where he was going and since it was a couple of blocks away, I told him to forget the 50 cents and get in. Turns out I had driven him in earlier in the year only I was drunker and didn’t remember, only that time I was a big winner and flashing broken teeth and mug. And so we talked, quietly, weary, smashed, as I tangoed in and out of traffic, slipping through with my sometime smoking car, and we talked the gambler’s talk, the rough days, the good days, but essentially nothing important. I let him off at Hollywood and Western. “Goodby, Hank,” he said. “So long, Nick,” I said, and I took a right, circled round and came back into the liquor store where I billed an I-owe-you for $11.50.

  Now, this is not bad, It adds up into living. No great words. Nothing. But somehow good. How can you explain it? [* * *]

  * * *

  [To Jon and Louise Webb]

  April 1, 1963

  [* * *] I agree with you on the Creeley, but am not too amazed that a lot of people don’t. They believe you have pot-shotted him, but they seem to forget that you have published him and his, plus their theories. You are going to hear a lot of stuff about how there were always “schools,” and you are going to hear some big names of the past mentioned as proof of those who have created and created damned well in spite of (or, they would like to say, because of) schools. What these good people forget is that the past does not prove the present. The past may have called for schools, whether they were created for self-survival of IDEA, or whether created by critics. The present, I feel, does not call for schools; with our speed-up of transportation and communication, it MIGHT become apparent to some sensible & feeling people that we touch too much, we are now slowly becoming ground down to the same thing. The only hope of survival is to escape as much as possible from the mass-hypnosis, of which the “school,” be it Black Mountain, Kenyon and/or etc., is still part of the grouping-thing and too many men in a closet (or make it bed for some of them). The only defense of a bad work is to create a better work, not to have some disciple of a school come to bat for you. In some places it helps them to teach English; in other places they gather as homos or smokers of pot. They need the trunk and then they feel pretty good as branches. Politics is often, it seems, involved with Art; and as Politics often stinks, their creations do too. If I want to join a Lonely Hearts Club I will go to a genuine place where I might make some old woman happy. Otherwise, all I need is a typewriter, some ribbon, paper, envelopes, stamps and soul. School—is out.

  …anyhow, I have an idea that this Creeley-blast might be good for The Outsider’s circulation, you’ll see. You took a swing but don’t back down; if you back down, you’re dead. Give them space, but don’t forget there’s creative work to be published, new people, new Buks, new Creeleys…

  * * *

  “Kaja” is Kaye Johnson, of whom Bukowski notes, “She wrote very literary letters a bit on the pretentious side.”

  [To Jon and Louise Webb]

  April 9, 1963

  [* * *] If you do write Kaja, please tell her that her “White Room” has a lot of the female race laughing because it’s true and sobbing because it’s so. Women, g.d. them, tho, must learn that there are other things besides LOVE, I mean, concentrating, centering on it; the man is not actually callous but more divided—he plants his seed and moves on, not nec. toward another woman but away from the concentration.

  * * *

  [To Jon and Louise Webb]

  April 22, 1963

  [* * *] Heard from Kaja today and also Harold Norse—so not being much of a reader I had to open #3 and read the Norse poem, and luckily it was pretty damned good, although a little too poetic for me, I like my cake plain, but he seems filled with the fire, so, o.k. I should read more, but reading bothers me. [* * *]

  oh yes, heard from Malanga today. He sent me some of his poems, which he self-praises but which do not get to me. He thinks you’ve got something against him because he rubs elbows with Auden and the New York Crowd. Me, I don’t think you care where a man comes from as long as he lays the line down. By the way, the boys didn’t like the photos you sent, said they were too “domestic.” Wants a head portrait, or something. So to hell with it. I told him to write in space where my photo supposed to be: “Charles Bukowski wishes these poems to be his photo.” [* * *]

  * * *

  [To Jon and Louise Webb]

  April 26, 1963

  [* * *] The book is beginning to well into my mind as a possibility. It’s like, you know, you meet a beautiful woman, have some talk with her, but really think nothing of it because everything seems pretty much out of reach and you turn to leave and find that she’s walking beside you, and she walks up the steps with you and stands there while you open the door to your room and then she walks in with you. The book’s like that. A little too much to behold. I’ve had so many knives stuck into me, when they hand me a flower I can’t quite make out what it is. It takes time. [* * *]

  * * *

  [To Neeli Cherry]

  April 29, 1963

  enclosed bad photo from leftover stash I had taken for some artist who thinks he might do a drawing for Cold Dogs in the Courtyard, Cyfoeth, Chi. Lit. Times, out in May, I’m told. Anyhow, Jory over for small drunk, saw reject photo and said I should send it to you. O.k., I said, o.k. But I didn’t and J. has kept hounding, so here it is, whatever it is. Which explains nothing.

