BY CHARLES BUKOWSKI
The Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over the Hills (1969)
Post Office (1971)
Mockingbird Wish Me Luck (1972)
South of No North (1973)
Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame: Selected Poems 1955–1973 (1974)
Factotum (1975)
Love Is a Dog from Hell (1977)
Women (1978)
You Kissed Lilly (1978)
Play the Piano Drunk Like a Percussion Instrument Until the Fingers Begin to Bleed a Bit (1979)
Shakespeare Never Did This (1979)
Dangling in the Tournefortia (1981)
Ham on Rye (1982)
Bring Me Your Love (1983)
Hot Water Music (1983)
There’s No Business (1984)
War All the Time: Poems 1981–1984 (1984)
You Get So Alone At Times That It Just Makes Sense (1986)
The Movie: “Barfly” (1987)
The Roominghouse Madrigals: Early Selected Poems 1946–1966 (1988)
Hollywood (1989)
Septuagenarian Stew: Stories & Poems (1990)
The Last Night of the Earth Poems (1992)
Screams from the Balcony: Selected Letters 1960–1970 (1993)
Pulp (1994)
Living on Luck: Selected Letters 1960s–1970s (Volume 2) (1995)
Betting on the Muse: Poems & Stories (1996)
Bone Palace Ballet: New Poems (1997)
The Captain Is Out to Lunch and the Sailors Have Taken Over the Ship (1998)
Reach for the Sun: Selected Letters 1978–1994 (Volume 3) (1999)
What Matters Most Is How Well You Walk Through the Fire: New Poems (1999)
Open All Night: New Poems (2000)
The Night Torn Mad with Footsteps: New Poems (2001)
Beerspit Night and Cursing: The Correspondence of Charles Bukowski & Sheri Martinelli 1960–1967 (2001)
Sifting Through the Madness for the Word, the Line, the Way: New Poems (2003)
The Flash of Lightning Behind the Mountain: New Poems (2004)
Slouching Toward Nirvana (2005)
Come On In! (2006)
The People Look Like Flowers At Last (2007)
The Pleasures of the Damned (2007)
The Continual Condition (2009)
On Writing (2015)
On Cats (2015)
On Love (2016)
On Love
CHARLES BUKOWSKI
Edited by Abel Debritto
First published in Great Britain in 2016 by Canongate Books Ltd,
14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE
www.canongate.tv
This digital edition first published in 2016 by Canongate Books
Copyright © 2016 by Linda Lee Bukowski
Photograph on page 33 courtesy of Marina Bukowski.
All other photographs courtesy of Linda Lee Bukowski
The moral right of the author has been asserted
First published in the USA by Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollins
Publishers, 195 Broadway, New York, NY, 10007
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available on
request from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 78211 728 5
eISBN 978 1 78211 729 2
Contents
mine
layover
the day I kicked a bankroll out the window
I taste the ashes of your death
love is a piece of paper torn to bits
to the whore who took my poems
shoes
a real thing, a good woman
one night stand
the mischief of expiration
love is a form of selfishness
for Jane: with all the love I had, which was not enough
for Jane
notice
my real love in Athens
sleeping woman
a party here—machineguns, tanks, an army fighting against men on rooftops
for the 18 months of Marina Louise
poem for my daughter
answer to a note found in the mailbox
all the love of me goes out to her (for A.M.)
an answer to a critic of sorts
the shower
2 carnations
have you ever kissed a panther?
the best love poem I can write at the moment
balling
hot
smiling, shining, singing
visit to Venice
love poem to Marina
I can hear the sound of human lives being ripped to pieces
for those 3
blue moon, oh bleweeww mooooon how I adore you!
the first love
love
raw with love (for N.W.)
a love poem for all the women I have known
fax
one for the shoeshine man
who in the hell is Tom Jones?
sitting in a sandwich joint just off the freeway
a definition
an acceptance slip
the end of a short affair
one for old snaggle-tooth
prayer for a whore in bad weather
I made a mistake
the 6 foot goddess (for S.D.)
