Screams From the Balcony
Page 19
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[To Douglas Blazek]
[Mid-] June, 1965
you asked to look at a nature poem and I have enclosed one for you to look over. you’ve got to realize that they ran the nature poem boys out a little before 1914, and it’s a little late in the day; in fact, it’s about 11:47 p.m.
yeah, the mother-humping emergence of Crucifix has somehow shut off the stream and the typewriter has turned on me like a tiger leaping at his trainer, to hell with whip and chair and just having had dinner. it is a curious situation, something like a broken neck, maybe worse. yes, I was hoping Webb would let me illustrate the book myself but guess he didn’t want to take the chance—I sent him some early drawings which haven’t been returned—and then all of a sudden he whipped in this pro with long line of credits. but maybe Time will prove Webb right. [* * *]
* * *
[To Douglas Blazek]
June 24, 1965
fly on curtain, woman scrubbing pot, child stopped hollering, the air of the world filled with gray and blue and me, and it’s Thursday, 2 more days nights at the pits and then a long drunk, the horses, same old bit, but somehow a climb-out, a fulfillment, at least away from machinery and stone-glazed bosses of this democracy of this freedom they tell me I have and that we should fight for.
listen, I’ll send you Notes from Underground if you want to read the story but send copy back when you get a loose dime as it’s my last copy, all right? will send by crawl mail…book rate.
I had a grandmother who used to pray for my infidelity, she’d come in while I was asleep and make these big-ass crosses over my body and mumble her incantations, she bugged me sure, but she was mostly senseless, life-drained, and it would not have been any victory to rip her arm off. I mostly had visions of her pissing, the yellow whirling fluid corkscrewing from that ancient blob of warted body. [* * *]
the lights keep going on and off here, might be a bombing, or the enemy working on the wires, or might be some of these big crosses old grandma made over me fucking each other in the air…. body trouble? mostly I get stiff as a board, pains all through, sweet sweet stuff, and mostly during this time the woman is talking some utter drab zero nonsense and goes on and on and I lay there and listen listen and then I pray: Jesus, I pray to thee, please make her be QUIET just a little while, I can’t breathe, it is like a STEAMROLLER, big daddy God, TAKE IT OFF ME!, but he doesn’t and she talks on, spilling it all over me, a neurotic chip chip chip of sound without sense, all twisted up with her poetry-meeting Unitarian Church world-saving complex. then the kid crawls in and: WHHHHAAA!! WHAAAA!!! it’s hardly any good for me most of the time, and during all the sound sound, these pains shooting through my body, ah…. and I had to be a wise guy and think: this one is too old to get pregnant. [* * *]
* * *
At Bukowski’s instigation, Purdy had sent poems to Blazek for Ole.
[To Al Purdy]
July 5, 1965
yes, I wouldn’t have wanted your poems for Ole if I didn’t think the mag was a kind of powerhouse, and that’s why I like to stick my stuff in there when I can…I guess you read the essay I wrote about a part of my youth for Ole #2; it was kind of a loose thing, but have gotten more comment on that than on anything I have written, and I doubt that any other mag slick slim or snobbish would have run it. They are also going to bring out a booklet thing, prose I wrote. Confessions of a Man Insane Enough to Live with Beasts, which I also don’t think anyone else would publish, and christ, if you don’t have outlet, you choke. I believe that rejection is good for the soul if you are not a quitter, but my soul has had plenty of that. [* * *]
* * *
[To Douglas Blazek]
July 8, 1965
[* * *] a small sparrow in the bush outside the window, ream-beaking his feathers in the 4 p.m. sun, and I’ve got to take a shit. just got a tune-up on my ’57 plymouth and the thing runs worse than ever. what the fuck? well it’s good to have a car like that. once in a while somebody’ll say, “why don’t you come over for dinner?” and I can just say, “Car won’t make it.” I don’t have to tell them that time is scarcer than young pussy around here. and I don’t mean time to write POETRY. I mean time to lay in bed, alone, and stare up at the ceiling and not think at all, not at all, not at all…. [***]
* * *
William Want-ling contributed to many of the same magazines as Bukowski and had a book published by Douglas Blazek. An ex-convict who had spend five years in San Quentin, he took an interest in matters such as capital punishment and penal reform (see Hank).