  Picked up a couple of Borestones the other day. One for “The House” and one for “The Singular Self.” They will come out later in the year, Best Poems of 1963. I’ve never seen one of their collections. Might be pure crap. Most poetry is. Almost everything is.

  Tell Sam to keep working out. I think I can find room for a good 4 round man down at Santa Monica. I hear all you havta do is keep the gloves laced.

  More and more black cats everywhere, but there’s a white cat here, that means luck, brother. He has an angular scar down the left side of his head. Proud; a real shit-head. [* * *]

  * * *

  [To John William Corrington]

  May 1, 1963

  god damned quarter horses worse than money stealing sluts, hot enough out there to take the bark off an oak tree, and everything in kind of a yellow-sandish grit, like a cheap dream, and you peel the money off—your last poor bloodsmeared 5 or ten, and here they come, damp, fear-peeling, and the number goes by and it is the wrong number. you are fucked again but the most noticeable part is that you are getting used to it. some day in
an alley I’ll wish I had back g.d. once more, the green, and the milk from ma’s tit, but it will be old newspapers and hacked-out minds and blue wind and young cops. What I am trying to tell you here is that I lost at Los Alamitos, and they all lose, they stand there stunned and greyfaced, the dream all gone. And I hit down the freeway in a borrowed blue 1954 Buick that drove like an ice truck. Tomorrow night she’ll be over and I’ll have to hear all about the horrors of the Right (as opposed to Left) and how soon we’ll have a sort of Gestapo dragging people screaming down the streets. She’ll have 2 tickets to a lecture by James Baldwin and I will refuse to go. As to Gestapos, Gestapos have always been—and hooeva is in powa has his own kinda Ges., only they call it something nice the The Federal Bureau of Investigation or Vets of For. Whores, or the A.M.A. or the Y.W.C.A.; when these shits gona realize the Gestap. has always been here? that Life is Blood? Control? Fences? only a guy like Gandhi did without and they got him. What I am trying to say, I lost at Lost Alamitos. [* * *]

  * * *

  [To Ben Tibbs]

  [May 1, 1963]

  Thanks for the drawing. It is the best one I have seen of yours. Don’t be pissed, but I think it so good I’d almost use the dirty word “genius.” I want Webb to see it. Going to write to him about it. But I want it back because you sent it to me.

  I will stoke up something for you—eventually—perhaps a series of small ones, if I don’t get run over or pressed out.

  Meanwhile your work lights up this dump on this grey day like one thousand searchlights. Thank you, Ben.

  Yes, the death of a good woman, it is a bad thing.

  I heard about the death of your wife, but take hold, man, your work is getting stronger, so put down the ink the way you do, go on, maybe she’s watching, and if she isn’t, go on anyway—she’d tell you to.

  Thanks again (a small thing to say) for the fine drawing.

  do continue.

  * * *

  [To Jon and Louise Webb]

  May 1, 1963

  [* * *] Ben Tibbs shipped me a drawing which he says [he] has not submitted anywhere and he wants me to have it, only it seems so quite warmly funny and good…I would like you to see it for possible Outsider use, but I would like the original back. I guess he just drew it for me, but hell hell, it’s something…called “Idyll” and it has one of Ben’s little old men with life-filled child eyes, hat on, reading a book in a rocking chair, and it’s out on the grass, and there’s a bed and the woman is putting a sheet on this bed and you can see part of the body through the sheet and just where the THING is, there is a patch on the sheet—oh, it is not vile ugly dirty but warm laugh clean and love—and then on the sidelights: there is some kind of bird sitting on the head of the bed, and he’s looking at the patch, and there’s a tree back there. Ben wants me to send him something in ink, but hell hell I can’t match, it’s trying to draw to an inside straight with a short deck.

