On Love

by Charles Bukowski

“is that all you’ve got

  to say?”

  “yes.”

  “eat shit!” she said and

  hung up.

  love dries up, I thought

  as I walked back to the

  bathroom, about as fast as

  sperm.

  one for old snaggle-tooth

  I know a woman

  who keeps buying puzzles

  Chinese

  puzzles

  blocks

  wires

  pieces that finally fit

  into some order.

  she works it out

  mathematically

  she solves all her

  puzzles

  lives down by the sea

  puts sugar out for the ants

  and believes

  ultimately

  in a better world.

  her hair is white

  she seldom combs it

  her teeth are snaggled

  and she wears loose shapeless

  coveralls over a body most

  women would wish they had.

  for many years she irritated me

  with what I considered her

  eccentricities—

  like soaking eggshells in water

  (to feed the plants so that

  they’d get calcium).

  but finally when I think of her

  life

  and compare it to other lives

  more dazzling, original

  and beautiful

  I realize that she has hurt fewer

  people than anybody I know

  (and by hurt I simply mean hurt).

  she has had some terrible times,

  times when maybe I should have

  helped her more

  for she is the mother of my only

  child

  and we were once great lovers,

  but she has come through

  like I said

  she has hurt fewer

  people than

  anybody I know,

  and if you look at it like that,

  well,

  she has created a better world.

  she has won.

  Frances, this poem is for

  you.

  prayer for a whore in bad weather

  by God, I don’t know what to

  do.

  they’re so nice to have around.

  they have a way of playing with

  the balls

  and looking at the cock very

  seriously

  twisting it

  tweaking it

  examining each portion

  as their long hair drops along

  your belly.

  it’s not the fucking and sucking

  alone

  that reaches into a man

  and softens him,

  it’s the extras,

  it’s all the extras.

  now it’s raining tonight

  and there’s nobody about.

  they are elsewhere

  examining things

  in new bedrooms

  in new moods

  or maybe in old

  bedrooms.

  anyhow, it’s raining tonight,

  one hell of a dashing, pouring

  rain . . .

  very little to do.

  I’ve read the newspaper

  paid the gas bill

  the electric co.

  the phone bill.

  it keeps raining.

  they soften a man

  and then let him swim

  in his own juices.

  I need an old-fashioned whore

  at the door tonight

  folding her green umbrella,

  drops of moonlit rain on her

  purse, saying, “shit, man,

  you can get better music

  than that on your radio . . .

  and turn up the heat . . .”

  it’s always when a man’s

  horny with love and everything

  else

  that it just keeps raining

  splattering

  vomiting

  rain

  good for the trees and the

  grass and the air . . .

  good for things that can

  live alone.

  I would give anything

  for a female’s hand on my balls

  tonight.

  they get to a man and

  then leave him listening

  to the rain.

  I made a mistake

  I reached up into the top of the closet

  and took out a pair of blue panties

  and showed them to her and

  asked “are these yours?”

  and she looked and said,

  “no, those belong to a dog.”

  she left after that and I haven’t seen

  her since. she’s not at her place.

  I keep going there, leaving notes stuck

  into the door. I go back and the notes

  are still there. I take the Maltese cross

  cut it down from my car mirror, tie it

  to her doorknob with a shoelace, leave

  a book of poems.

  when I go back the next night everything

  is still there.

  I keep searching the streets for that

  blood-wine battleship she drives

  with a weak battery, and the doors

  hanging from broken hinges.

  I drive around the streets

  an inch away from weeping,

  ashamed of my sentimentality and

  possible love.

  a confused old man driving in the rain

  wondering where the good luck

  went.

  the 6 foot goddess (for S.D.)

  I’m big

  I suppose that’s why my women have seemed

  small

  but this 6 foot goddess

  who deals in real estate

  and art

  and flies from Texas

  to see me

  and I fly to Texas

  to see her—

  well, there’s plenty of her to

  grab hold of

  and I grab hold of it

  of her,

  I yank her head back by the hair,

  I’m real macho,

  I suck on her upper lip

  her cunt

  her soul

  I mount her and tell her,

  “I’m going to shoot some white hot

  juice into you. I didn’t fly all the

  way to Galveston to play

  chess.”

  later we lay locked like human vines

  my left arm under her pillow

  my right arm over her side

  I grip both of her hands,

  and my chest

  belly

  balls

  cock

  tangle into her

  and through us in the dark

  pass white whooping rays

  back and forth

  back and forth

  until I fall away

  and we sleep.

  she’s wild

  but kind

  my 6 foot goddess

  makes me laugh

  the laughter of the mutilated

  who still need

  love,

  and her blessed eyes

  run deep into her head

  like inward fountains

  far in

  and

  cool and good.

  she has saved me

  from everything that is

  not here.

  quiet clean girls in gingham dresses

  all I’ve ever known are whores, ex-prostitutes,

  madwomen. I see men with quiet,

  gentle women—I see them in the supermarkets,

  I see them walking down the streets together,

  I see them in their apartments: people at

  peace, living together. I know
that their

  peace is only partial, but there is

  peace, often hours and days of peace.

  all I’ve ever known are pill freaks, alcoholics,

  whores, ex-prostitutes, madwomen.

  when one leaves

  another arrives

  worse than her predecessor.

  I see so many men with quiet clean girls in

  gingham dresses

  girls with faces that are not wolverine or

  predatory.

  “don’t ever bring a whore around,” I tell my

  few friends, “I’ll fall in love with her.”

  “you couldn’t stand a good woman, Bukowski.”

  I need a good woman. I need a good woman

  more than I need this typewriter, more than

  I need my automobile, more than I need

  Mozart; I need a good woman so badly that I

  can taste her in the air, I can feel her

  at my fingertips, I can see sidewalks built

  for her feet to walk upon,

  I can see pillows for her head,

  I can feel my waiting laughter of easy joy,

  I can see her petting a cat,

  I can see her sleeping,

  I can see her slippers on the floor.