[To William Want-ling]
July 9, 1965
no, haven’t made a dime on poetry but am supposed to get 10 cents a copy on all Crucifix’s sold and there were over 3,000 of them printed but I don’t know if I can trust Park ave. I never saw the contract. Also supposed to get 10 percent from Poems Written Before Jumping from an 8 Story Window and am supposed to get 50 percent from a BORDER PRESS book of drawings, both of these supposedly to be issued this Fall. but, after all, I’ve only been writing poetry since I was 35—about ten years ago, and I figure about ten cents a year would be very good pay. hell, that reminds me, I did get $2 for a poem once, a horrible thing in Flame. and Garner of the extinct Targets sent me checks of $10 or more 3 times for large groups of poems—so shit, I did make my dime on poetry. and when I was young and used to go the short story—$25 for one from Story and ten bucks for one from Portfolio. so I’ve made around $80 writing and no end in sight except the a-bomb.
I don’t know about this anarchist handbook, I really wouldn’t know who to burn or who to put in if I tore down the works. the way I see it you ream out one piece of shit and substitute another for it. in the human mechanism—soul, balls, brain—there simply isn’t enough there; it’s a bad party, good guys in or not…. [* * *] everything here sags. now toothache. out of beer. car stalls in streets and they honk honk honk and I push it to the curb and think it’s time they dropped the god damned hydrogen bomb and got everything over with. there’s your anarchy—it’ll come from the top and they won’t know it. except the few big fat fuckers who get away on that space ship to another planet. I hate teeth. shit’s all right if it’s yours, but teeth, no, soulless shirks of things, fangs into brain center pulling…puking. [* * *]
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[To Tom McNamara]
July 14, 1965
yours was a good letter in courage but no more than I would expect from a guy like you living on the edge of hell, you’ve got it, and I could no more give a damn whether you were a latent or an unlatent homo or a desk drawer—although one always gets a little touchy about this subject and feels as if he were saluting the flag, and if you talk enough about it somebody points a finger at you and says, “you are a homo yourself!” same with Shannon—what he is as a sexual weapon or tool or plant doesn’t matter to me—he writes a good letter and had a beer with me, and to hell with it.
bad day at track today, hot sweaty hot crotches of whores and maidens and men and jocks and newsboys stank and I made some bad plays against my reason, feeling my 45 years jumbling in my balls and getting a little down with EFFORT, the old death-wish assuming its effrontery, and I drank too much out there and sun came down and the whole world stank.
I guess it works like this in Spain too, or The United Arab Republic, and I have some sketches to make for a book of sketches drawings due in Nov. and I can’t get rolling, I think of ants and garters and wire of cheese, and madmen dicing up committees of kangaroo, wawa, didn’t d. h. lawrence write a bad one about a kangaroo? a novel? well, who cares? he hadda eat, I hadda eat, I do things I do not like to do either but not yet on a typing machine although I guess there’s not much difference if you hold it under strong glass…. christ, I’m tired. think of all the piss pissed away today; not the shit, just the piss. momentous. think of all the poems written today, then if you want to, think of all the shit. I donate. when the cat comes home-in the morning I’ll have 3 pears on my head.
I
am pretty well on the way and listening to some Beethoven; (on radio)—with music I like what I care for, and sometimes it’s jazz or whatever or sentimental or sound that strikes against my arms under electric light just right, awwha, you ever get that guy fucking with your mailbox?