  And yet I know that Ben is not trying me in contest. He has liked some of my drawings. Well, this is good, but drawing hardly interests me now—little does—and I draw like Thurber

  which is o.k. only if

  you are

  Thurber

  and T.’s dead so he’s ahead of me on 2 counts, only o you should see the Tibbs, this is the best I’ve seen of his. Did you know he’s an old man? Not that this should prejudice judgement of a work. I see whatever I can see that is there. But when you get an old man who still has velvet in his dreams you get something coo, dad, and mama. [* * *]

  * * *

  [To Ann Bauman]

  [May 2, 1963]

  I am writing this right after you have phoned, and you have so little money and you should not have, and yet this makes it better, and for it all, it was a sound out of the darkness, and I love you for it, and there’s something good in you, you may not know it, but there is, and forgive all the comas and loose talk…it is so odd to hear a sound out of all this madness. I am not so good at talking on the phone, or talking at all and though I say small things, hesitant dull things, it is only shame and lack of heart and lack of ability and all the lacks that keep me from expressing what should be, and when the phone is put down I always feel as if I have failed—not only in ordinary failure but in a failure that affects everything: myself and you and tomorrow morning and any way the smoke blows. [* * *]

  Ann, I think you should know this—I am not primarily a poet, I hate god gooey damned people poets messing the smears of their lives against the sniveling world, and poets are bad and the world is bad and we are here, ya. What I am trying to say is that poetry, what I write, is only one tenth of myself—the other 9/to hell tenths are looking over the edge of a cliff down into the sea of rock and wringing swirl and cheap damnation. I wish that I only could suffer in the classic style and carve out of great marble that would last centuries beyond this dog’s bark I now hear outside of my 1963 window, but I am damned and slapped and chippied and wasted down to the nothingness of my arms and eyes and fingers and this letter tonight, May first or second, 1963, after hearing your voice upon the phone.

  I deserve to die. I wait upon death like a plumed falcon with beak and song and talon for my caged blood. This may sound pretty god damned pretty but it is not. The poetry part of me, the seeming actuality, what I write, is dung and dross and saliva and old battleships sinking. I know that when the world—which is fairly cheap and stylish and what? what?—forgets a little of the poetry that I have written, it will not be entirely the fault of the world—mainly because I do not think of writing, and only the edge of the knife…where I spread the butter or cut the onion keeps practice in the verse of my mind.

  You do not know how much your call meant although I was seemingly dull and drab and stupid, but I do wish you would not do it again because I know how things are going for you and yours (not so good) and I don’t want the few good people of the world hurt because of buk the puke. (Someone once wrote me that Buk rhymed with puke and she was correct, not only in manner, which is bad, but also in the way the chandeliers work their still lightning in an empty room) and I say, everything is pretty good now but I of course don’t know when or if or what the next o my god stroke of everything will bring, which is a coward’s viewpoint, and all drowning men are cowards, hear them scream, and life is what? what? going down into the water, and it is not the cutting off of air and light and lung and eye and love that counts—it’s the itch they put into us making us wonder why the hell we are here. For these few things. Like a phone call from Sacramento at 7:30 p.m. I don’t know, I don’t know, and it is so sad. If I could give tears to make it right we would all drown in my sick tears. I hardly know what to do. I drink too much. Or not enough. I gamble. I make love to women who only exist within their bodies and I look against the flakes of their eyes and I know that I am lying to myself and to them because I am no less than a dog, and love or the act should contain more than a couple of steaks in a frying pan or else all is lost like weeds in a garden or snails stepped upon and crushed and left in some sort of slime which contains life, smashed life forever and foreboding.

  This poetry-thing is the worst sort of crutch. It weakens a man. And if a man is weak before he writes poetry he becomes, finally, through the strumming of shadows and wailing, he becomes finally what he is—just another fine pink juicy boy doing his god damned job in the frailest and most vomiting way.

  You’ve got to understand that there are other ways of facing the horn except through the typewriter. Those who are known to us may just be a bad choice of chance. Never take the Arts as a holy mirror. Very little is just, and that includes all the centuries. The most honorable countries do not survive through courage nor do the ages survive us the best artists. Everything is chance and shit and the strumming of the winds. Please forgive the center word. If I hate anything it is a vile word said vilely or a dirty joke or the making of sex and life and woman and man into the thing they seem to want it to be.

  I am probably fairly insane and you should know this (a mor
e somber note with golden screeching undertones) and I do not mean to knock your verse plays…some have been done well…Racine, etc., only it is too much and ever so easy to mock and cajole when you do not give or try, and I say go ahead: verse, or phone calls or cards or death or love or vast areas of bathing in arenas of sound and stroke and midnight moments, I thank you for going on and I, too, go on a little while more.

  p.s.—don’t hate me for feeling more than is (perhaps) necessary. It may be best that the lost frogs and space-burnt nylon and neon air…it may be best that we are creatures of gesture instead of reality and marriage is reality with life and very few of us can stand either marriage or reality or life. [* * *]

  * * *

  [To Jon and Louise Webb]

  May 7, 1963