Play the Piano

by Charles Bukowski

  and now it’s her again,

  every time she phones you go crazy,

  you told me it was over

  you told me it was finished,

  listen, I’ve lived long enough to become a

  good woman,

  why do you need a bad woman?

  you need to be tortured, don’t you?

  you think life is rotten if somebody treats you

  rotten it all fits,

  doesn’t it?

  tell me, is that it? do you want to be treated like a

  piece of shit?

  and my son, my son was going to meet you.

  I told my son

  and I dropped all my lovers.

  I stood up in a cafe and screamed

  I’M IN LOVE,

  and now you’ve made a fool of me…

  I’m sorry, I said, I’m really sorry.

  hold me, she said, will you please hold me?

  I’ve never been in one of these things before, I said,

  these triangles…

  she got up and lit a cigarette, she was trembling all

  over. she paced up and down, wild and crazy. she had

  a small body. her arms were thin, very thin and when

  she screamed and started beating me I held her

  wrists and then I got it through the eyes: hatred,

  centuries deep and true. I was wrong and graceless and

  sick. all the things I had learned had been wasted.

  there was no living creature as foul as I

  and all my poems were

  false.

  the apple

  this is not just an apple

  this is an experience

  red green yellow

  with underlying pits of white

  wet with cold water

  I bite into it

  christ, a white doorway…

  another bite

  chewing

  while thinking of an old witch

  choking to death on an apple skin—

  a childhood story.

  I bite deeply

  chew and swallow

  there is a feeling of waterfalls

  and endlessness

  there is a mixture of electricity and

  hope.

  yet now

  halfway through the apple

  some depressive feelings begin

  it’s ending

  I’m working toward the core

  afraid of seeds and stems

  there’s a funeral march beginning in Venice,

  a dark old man has died after a lifetime of pain

  I throw away the apple early

  as a girl in a white dress walks by my window

  followed by a boy half her size

  in blue pants and striped

  shirt

  I leave off a small belch

  and stare at a dirty

  ashtray.

  the violin player

  he was in the upper grandstand

  at the end

  where they made their stretch moves

  after coming off the curve.

  he was a small man

  pink, bald, fat

  in his 60’s.

  he was playing a violin

  he was playing classical music on

  his violin

  and the horseplayers ignored him.

  Banker Agent won the first race

  and he played his violin.

  Can Fly won the 3rd race and

  he continued to play his violin.

  I went to get a coffee and when I came back

  he was still playing, and he was still playing

  after Boomerang won the 4th.

  nobody stopped him

  nobody asked him what he was doing

  nobody applauded.

  after Pawee won the 5th

  he continued

  the music falling over the edge of the

  grandstand and into the

  wind and sun.

  Stars and Stripes won the 6th

  and he played some more

  and Staunch Hope got up on the inside

  to take the 7th

  and the violin player worked away

  and when Lucky Mike won at 4 to 5 in the 8th

  he was still making music.

  after Dumpty’s Goddess took the last

  and they began their long slow walk to their cars

  beaten and broke again

  the violin player continued

  sending his music after them

  and I sat there listening

  we were both alone up there and

  when he finished I applauded.

  the violin player stood up

  faced me and bowed.

  then he put his fiddle in the case

  got up and walked down the stairway.

  I allowed him a few minutes

  and then I got up

  and began the long slow walk to my car.

  it was getting into evening.

  5 dollars

  I am dying of sadness and alcohol

  he said to me over the bottle

  on a soft Thursday afternoon

  in an old hotel room by the train depot.

  I have, he went on, betrayed myself with

  belief, deluded myself with love

  tricked myself with sex.

  the bottle is damned faithful, he said,

  the bottle will not lie.

  meat is cut as roses are cut

  men die as dogs die

  love dies like dogs die,

  he said.

  listen, Ronny, I said,

  lend me 5 dollars.

  love needs too much help, he said.

  hate takes care of itself.

  just 5 dollars, Ronny.

  hate contains truth. beauty is a facade.

  I’ll pay you back in a week.

  stick with the thorn

  stick with the bottle

  stick with the voices of old men in hotel rooms.

  I ain’t had a decent meal, Ronny, for a

  couple of days.

  stick with the laughter and horror of death.

  keep the butterfat out.

  get lean, get ready.

  something in my gut, Ronny, I’ll be able

  to face it.

  to die alone and ready and unsurprised,

  that’s the trick.

  Ronny, listen—

  that majestic weeping you hear

  will not be for

  us.

  I suppose not, Ronny.

  the lies of centuries, the lies of love,

  the lies of Socrates and Blake and Christ

  will be your bedmates and tombstones

  in a death that will never end.

  Ronny, my poems came back from the

  New York Quarterly.

  that is why they weep,

  without knowing.

  is that what all that noise is, I said,

  my god shit.

  cooperation

  she means well.

  play the piano

  she says

  it’s not good for you

  not to write.

  she’s going for a walk

  on the island

  or a boatride.

  I believe she’s taken a modern novel

  and her reading glasses.

  I sit at the window

  with her electric typewriter

  and watch young girls’ asses

  which are attached to

  young girls.

  the final decadence.

  I have 20 published books

  and 6 cans of beer.

  the tourists bob up and down in the water

  the tourists walk and talk and take

  photographs and

  drink soft drinks.

  it’s not good for me not to

  write.

  she’s in a boat now, a

  sightseeing tour

  and
she’s thinking, looking

  at the waves—

  “it’s 2:30 p.m.

  he must be writing

  it’s not good for him not to write.

  tonight there will be other things to do.

