we’ve got to live with loss like we used to
maybe still do
live with a bad
whore
but
we know all along what it is
we take is standing like Hemingway
or we dismiss it like
Camus
but we know
about it
this is the way it works and
we wind our clocks and we
wait on
midnight or the carnival
a hamburger sandwich or the
garbage man.
we live with it we live until we
die.
how’s that for hot shit? I throw in free poems that will never be used. I am a truly tough spit baby crying outa a blinkin’ blinking eye thing. [* * *]
* * *
Want-ling must have requested some quotable aphorisms.
[To William Want-ling]
November 11, 1965
They beat you down with their factories, their booze, their women until you are no longer of any use to them or yourself.
—Bukowski
The trouble with women is that in creating new men they tend to destroy old ones, and you and I know that women are not very good artists.
—Bukowski, again.
[* * *]
I have never met a man that I have truly liked. I have met men that I would drink with, laugh with, fight for—but only in a manner of hope instead of reality.
—B.
I only loved one woman and, unlike all the others, she was the only one who never demanded or asked for the spoken word of it. and even over her grave I said nothing, not even in my head, but the sunlight knew and my shoelaces and [illegible].
—B.
[* * *]
I don’t want to play the image of the drunk; it is only that I get so sick of what I remember.
b.
Social consciousness is what keeps me from raping little girls of eleven—that, and the chance of getting caught. Yet I cannot conceive of anybody raping my own little daughter—her eyes are so blue and holy that God himself might awaken to destroy the offender. Yet what keeps us going while we are racking up our own cruelties is the almost certain knowledge (instinct) that God is asleep during our acts. I am as guilty as any, for the desire to act and then not-to-act is the same as acting; the only factor lacking between them being courage, and yet I must beg off at times through a seeming sympathy for an intended victim, which might only be an inbred Christianity or cowardice. The greatest problem is, however, that no intended victim of rape, robbery, murder, the worst of acts, is innocent at all—they have all died or slipped or slurred or murdered something themselves along the way—even eleven year old girls. I think that the best principle for a strong man (if I may invent a term?) is not to get involved with the creatures because the creatures are a swamp. There will be certainly enough involvement, without voluntary explorative involvement, to last you a lifetime and to wear you down and kill you before you are 37 years old.
—buk
happy birthday you 32 year old dog [* * *]
[* * *] and we all know about our Great President Honorable Rancho Hot shit Johnson, he talks outa one side of his mouth and shoots a loaded 45 into the back of an innocent man with the other. I go on record that he is a Liar. I’ve met and worked for his types in all the slave mills from Atlanta, Dallas, New York, any city you can name. I hate his face. he is the final great o o o intruder elected to mutilate society at society’s behest. what a hell kind of a democracy is this, that gives you one face, and then gives you the knife?
the United States Government keeps increasing its hardness by the surety of its strength, and it keeps getting harder and harder and tougher and tougher until it is almost like some crazy kind of wart or cancer gone mad. I keep getting the thought that this is happening everywhere in all governments all countries…. christ, we are all so ugly. Is this the meaning of Govts? to get uglier? so, we have the French Rev. which slowly faded back into its cage. and now we have found that even the American Civil War was meaningless…an exchange of ariel courtesies…while the poor black remained the poor free?? black, and even more hollow doughnuts, this Watts strike which I witnessed and work with most of the blacks, even the blacks have conspired into silence, for Christ’s sake, tell them about a few committees, a poverty program wherein not one wino gets 10 cents for a drink of wine, just salaries for officials who have already beat the game by getting into the machine of the game fuck it fuck it. I am lost. and I knew all during the riots that it would be lost…that even the words of the rioters would fall back…. no new world, never. Just the guy on top looking and talking like the guy on the bottom and thinking the same things and the same way. all lost, forever. my hands on a small torn white tablecloth, my white hands, my drink, my cigarette, hoping verily for a wake up of Big Prick God but knowing all along it would not be so. Keep your grenades, 32 year old tough guy, I have done time too, but I guess all our dreams are going to leak out of a salty piss pillow, and I never had no hope and if you think it hard to be 32, you are correct. it is hard to be anything. [* * *]
* * *
[To Douglas Blazek]
[?November, 1965]
[* * *] I’ve got to say one thing for ALL THE WOMEN I’ve lived with, they couldn’t care less. it’s only when the blade falls and we are sitting out on the street on a piece of cardboard that they seem to question. I remember one of them saying, “But I thought you knew what you were doing!” “Baby, baby,” I told her, “what ever gave you such an idea?” this one I walked South into the city with, she knew somebody—“he’ll let me stay. I only hope he makes his balls quick. I can’t stand the son of a bitch.” I walked her to the door, watched her make up her face, she gave me the sad death kiss and then knocked, “It’s me, Kelly, honey.” and some big fat swine of a businessman, 285 pounds of gold wrapped his arms around her and I walked off. to the streets. I didn’t have a pussy.