quiet clean girls in gingham dresses
tonight
pacific telephone
hunchback
mermaid
yes
2nd. street, near Hollister, in Santa Monica
the trashing of the dildo
a place to relax
snap snap
for the little one
hello, Barbara
Carson McCullers
Jane and Droll
we get along
it was all right
my walls of love
eulogy to a hell of a dame
love
eulogy
40 years ago in that hotel room
a magician, gone
no luck for that
love poem to a stripper
love crushed like a dead fly
shoes
pulled down shade
Trollius and trellises
turn
oh, I was a ladies’ man!
love poem
a dog
the strong man
the bluebird
the dressmaker
confessions
mine
She lays like a lump.
I can feel the great empty mountain
of her head
but she is alive. She yawns and
scratches her nose and
pulls up the covers.
Soon I will kiss her goodnight
and we will sleep.
And far away is Scotland
and under the ground the
gophers run.
I hear engines in the night
and through the sky a white
hand whirls:
goodnight, dear, goodnight.
layover
Making love in the sun, in the morning sun
in a hotel room
above the alley
where poor men poke for bottles;
making love in the sun
making love by a carpet redder than our blood,
making love while the boys sell headlines
and Cadillacs,
making love by a photograph of Paris
and an open pack of Chesterfields,
making love while other men—poor
fools—
work.
That moment—to this . . .
may be years in the way they measure,
but it’s only one sentence back in my mind—
t
here are so many days
when living stops and pulls up and sits
and waits like a train on the rails.
I pass the hotel at 8
and at 5; there are cats in the alleys
and bottles and bums,
and I look up at the window and think,
I no longer know where you are,
and I walk on and wonder where
the living goes
when it stops.
the day I kicked a bankroll out the window
and, I said, you can take your rich aunts and uncles
and grandfathers and fathers
and all their lousy oil
and their seven lakes
and their wild turkey
and buffalo
and the whole state of Texas,
meaning, your crow-blasts
and your Saturday night boardwalks,
and your 2-bit library
and your crooked councilmen
and your pansy artists—
you can take all these
and your weekly newspaper
and your famous tornadoes
and your filthy floods
and all your yowling cats
and your subscription to Life,
and shove them, baby,
shove them.
I can handle a pick and ax again (I think)
and I can pick up
25 bucks for a 4-rounder (maybe);
sure, I’m 38
but a little dye can pinch the gray
out of my hair;
and I can still write a poem (sometimes),
don’t forget that, and even if
they don’t pay off,
it’s better than waiting for death and oil,
and shooting wild turkey,
and waiting for the world
to begin.
all right, bum, she said,
get out.
what? I said.
get out. you’ve thrown your
last tantrum.
I’m tired of your damned tantrums:
you’re always acting like a
character
in an O’Neill play.
but I’m different, baby,
I can’t help
it.
you’re different, all right!
God, how different!
don’t slam
the door
when you leave.
but, baby, I love your
money!
you never once said
you loved me!
what do you want
a liar or a
lover?
you’re neither! out, bum,
out!
. . . but baby!
go back to O’Neill!
I went to the door,
softly closed it and walked away,
thinking: all they want
is a wooden Indian
to say yes and no
and stand over the fire and
not raise too much hell;
but you’re getting to be
an old man, kiddo:
next time play it closer
to the
vest.
I taste the ashes of your death
the blossoms shake
sudden water
down my sleeve,
sudden water
cool and clean
as snow—
as the stem-sharp
swords
go in
against your breast
and the sweet wild
rocks
leap over
and
lock us in.
love is a piece of paper torn to bits
all the beer was poisoned and the capt. went down
and the mate and the cook
and we had nobody to grab sail
and the N.wester ripped the sheets like toenails
and we pitched like crazy
the bull tearing its sides
and all the time in the corner
some punk had a drunken slut (my wife)
and was pumping away
like nothing was happening
and the cat kept looking at me
and crawling in the pantry
amongst the clanking dishes
with flowers and vines painted on them
until I couldn’t stand it anymore
and took the thing
and heaved it
over
the side.