Find a way to survive that does not cut too much of a hole in you or anybody else, said the holy man, and then he lifted out his palm and I dropped in the pecan shell and the lighted cigarette butt, and victory is not what you capture but rather what you don’t want to capture, and I’ve wanted to be a monk but the robes are hot and they itch and I’m afraid I’d meet the same men there too—dressed differently. conch auszieh tusche schwarz! this is a dull one! like I told you, I am on the way. and the woman’s in the bathroom and the baby fell, YAAAH!!! more death on a fork. by midnight I will know no more; I will be sitting naked on the edge of the bed spitting invective out of my broken teeth out of the m.g.’d psyche, slabs of fat rolling like bread dough white and gummy over my gut, my face hacked with the bad years, my eyes sucked out by the snakes, I will be sitting on the edge of the bed…mumbling, twitching, shading myself against the walls, shading myself against my self, the elves, the whores, taxes, love and demolition, it will be a more drab-plink night than the one before and finally it will be a little while safe in the barbwire of sleep. sweet picture of groveling snail can’t breathe.
I used to lean slightly toward the liberal left but the crew that’s involved, in spite of the ideas, are a thin & grafted-like type of human, blank-eyed and throwing words like vomit. essentially they are very lonely. the secret is really that they have not put society down but that society has put them down and so now they gather and handhold through ¼ souls and play at tinkertoy games with 1/8 minds. there’s nothing left to do except admit that they are slugs, worms, and they are not going to do that. I do not say that these people do not sometimes do things for the betterment of mankind; I only say that they give me a pain in the ass when I have to sit in the same room with them. I am essentially a loner and now that I’ve got hung with child and woman a lot of people are coming through my door (her friends) that I would never have to look upon. christ, this is a bitter letter. maybe it was the phone call. she’s still talking, “yes, the writer needs to make such a thing vivid, give it vividness….” it’s the same old swill I heard on campus so long ago. god damn, Tom, am I insane? it seems to me as if everything is the same mouth saying the same thing over and over again from all these bodies and faces that also look the same. sometimes I feel sick, sick, disgusted. you get your faith up again and again; then it’s like trying to climb a mountain for a good hot piece of ass or a fifth of good scotch at the peak, and what do you find? a basketful of worms.
I’m going to get something to drink. you slam through that novel.
the realest part of the leg is
where is ends, like the mind
becoming soul or an apple thrown into
the sea
p.s.—christ, don’t get me wrong. I’m no John Bircher or am I for the power boys at all. nine, nine, I only like time to lay around and stare at the ceiling for a while without voices around or bodies with voices. like that.
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The following letter is printed entire and verbatim.
[To Douglas Blazek]
[July 14, 1965]
July 14 in 1965 in Los Angeles in America in a kitchen drinking beer and smoking a Dutch Master panatella, and lost $8 at the races today, and listening to Schumann I think…
aye, Blazer:
you’re right, I have been feeling down DOWN and almost did the Big Thing last Sunday, but that’s talk, Krist, I’m still here with 14 half-quarts of beer, stocking feet, red-eyed, misty of brain, gaga fk goofy, and the man on the radio asks me:
“Have you made your will yet?”
I don’t answer him.
MORE THAN THE BLUES, MORE THAN A SPIDER CRAWLING NEAR THE CORNER OF THE WALL:
quite quite quite
quit quit quit
I want to quit
I am not brave
I do not want to fight
I want to stay under the covers and
cry cry cry.
I don’t want to see a
human
I want to sleep
I will stay here until they come and
get me
or the meat disappears from the
bones and I am
beautiful
again
this is a free poem to hang in your bathroom in case you run out of paper.