  I hope he doesn’t drink

  too much beer. he’s a much better

  lover than Robert was

  and the sea is beautiful.”

  the night I was going to die

  the night I was going to die

  I was sweating on the bed

  and I could hear the crickets

  and there was a cat fight outside

  and I could feel my soul dropping down through the

  mattress

  and just before it hit the floor I jumped up

  I was almost too weak to walk

  but I walked around and turned on all the lights

  then made it back to the bed

  and again my soul dropped down through the mattress

  and I leaped up

  just before it hit the floor

  I walked around and I turned on all the lights

  and then I went back to bed

  and down it dropped again and

  I was up

  turning on all the lights

  I had a 7 year old daughter

  and I felt sure she didn’t want me dead

  otherwise it wouldn’t have

  mattered

  but all that night

  nobody phoned

  nobody came by with a beer

  my girlfriend didn’t phone

  all I could hear were the crickets and it was

  hot

  and I kept working at it

  getting up and down

  until the first of the sun came through the window

  through the bushes

  and then I got on the bed

  and the soul stayed

  inside at last and

  I slept.

  now people come by

  beating on the doors and windows

  the phone rings

  the phone rings again and again

  I get great letters in the mail

  hate letters and love letters.

  everything is the same again.

  2347 Duane

  there’s this blue baby and she’s sucking a

  blue breast under a green vine that has

  grown from the ceiling,

  and further to the right

  there’s a light brown girl

  against a dark brown background

  and she’s leaning out over a chair looking

  pensive, I suppose.

  my cigarette just went out

  there are never any matches around here

  and I get up and go into the kitchen

  and light it on a 30 year old stove.

  I get back without accident.

  now behind me on a pink chair

  is a large old-fashioned shears.

  it is 15 minutes past midnight

  and the hook is on the door

  and over the tall twisted lamp by the bed

  is a red floppy hat that is used as a lampshade

  and a small dog growls at the tall cold sky outside.

  there are two mattresses on the floor

  and I have slept on one of those mattresses

  many nights.

  they say they are going to bulldoze this place

  which is owned by a Japanese wrestler called Fuji.

  I don’t see how it can be replaced with anything better.

  she fixed the bathtub faucet and the faucet in the sink

  tonight. she can’t roll a cigarette but she keeps the

  plumbing bills down.

  we ate some Col. Sanders chicken with coleslaw, mashed spuds,

  gravy and biscuits.

  it’s 23 minutes past midnight

  and they are going to bulldoze this place,

  I don’t mean tomorrow, I mean soon,

  and the small dog growls at the sky again

  and my cigarette is out again;

  the love on that one mattress near the door,

  the sex and the arguments and the dreams and the

  conversations,

  that bulldozer is going to come up missing there,

  and even when it knocks down the trees and the crapper

  and eats holes in the dirt driveway

  it’s not going to get it all,

  and when I drive by in 6 months and see the highrise

  filled with 50 people with good stable incomes,

  I will still remember the blue baby sucking the blue breast,

  the vine through the roof, the brown girl,

  the leaky faucets, the spiders and the termites,

  the grey and yellow paint, the tablecloth over the front

  window, and that mattress near the door.

  a radio with guts

  it was on the 2nd floor on Coronado Street

  I used to get drunk

  and throw the radio through the window

  while it was playing, and, of course,

  it would break the glass in the window

  and the radio would sit out there on the roof

  still playing

  and I’d tell my woman,

  “Ah, what a marvelous radio!”

  the next morning I’d take the window

  off the hinges

  and carry it down the street

  to the glass man

  who would put in another pane.

  I kept throwing that radio through the window

  each time I got drunk

  and it would sit out there on the roof

  still playing—

  a magic radio

  a radio with guts,

  and each morning I’d take the window

  back to the glass man.

  I don’t remember how it ended exactly

  though I do remember

  we finally moved out.

  there was a woman downstairs who worked in

  the garden in her bathing suit

  and her husband complained he couldn’t sleep nights

  because of me

  so we moved out

  and in the next place

  I either forgot to throw the radio out the window

  or I didn’t feel like it

  anymore.

  I do remember missing the woman who worked in the

  garden in her bathing suit,

  she really dug with that trowel

  and she put her behind up in the air

  and I used to sit in the window

  and watch the sun shine all over that thing

  while the music played.

  Solid State Marty

  he’s almost 80 and they went to

  visit him the other

  day. he was sitting in his chair

  with a burlap rug over his

  lap

  and when they walked in

  the first thing he said was

  “Don’t touch my cock!”

  he had a gallon jug of

  zinfandel in his

  refrigerator, had just gotten off

  of

  5 days of

  tequila.

  a new $600 piano was in the center of

  the room,

  he’d bought it for his

  son.

  he’s always phoning for me to come over

  but when I do

  he’s very dull. he agrees with

  everything I say and

  then he goes to

  sleep.

  Solid State Marty.

  when I’m not there

  he does everything:

  sets fire to the couch

  pisses on his belly

  sings the National Anthem.

  he gets call girls over and

  squirts them with

  seltzer water, he

  rips the telephone wire out

  of the wall

  but bef
ore he does

  he telephones

  Paris

  Madrid

  Tokyo

  he beats dogs

  cats

  people

  with his

  silver crutch

  he tells stories about

  how he was a

  matador

  a boxer

  a pimp

  a friend of Ernie’s

  a friend of Picasso

  but when I come over

  he goes to sleep

  upright in his chair

  grey hair rumbling down over

  the silent

  dumb hawk face

  his son starts talking

  and then it’s time

  for me

  to go.

  interviews

  young men from the underground

  newspapers and the small circulation