  I know that she exists

  but where is she upon this earth

  as the whores keep finding me?

  tonight

  “your poems about the girls will still be around

  50 years from now when the girls are gone,”

  my editor phones me.

  dear editor:

  the girls appear to be gone

  already.

  I know what you mean

  but give me one truly alive woman

  tonight

  walking across the floor toward me

  and you can have all the poems

  the good ones

  the bad ones

  or any that I might write

  after this one.

  I know what you mean.

  do you know what I mean?

  pacific telephone

  you go for these wenches, she said,

  you go for these whores,

  I’ll bore you.

  I don’t want to be shit on anymore,

  I said,

  relax.

  when I drink, she said, it hurts my

  bladder, it burns.

  I’ll do the drinking, I said.

  you’re waiting for the phone to ring,

  she said,

  you keep looking at the phone.

  if one of those wenches phones you’ll

  run right out of here.

  I can’t promise you anything, I said.

  then—just like that—the phone rang.

  this is Madge, said the phone. I’ve

  got to see you right away.

  oh, I said.

  I’m in a jam, she continued, I need ten

  bucks—fast.

  I’ll be right over, I said, and

  hung up.

  she looked at me. it was a wench,

  she said, your whole face lit up.

  what the hell’s the matter with

  you?

  listen, I said, I’ve got to leave.

  you stay here. I’ll be right back.

  I’m going, she said. I love you but you’re

  crazy, you’re doomed.

  she got her purse and slammed the door.

  it’s probably some deeply-rooted childhood fuckup

  that makes me vulnerable, I thought.

  then I left my place and got into my Volks.

  I drove north up Western with the radio on.

  there were whores walking up and down

  both sides of the street and Madge looked

  more vicious than any of them.

  hunchback

  moments of damnation and moments of glory

  tick across my roof.

  the cat walks by

  seeming to know everything.

  my luck has been better, I think,

  than the luck of the gladiola,

  although I am not sure.

  I have been loved by many women,

  and for a hunchback of life,

  that’s lucky.

  so many fingers through my hair

  so many hands grasping my balls

  so many shoes tilted sideways across my bedroom

  rug.

  so many eyes looking,

  indented into a skull that will carry all those

  eyes into death,

  remembering.

  I have been treated better than I should have

  been—

  not by life in general

  or the machinery of things

  but by women.

  and the other

  (by women): me

  standing in the bedroom alone

  doubled

  hands holding the gut—

  thinking

  why why why why why why?

  women gone to men like pigs

  women gone to men with hands like dead branches

  women gone to men who fuck badly

  women gone to things of men

  women gone

  gone

  because they must go

  in the order of

  things.

  the women know

  but more often chose out of

  disorder and confusion.

  they can kill what they touch.

  I am dying

  but not dead.

  mermaid

  I had to come into the bathroom for something

  and I knocked

  and you were in the tub

  you had washed your face and your hair

  and I saw your upper body

  and except for the breasts

  you looked like a girl of 5, of 8

  you were gently gleeful in the water

  Linda Lee.

  you were not only the essence of that

  moment

  but of all my moments

  up to there

  you bathing easily in the ivory

  yet there was nothing

  I could tell you.

  I got what I wanted in the bathroom

  something

  and I left.

  yes

  no matter who I’m with

  people always say,

  are you still with her?

  my average relationship lasts

  two and one half years.

  with wars

  inflation

  unemployment

  alcoholism

  gambling

  and my own degenerate nervousness

  I think I do well enough.

  I like reading the Sunday papers in bed.

  I like orange ribbons tied around the cat’s neck.

  I like sleeping up against a body that I know well.

  I like black slips at the foot of my bed

  at 2 in the afternoon.

  I like seeing how the photos turned out.

  I like to be helped through the holidays:

  4th of July, Labor Day, Halloween, Thanksgiving,

  Christmas, New Year’s.

  they know how to ride these rapids

  and they are less afraid of love than I am.

  they can make me laugh where professional comedians

  fail.

  there is walking out to buy a newspaper together.

  there is much good in being alone

  but there is a strange warmth in not being alone.

  I like boiled red potatoes.

  I like eyes and fingers better than mine that can

  get knots out of shoelaces.

  I like letting her drive the car on dark nights

  when the road and the way have gotten to me,

  the car radio on

  we light cigarettes and talk about things

  and now and then

  become silent
.

  I like hairpins on tables.

  I like knowing the same walls

  the same people.

  I dislike the insane and useless fights which always

  occur

  and I dislike myself at these times

  giving nothing

  understanding nothing.

  I like boiled asparagus

  I like radishes

  green onions.

  I like to put my car into a car wash.

  I like it when I have ten win on a six to one

  shot.

  I like my radio which keeps playing

  Shostakovich, Brahms, Beethoven, Mahler.

  I like it when there’s a knock on the door and

  she’s there.

  no matter who I’m with

  people always say,

  are you still with her?

  they must think I bury them in

  the Hollywood Hills.

  2nd. street, near Hollister, in Santa Monica

  my daughter is 13 years old

  and the other afternoon

  I drove to her court to take her

  to lunch

  and there was a beautiful woman

  sitting on the porch

  and I thought, well, she’ll get

  up and tell Marina that

  I’m here.

  and the beautiful woman stood up

  and walked toward me.

  it was my daughter.

  she said, “Hi!”

  I answered as if everything were

  commonplace and we drove off

  together.

  the trashing of the dildo

  one week I had 6 different women

  in 6 different beds

  (I took a Thursday night off to rest up)

  and I only failed

  sexually