I will send the letters I will send the letters I will send the letters, it is only that I have been a little goofy and some things going wrong—no need a list—I am being chewed to pieces by everything, and if I were a smooth gentleman I would not admit this—but I eat hash, hate policemen, baseball, squaredances, nuns, factories, goatees, barbers and old women who want respect only because they are old women. I will send the letters, only like I said most of them are not so good, god damn it. yours, Purdy’s, and then that’s it. I will send yours in seperate envelope so as not to defile their good guts. it’s a matter of getting to a postoffice and I will be very haappy when i get up the verve to seeit done. I am half-assed weak or something lately. how about death by cannon, Blaz? shit. great, eh man? completely blown apart in the public square, in the park on a Wednesday afternoon under a statue of Grant or Lincoln or Beethoven or Lee! in the sunshine! poems blown to pigeons. I’ve never seen a statue of Christ in the park, any park, I guess they don’t want the birdshit on his brain, I saw one once in a glass case and I was drunk and felt like getting up in there with him, it was night and he was undera small blue light but I didn’t get in there with him (Him, I mean). I was too much in a hurry to get to my place and knock off a piece of ass from this longlegged wino whore I was living with at the time, she’s dead now, poor slit. which reminds me—once I was drunk in Inglewood and I was walking down the street and I saw this mortuary, it was 2 a.m. in the morning and you know how mortuaries are out here, the big ones, those long flat steps leading up to a kind of white colonial granduer and they keep the bright big lights on all night, and I climbed up on the top step and stretched out and passed out on those mortuary steps until thepolice came and got me. and when the judge sentenced me he not only sentenced me for drunkenness but also for BLOCKING TRAFFIC!—ain’t that the shits? you know there aren’t many cars at that time of the morning but so many of them stopped to look at the body on the top step that it caused a jam. I guess they thought I was dead and that’s what I wanted them to think, chop up the smooth jugular vien of their sleep-within-Life, the fuckers. I don’t do this so much anymore because
To Douglas Blazek. October 28, 1964.
To Jon and Louise Webb. January 26, 1964.
To Jon and Louise Webb. January 26, 1964.
To Jon and Louise Webb. January 26, 1964.
To Jon and Louise Webb. [April, 1965?].
To Douglas Blazek. June 2, 1966.
To Carl Weissner. March 3, 1967.
To Jon and Louise Webb. April 19, 1967.
there is this ten-month old kid as an excuse, and I shouldn’t use it; but you know I used to conk out everywhere. there was one of my favorite hills, I believe it was Westview street just above 21st. and the hill was very steep a dark steep street going straight down without lights, and I’d get drunk and just lay myself down in the center of the street right near the top and pass out. a car never got me. although once a woman came by and screamed when she saw me out there and it brought me to and I lifted my head and looked at her and said, “Don’t worry, baby, I don’t want to FUCK you, you are too ugly, you are a shitty ugly looking human being because you live like a roach!” she disgusted me so much that I got up and staggered after her until she ran into a house. then there was an alley behind a bar in Philly, I think the bar was at 16th. and Fairmount, a real piss hole and I ran errands for sandwiches and begged for drinks and shook the pinball machine for drinks and talked for d
rinks (I used to be a good talker) and about noon I’d go into my first phase of drunkeness and walk out into the alley and lay down, and I knew these trucks used the alley to deliver and pickup stuff from the warehouses but since it was noon or one p.m. they had some chance to see me, and they had little houses in there that the blacks lived in and the kids would come out and throw rocks at me or poke me in the back with sticks, and I’d hear the mammy’s voice finally, “Now you chilrens leave dat man alone!!” and the truck didn’t come by. I am writing you now and I have 12 beers left. I been thinking about Want-ling. got a rather (what?) knifey postcard from him today because I had told him in a letter that I was rather disappointed with anarchy and revolution because the way I saw it shit was only replaced with more shit. he inferred that I was getting old and—“that terd yr carrying in your pocket, throw it out. somebody might throw you back a diamond.” I don’t intend to argue with him; yet it’s true that I don’t have much hope. I don’t disrespect either his hope or his energy, or his work. I give money to people on the streets. a woman stopped me the other night. I know I shouldn’t. it doesn’t help. maybe I should have fucked her. I am tired of pain. mass anarchy is more pain, more error. I don’t know what to do. shit, I know about the corruption, the lie of office and govt., but these are only men and if we put them in different jars with different labels they will remain only men, and the process is slow, most surely almost 2,000 years wasted, but I don’t know if i could kill a man or even say that I thought I was right about anything.