the woman is off to her little poetry reading group at his church or other. Neeli Cherry is down there too. he likes to mouth his stuff but they won’t let him read right off. he’s got to suck in. he’ll shoot some mouth tho. I can see Frances now, “And now, I want to introduce Neeli Cherry, editor of the Black Cat Review.” and the little butterball, 20 years of him, will try to get up and say something clever. I’ll have them all on my back next Sunday—Neeli, Frances, the kid; I’m going to drive them down to see the Richmond madhouse EARTH, if the old car makes it, and I take F. to drive me back. the judge told me last time, “one more drunk driving rap and you might as well measure up for a loose-fitting pinstripe.” only not in that terminology. but I read him, the monster. Neeli keeps telling me, “I don’t care for Richmond’s stuff,” and not being an arguer or a man for detail in vocal transmission, I always give him the same, “Richmond writes some good stuff.” which, of course, is so. Richmond writes a clean and easy and a clear line. all those fuckers write well: Richmond, Cherry, Want-ling, the whole screwy suffering houseful. I just hate to see them scratch each other. well, god damn them anyhow, I travel alone.
scratch, scratch.
very strange happening today. was sitting going over my horses today before going to track, red-eyed, sucking on a beer, shivering, sick with 2 hours overtime and no sleep, sitting in the torn chair by the door and the doorbell rings and here is the mailman with a registered letter from one Heinrich Fett, 547 Andernach a/Rhein, Privoit Strs. 1, Germany. that’s where I was born, sweetheart. what an odd feeling. and here in broken English was a letter from my Uncle (my dead mother’s brother) who said, “By chance I got your address on October 22, 65.” only it was my old address at 1623 N. Mariposa Ave. where I did some good whoring and maybe some good writing too. anyhow, the letter, short and simple, damn near knocked the beer outa my hand, tho not quite. I’ll write him tomorrow and tell him that I am very old and very tired. [* * *]
* * *
[To Ann Menebroker]
&nb
sp; November 17, 1965
[* * *] It seems like I’ve written a hell of a lot of drunken letters, maybe more letters than poems, and somebody got the idea it might make a book. Feelers in from some publishers already even tho book is still gathering. I would like your letters—mine to you—included, the best ones, unless you feel that in some of them there was something extra personal. But I have nothing to hide. the letters are yours tho, please do as you wish. I am hoping that you will let them look at most of them, maybe all of them. All letters are returned, of course. Please understand that. and my letters to you are, of course, more personal than to many but I am hoping that anything I said was universal as well as personal. I do hope that you will let them look at most of them? if you do, my more than thanks, of course. for since we have gotten into this thing I would like it to be as complete a selection as possible. [* * *]
[To Douglas Blazek]
November 24, 1965
[* * *] I haven’t heard from you on the 2 long poems I sent. Please return if they don’t fit you. I have been rejected before. besides, one poem must have a portion eliminated anyhow. I remember slamming Eisenhower but since his recent heart attack & obvious decline, I have decided to lay off. no need to attack the sick and the aged—there’s bigger game in the brush.
now must try to get some rest. please forgive tired letter. and again, much thanks, your master job on Confessions.
