and the priest
and the 3 teeth of the last nun
and fuck the bathtub
and fuck the faucets
and fuck my beerbottle
(but be careful)
fuck the spiral
and the smog
and the pavements
and the calendars
and the poets and the bishops and the kings and
the presidents and the mayors and the councilmen
and the firemen and the policemen
and the magazines and the newspapers and the brown
paper bags
and the stinking sea
and the rising prices and the unemployed
and rope ladders
and gall bladders
and sniffy doctors and orderlies and nice
nurses
and fuck the entire thing,
you know.
do your job.
take it out
and begin.
2 immortal poems
about 2 immortal poems a night
are about all I’ll allow myself
to write.
it’s fair—there isn’t much
competition.
besides, it’s more enjoyable
getting drunk
than lasting
forever.
that’s why more people
buy liquor than
Shakespeare . . .
who wouldn’t rather learn to
escape through the neck of a
bottle
or a neatly-rolled
Zig-Zag
than a book?
2 immortal poems a night are
enough . . .
when I hear those high heels
clicking up my doorway
steps . . .
I know that life is not made of paper
and immortality
but what we are
now; and as
her body, her eyes, her soul
enter the
room
the typewriter sits like a spoiled and
wasted, most well-fed
dog . . .
we embrace
within the tiny flash
of our
lives
as the typewriter
yowls
silently.
T.H.I.A.L.H.
in dwarf-like piety the guns mount toward home,
and the coffee cans desire 18th-century verse;
the tabloid is grim with comic strips and
baseball box scores—
as the Egyptians spit on dogs and the geek
swallows lightbulbs at The Metropolitan Museum of
Art; it’s haversack and ballyhoo,
the punctuation is regular
the flax is battleship sick
and Captain Claypool vomits midnights out
cleanly;
the destination is the shoebox and the prize is
century-old
taffy, and nobody says
that the purple and green animals
out back by the garbage cans will
control which way the steam will
blow;
pictures of Dempsey and Tunney
crawl across the brain like
snails; and ether is the smell of your dead
psyche;
then, this must be it:
taking your shoes off
across sick evenings
allows ventures that would rip the skull like a
lion’s tooth, and Mrs. Carson McCullers is
long dead now
of
drink and
greatness, and the heart still sails like a
boomerang.
the lesbian
(dedicated to all of them)
I was sitting on my couch one night,
as per custom, in shorts and undershirt,
drinking beer and not thinking about too much
when there was a knock on the door—
“woo hooo! woo hooo!”
now what the hell? I thought.
“woo hooo! wooo hooo!”
“what is it?” I asked.
“I got a slim one! I got a slim one for you!”
a slim one?
it sounded like a woman’s voice.
“wait a minute,” I asked.
I went into the bedroom, put on a ripped shirt and
my dirty chino trousers. then I came out and opened the
door.
it was the lesbian from the place in back.
“I bought a slim one for you,” she said.
“oh yeah?”
she was in a tight sweater and shorts,
she turned in the moonlight.
“see? I lost 20 pounds! you like it?”
“come on in,” I said.
she sat in the chair across from me and
crossed her legs.
“don’t tell the landlady I came by.”
“don’t worry,” I said.
and she crossed her legs the other way. they had
these big purple bruises all over them. I wondered who
had put them there.
she talked and asked questions, talked and asked questions—
who was that woman who came by with the little girl? my little girl,
was it
my little girl? yes, but they didn’t live here. my, that’s nice.
her father supported her, her father gave her lots of money, her
father was a
nice man. was that my painting on the wall? yes, it was. she knew
something about
Art—she said. did I have a girlfriend? what did I do when I wasn’t
sleeping?
she talked and asked questions, talked and asked questions. I was
bored,
completely out of it.
when I had been a young man
I had thought I could alter nature,
but one lesbian had been simply wood—
wood with a knothole—
and the other
(I tried it twice)
had almost killed me,
chasing me down three flights of steps and
halfway down
Bunker Hill.
the one across from me stood up
walked over, then stuck her breasts in my
face—
“you don’t want any, do you?”
“uuh uuh.”
she pointed over to a potty chair in the corner—
“you still use that?”
“ah yes. it pinches my cheeks a bit but it brings back
memories . . .”
“good night!” she ran to the door, opened it, slammed
it.
“good night,” I
said, and then finished my bottle of beer, thinking,
I wonder what’s wrong with
her tonight?
*
then there was a man with little tiny legs running back
there. he had this long body, and these little tiny legs
began where an ordinary man’s knees would be
and he ran along with these little tiny legs
packing baskets of food to the lesbian in back there.
my my, there’s something wrong with that poor little fellow,
I thought.
the landlord ran him out of there one morning at 5 A.M.
“hey! what the hell you doing up there? get the hell out of
here!”
“I brought her food! I brought her food!”
“get the hell out of here!”
the landlord chased him up the driveway. “you’re up there every
damn
morning at 3 A.M. I’m getting sick of it! don’t you ever sleep?
what the hell’s wrong with your legs?”
“I sleep! I sleep! I work nights!”
they came running past my window.
“you work nights? what the hell’s the matter with you? why don’t
you get a job
working days?”
little legs just kept running. he made a quick turn around a hedge
and was up the
street. the landlord screamed after him:
“you damn fool! don’t you know she’s a dyke? what the hell you
gonna do with a
dyke?”
there was no answer, of
course.