to the whore who took my poems
some say we should keep personal remorse from the
poem,
stay abstract, and there is some reason in this,
but jezus:
12 poems gone and I don’t keep carbons and you have
my
paintings too, my best ones; it’s stifling:
are you trying to crush me out like the rest of them?
why didn’t you take my money? they usually do
from the sleeping drunken pants sick in the corner.
next time take my left arm or a fifty
but not my poems:
I’m not Shakespeare
but sometimes simply
there won’t be any more, abstract or otherwise;
there’ll always be money and whores and drunkards
down to the last bomb,
but as God said,
crossing his legs,
I see where I have made plenty of poets
but not so very much
poetry.
shoes
shoes in the closet like Easter lilies,
my shoes alone right now,
and other shoes with other shoes
like dogs walking avenues,
and smoke alone is not enough
and I got a letter from a woman in a hospital,
love, she says, love,
more poems,
but I do not write,
I do not understand myself,
she sends me photographs of the hospital
taken from the air,
but I remember her on other nights,
not dying,
shoes with spikes like daggers
sitting next to mine,
how these strong nights
can lie to the hills,
how these nights become quite finally
my shoes in the closet
flown by overcoats and awkward shirts,
and I look into the hole the door leaves
and the walls, and I do not
write.
a real thing, a good woman
they are always writing about the bulls, the bullfighters,
those who have never seen them,
and as I break the webs of the spiders reaching for my wine
the umhum of bombers, gd.dmn hum breaking the solace,
and I must write a letter to my priest about some 3rd. st. whore
who keeps calling me up at 3 in the morning;
up the old stairs, ass full of splinters,
thinking of pocket-book poets and the priest,
and I’m over the typewriter like a washing machine,
and look look the bulls are still dying
and they are razing them raising them
like wheat in the fields,
and the sun’s black as ink, black ink that is,
and my wife says Brock, for Christ’s sake,
the typewriter all night,
how can I sleep? and I crawl into bed and
kiss her hair sorry sorry sorry
sometimes I get excited I don’t know why
friend of mine said he was going to write about
Manolete . . .
who’s that? nobody, kid, somebody dead
like Chopin or our old mailman or a dog,
go to sleep, go to sleep,
and I kiss her and rub her head,
a good woman,
and soon she sleeps and I wait
for m
orning.
one night stand
the latest hardware dangling upon my pillow catches
window lamplight through the mist of alcohol.
I was the whelp of a prude who whipped me when
the wind shook blades of grass the eye could see
move and
you were a
convent girl watching the nuns shake loose
the Las Cruces sand from God’s robes.
you are
yesterday’s
bouquet so sadly
raided. I kiss your poor
breasts as my hands reach for love
in this cheap Hollywood apartment smelling of
bread and gas and misery.
we move through remembered routes
the same old steps smooth with hundreds of
feet, 50 loves, 20 years.
and we are granted a very small summer, and
then it’s
winter again
and you are moving across the floor
some heavy awkward thing
and the toilet flushes, a dog barks
a car door slams . . .
it’s gotten inescapably away, everything,
it seems, and I light a cigarette and
await the oldest curse
of all.
the mischief of expiration
I am, at best, the delicate thought of a delicate hand
that quenches for the mixing rope, and when
beneath the love of flowers I am still,
as the spider drinks the greening hour—
strike gray bells of drinking,
let a frog say
a voice is dead,
let the beasts from the pantry
and the days that have hated this,
the contrary wives of unblinking grief,
plains of small surrender
between Mexicali and Tampa;
hens gone, cigarettes smoked, loaves sliced,
and lest this be taken for wry sorrow:
put the spider in wine,
tap the thin skull sides that held poor lightning,
make it less than a treacherous kiss,
put me down for dancing
you much more dead,
I am a dish for your ashes,
I am a fist for your air.
the most immense thing about beauty
is finding it gone.
love is a form of selfishness
pither, the eustachian tube and the green bugdead ivy
and the way we walked tonight
with the sky climbing on our ears and in our pockets
On Love Page 1