* * *
[To Ruth Want-ling]
[November 25, 1965]
[* * *] no no no, I don’t like snowstorms, I almost died in one, and I am now too old to die. death is only for the young. o christ, forgive me. I keep opening my mouth. you know, I am always in a jam. anyhow, since you know I am an ass, I’ll go on. there was one winter, I think it was in Philly. I am sitting in this very tiny bar and the bartender starts spouting Shakespeare and I am making it with a couple of women in there but this makes me angry, this Shakespeare, so being a blackheart by nature I started bragging on Hitler, Mussolini, so forth, and the next thing I knew I was evicted and instead of being guided to one of the warm pads of one of the whores to be fucked and rolled or maybe just rolled I was walking along in the snow, then stopped and decided to piss against the side of a church. this worked nicely. finished. put it away. then decided on a shortcut across the churchyard. all fine, big moon. ice cold. I have a room somewhere anyhow. I am walking along plenty drunk and then I trip over this wire they have strung across the yard about ankle high. down I go. too drunk to raise up. I lay there knowing I will freeze. I laid there a long time. but it must have been the coldness of the snow on my face that revived me. I got up and made it on in. but, remembering this the next morning, I decided to get out of the snow country and stay out. suicides are desperately vain: they like to choose the time and place. there’s a great difference between dying when you want to and dying when you don’t want to. I know that it amounts to the same thing yet there remains a kind of difference in how the soul or what’s left of the soul enters the earth of the sky or whatever it enters.
listen!!! will you stop this god damned lovely dental technician shit and what great gobs of nicety these dentists…these paid torturers of the haunted human race…are. all other areas of science have moved forward and these fuckers are still working with a pair of pliers. I can’t see a man who wants to be constantly around blood as any kind of decent individual. I’d rather pick up garbage. every dentist I have ever met has had thick wrists, black nazi hair on his arms and an ovaltine belly swarming with the hymns of rats. what lies are you trying to tell me? [* * *]
* * *
[To Steven Richmond]
Thanksgiving for what? [November 25,] 1965
[* * *] if you think f. franklyn’s thing was rough on me, you ought to see what I did to my dear friend John William Corrington when the editor of Steppenwolf sent me his latest book of poems Lines to the South to read and review. I had praised Corrington’s preceding book of poems but this collection became a complete reversal-automatic poetic poetry. I didn’t know what to do. as you might know, Corrington wrote the foreword to my selection-collection of 8 years’ worth of poetry, It Catches My Heart in Its Hands. he called me some pretty good things, and here I sat with his latest book of poems in my hands and it didn’t have it, it didn’t even try…I can forgive a lot of bad stuff if a man is swinging from his heels but he was making little cotton muffins. like George Washerbaby, I could not tell a lie. I had to let him have it. I never knew that such assassination lurked within my bowels. Steppenwolf will be out after Christmas with its bloody pages. yet really, I think you will find it different than the franklyn. I don’t think it is snitty or below the belt. anyhow, hell. [* * *]
* * *
[To William Want-ling]
November 29, 1965
[* * *] maybe my last letter offended you? remember being drunk as usual but remember mentioning something about a desire to rape eleven year old girls. I said desire, not actuality. in other words, if you had an eleven year old daughter staying with me you might consider her pretty safe, at least a lot safer than with men who won’t admit their desires even to themselves, or if to themselves, then not to the rest of the world. I am not saying that I am anything special but as I say that if you take offense at my naturalism, at that which nature has put into me, then, you are a damn fool. [* * *]
* * *
[To Douglas Blazek]
December 4, 1965