*
then the fellow in the next court, a chap a bit on the subnormal
side inherited 20 thousand
dollars. next thing I knew, I heard the lesbian’s voice
in there. the walls were quite thin.
god, she got down on her knees and scrubbed all the
floors. and kept running out the back door with the
trash. he musta had a year’s worth of trash in
there. each time she ran out the back, the screen door would
slam—bam! bam! bam! it must have slammed 70 times in an
hour and a half. she was showing him.
my bedroom was next to theirs. at night I’d hear him mount
her. there wasn’t much action. quite dead. only one body in
motion. your guess.
a few days later the lesbian started to take over—
coming in from the kitchen—
“oh no, buster! get up! get up! you can’t go to bed this time
of day! I’m not going to make your bed twice!”
then a week later it was over. I didn’t hear her voice anymore.
she was again in her place in the back.
I was standing on my porch one day thinking about it—
poor thing. why doesn’t she get a girlfriend? I’m not prejudiced, I
don’t hold anything against lesbians, no sir! Look at Sappho. I
didn’t
hold anything against Sappho
either.
then I looked up and here she came down the
driveway, it was too late to run into my
place. I stood quietly, trying to be part of the porch.
she came by in her white shorts and neck bent like a vulture and
then she saw me and made this incredible sound:
“YAWK!”
“good morning,” I said.
“YAWK!” she went again.
god damn, I thought, she thinks I’m a bird. I walked quickly into
my place and
closed the door, looked through the
curtains. she was out there breathing
heavily. then she began to flail her arms up and down, going
“YAWK! YAWK! YAWK!”
she’s gone nuts, I
thought.
then slowly slowly she began to rise into the
air.
oh no, I thought.
she was about 3 feet above the hedge,
flailing the air—her breasts bouncing sadly,
her giant legs kicking
looking for notches in the
air. then she rose, higher and
higher. she was above the apartment houses, rising up
into the Los Angeles smog. then she was over Sunset Boulevard
high above the Crocker-Citizens Bank, and
then I saw another object come flying from the
south. it seemed to be all body with just these little short legs
at the back. then they flew toward
each other. when I saw them embrace in mid-air
I turned away, walked into the kitchen and
pulled down all the
shades.
and waited for the end of the
world.
my head rang like a bell
and I began to weep.
a poem to myself
Charles Bukowski
disputes the indisputable
used to work in the Post Office
scares people on the streets
is a neurotic
makes his shit up
especially the stuff about sex
Charles Bukowski
is the King of the Hard-Mouthed Poets
Charles Bukowski
used to work for the Post Office
Charles Bukowski
writes tough and acts scared
acts scared and writes tough
makes his shit up
especially the stuff about sex
Charles Bukowski
has $90,000 in the bank and is
worried
Charles Bukowski
will make $20,000 a year for the
next 4 years and
is worried
Charles Bukowski
is a drunk
Charles Bukowski
loves his daughter
Charles Bukowski
used to work for the Post Office
Charles Bukowski
says he hates poetry readings
Charles Bukowski
gives poetry readings
and bitches when the take is under
$50
Charles Bukowski
got a good review in Der Spiegel
Charles Bukowski
was published in Penguin Poetry Series #13
Charles Bukowski
has just written his first novel
has two old pair of shoes—one black, one
brown
Charles Bukowski
was once married to a millionairess
Charles Bukowski
is known throughout the underground
Charles Bukowski
sleeps until noon and always awakens with a
hangover
Charles Bukowski
has been praised by Genet and Henry Miller
many rich and successful people wish they
were
Charles Bukowski
Charles Bukowski
drinks and talks with fascists, revolutionaries,
cocksuckers, whores and madmen
Charles Bukowski
dislikes poetry
looks like a fighter but gets beat-up every time
he drinks scotch or wine
Charles Bukowski
was a clerk in the Post Office for eleven years
Charles Bukowski
was a carrier in the Post Office for 3 years
wrote Notes of a Dirty Old Man
which is in bookstores from the Panama
Canal to
Amsterdam
Charles Bukowski
gets drunk with college professors and tells
them
to suck shit;
once drank a pint of whiskey straight down
at a party
for squares, and what was
Charles Bukowski
doing there?
Charles Bukowski
is in the archives at the University of Santa
Barbara
that’s what started all the riots at Isla Vista
Charles Bukowski
got it made—he can fuck a skunk in a
cesspool
and come up with a royal flush in a Texas
tornado
almost everybody wants to be
Charles Bukowski
to get drunk with
Charles Bukowski
all the raven-haired girls with tight pussies
want to
fuck
Charles Bukowski
even when he speaks of suicide
Charles Bukowski
smiles and sometimes laughs
and when his publishers tell him
we’ve hardly made the advance yet
or we haven’t made our bi-yearly tabulation
but you’ve got it made
Charles Bukowski
don’t worry
and Penguin Books bills
Charles Bukowski
for 2 pounds owed after
the first edition ha
s sold out, but don’t worry,
we’re
going into a second
edition,
and when the wino on the couch falls on his
face
and Charles Bukowski tries to lift him to the
couch
the wino punches him in the nose
Charles Bukowski
has even had a bibliography written about
him
or tabulated about him
he can’t miss
his piss doesn’t stink
everything’s fine,
he even gets drunk with his landlord and
landlady, everybody likes him, think he’s
just just just . . .
Charles Bukowski’s
shoulders slump
he pecks at keys that won’t answer the call
knowing he’s got it made
knowing he’s great
Charles Bukowski
is growing broke
is breaking
in a period of acclaim
in a period of professors and publishers and
pussy
nobody will understand that the last of his
bankroll
is burning faster than
dog turds soaked and lit with F-310 gasoline
and Marina needs new
shoes.
of course, he doesn’t understand the
intangibles. but he
does.
Charles Bukowski
doesn’t have it
he leans across a typewriter
drunk at 3:30 in the morning
let somebody else carry the ball
he’s bruised and his ass has been
kicked
it’s quits
the night is showing
Storm for the Living and the Dead Page 4