rec. Ole 3 and see you are still with hammer and sight and selectivity. I always await a downgrading from first issues of enthusiasm but you are only still more there. my thanks for the ads on various books. I am sure my starving, mad editors like them too…. this is my next to last night off until Xmas and I must work eleven and twelve hours each night. hell, of course, sweet hell, but it’s take it or quit the job or get fired and there is nothing in my brain working yet on the perfect escape. yet I have hustled my horse-race figures over and over and now the madman says (Buk), “with my method of play, I can average $500 a week with a straight $10 flat bet on win.” I’ve put in hours and hours of work and on this thing and it would be some laugh if it were true! it’s true on paper, at any rate, and almost frighteningly logical, and my job is to follow my scientific papers instead of emotion or hysteria or so forth. you get out there and some ass spills beer on your shirt, somebody steps on your shoes, you glance up and see a man staring at you with a mountain of immense hatred; you look around and here is some gal sitting on a bench with her skirt pulled up around her ass. you take a good swig from the flask Nash sent you, the one Hemingway drank out of, so it’s good enough for me, maybe not good enough. anyhow, what I am trying to say is that a lot of things get in the way of pure paper theory, and it takes guts to continues to follow a straight central line, esp. when a losing streak occurs. and EXACTLY when you JUMP OFF, IT COMES IN AT VERY GOOD ODDS. I am going to stay on the line, listen, what has this got to do with the good Ole? I worked eleven hours last night, so make that an excuse. listening to a Rossini opera. I can see why they failed. all his operas sound like his overtures, and an over. and the meat of an opera are different things.
more beer. shit, maybe I will pick up. if you don’t hear from me until after Xmas, please understand—the hours, and my health is bad; pain pain in throat back chest shoulders, sick stomach, weakness. sometimes I am working and I get faint. it is all I can do to keep from falling to the floor. it is very embarrassing. but after a while it passes. and after the tenth or eleventh hour you longer no longer give a shit. it is like being drunk, almost. you say exactly what you are thinking because you no longer care. senselessness. that most of my fellow workers seem to like their jobs and even like each extra call of overtime hours…is what?? disheartening, at least, when I think of the future of the human race. I was sitting next to a fairly sensible fellow the other night and when the screws weren’t watching I said to him, “You know, it would be nice if they let each man work the number of hours he had to in order to take care of his needs. you kno
w, when you get tired of working, just get up and walk out.” “It wouldn’t work for you,” he told me, “you’d starve to death.” like I said, he was a sensible fellow.
Frances and I have split. she and the little girl are over in a place on Carlton. it costs me something, but hell, I blow every paycheck anyhow, so what’s the difference? I see the little girl every day so she’ll remember me. I am soft in the head for her, Marina. the other day Frances brought her over and I was in bed asleep and she crawled on my chest and looked at my face and smiled smiled like crazy and then she kissed me on the mouth. little wench. and then she laughed. she’s all full of this kind of love and she makes me remember somehow how it once was.
lighting up a Corona. fuck, I am a big money man. the boys on the opera on the radio laugh at me. [* * *]
Norse has not sent me his poems. I wrote him. now, Blaz, I just can’t write this guy a blank check. I’ve got to see what you are printing. I realize that he is some sort of overlooked master craftsman with a master heart, but I’ve got to see the poems you are publishing or, I can’t say a word towards or against him. he has an instinctive way with the word; he makes a man feel good reading him. the line is clear and specked with blood. I suppose what worries me about him is that he never throws the bomb or screams. but this is the danger point: it is hard to scream or bayonet and still retain the vindictive and cool Art-form. this was my trouble with Crucifix. everything was bothering me at once. I was stumbling all over the place and my blood was real, except for a few jokes, but the bull was making me look bad. it’s best when you look good and say good. not rules, shit, no, but a way to do things like the wind or the trees or some gal at the track just showing you enough leg to make you forget God and his peashooter. fuck it.
Screams From the Balcony Page 25