The Roominghouse Madrigals: Early Selected Poems, 1946-1966

by Charles Bukowski

and when you fail life

  you were never born

  no matter what the statistics

  or what your mother named you.

  the grandstands are crowded with the dead

  screaming for a winner

  wanting a number to carry them over

  into living,

  but it is not as easy as that—

  just as with the poem:

  if you are dead

  you might as well be buried

  and throw the typewriter away

  and stop fooling with

  poems horses women life:

  you are cluttering up

  the exits—

  so get out fast

  and desist from the

  precious few

  pages.

  Seahorse

  I own the ticks on a horse

  I own his belly and balls

  I own this

  the way his eyes roll

  the way he eats hay

  and shits and

  stands up asleep

  he is mine

  this machine

  like a blue train I used to play with

  when my hands were smaller

  and my mind better

  I own this horse,

  someday I will ride my horse

  down all the streets

  past the trees we will go

  up the mountain

  down the valley

  ticks and eyes and balls

  the both of us

  we will go to where kings eat

  dandelions

  in the giant sea

  where thinking is not terror

  where eyes do not go out

  like Saturday night children

  the horse I own and the myself I own

  will become blue and nice and clean

  again

  and I will get off and

  wait for you.

  I Have Lived in England

  I have lived in England

  and I have lived in hell,

  but perhaps there is nothing quite so horrible

  as picking up the latest literary review

  filled with the latest literary darlings;

  K. teaches at L.; M. has a second volume of

  poems coming out; O. has been published

  in the leading journals; S. has won a

  scholarship to Paris—

  and you hold the pages up

  to the overhead light

  and still

  nothing comes through.

  it is a puzzle indeed,

  far more a puzzle than when a 90-to-one shot

  leaps through at the last moment

  along the rail.

  a horse can live.

  and, indeed, do you expect to find

  poetry

  in a poetry review?

  things are not that

  simple.

  Farewell, Foolish Objects

  I have lain in bed all day

  but I have written one poem

  and I am up now

  looking out the window

  and like a novelist might say

  drunk: the clouds are coming at me

  like scullery maids with dishpans

  in their hands—

  something that holds gritty dirty

  water.

  but I am a drunken non-novelist

  but in clear condition now

  here sits the bottle of beer

  and I am warmly thinking

  in a kind of foam-shaped idle fancy

  working closely

  but all I can stoke up are

  squares and circles which

  do not fit; so

  messeigneurs

  I will tell you the truth:

  again (in bed)

  I read another article on D. Thomas &

  some day I will get lucky and sit around

  and own a French horn and a tame eagle

  and I will sit on the porch all day

  a white porch always in the sun

  one of those white porches with green

  vines all around, and

  I will read about Dylan and D.H. until

  my eyes fall out of my head for eagle

  meat and I will play the French horn

  blind. but even now it gets darker

  the evening thing into night

  the bones down here

  the stars up there

  somebody rattling the springs in

  Denver so another pewker can be born.

  I think everything is a sheet of sun

  and the best of everything

  is myself walking through it

  wondering about the pure nerve

  of the life-thing going on:

  after the jails the hospitals

  the factories the good dogs

  the brainless butterflies.

  but now I am back at the window

  there is an opera on the radio

  and a woman sits in a chair to my left

  saying over and over again:

  BRATCH BRATSHT BRAATCHT!

  and she is holding a book in her hand:

  How to Learn Russian Easily.

  but there is really nothing you can do

  easily: live or die or accept fame

  or money or defeat, it’s all hard.

  the opera says this, the dead birds

  the dead countries the dead loves

  the man shot because somebody thought

  he was an elk

  the elk shot because somebody thought

  it was an elk.

  all the pure nerve of going on

  this woman wanting to speak Russian

  myself wanting to get drunk

  but we need something to eat.

  GRIND CAT GRIND MEAT says

  the woman in Russian so I figure

  she’s hungry, we haven’t eaten

  in a couple of hours. CLAM

  BAYONET TURKEY PORK

  AND PORK she says, and I walk

  over and put on my pants and

  I am going out to get something.

  the forests are far away and I am

  no good with the bow and arrow

  and somebody sings on the radio:

  “farewell, foolish objects.”

  and all I can do is walk into a grocery

  store and pull out a wallet and hope

  that it’s loaded. and this is

  about how I waste my Sundays.

  the rest of the week gets better

  because there is somebody telling

  me what to do

  and although it seems madness

  almost everybody is doing it

  whatever it is.

  so now if you will excuse me

  (she is eating an orange now)

  I will put on my shoes and shirt

  and get out of here—it’ll

  be better for

  all of us.

  A Report Upon the Consumption of Myself

  I am a panther shut up and bellowing in

  cement walls, and I am angry at blue

  evenings without ventilation

  and I am angry with you, and it will come

  like a rose

  it will come like a man walking through fire

  it will shine like an unseen trumpet in a trunk

  the eyes will smell like sausages

  the feet will have small propellers

  and I will hold you in Bayonne and

  the sailors will smile

  my heart like something cut away from

  cancer will feel and beat again feel

  and beat again—but now

  the blue evening is cinched like old

  muskets and the dangling sex rope hangs

  as the tree stands up and calls:

  July. the dust of hope in the bottom of paper cups

  along with small spiders that have names like ancient

  European cities; spi
t and dross, heavy wheels;

  oilwells stuck between fish and sucking up the grey gas

  of love and the palms up on the cliff waving

  waving in the warm yellow light

  as I walk into a drugstore to buy toothpaste,

  rubbers, photographs of frogs, a copy of the latest

  Consumer Reports (50 cents) for I consume and

  am consumed and would like to know

  on this blue evening

  just which razorblade it would be best for me

  to use, or maybe I could get a station wagon or buy a

  stereo or a movie camera, say 8mm, under $55

  or an electric frying pan…like the silver head

  of some god-thing after they drop the bomb BANG

  and the grass gives up and love is a shadow

  and love is a fishtail weaving through

  threads that seem eyes but are only what’s

  left of me on the last blue evening after the bands

  have suicided out, the carnival has left town and

  they’ve blown up the Y.W.C.A. like a giant balloon and

  sent it out to sea full of screaming lovely lonely

  girls.

  Fleg

  Now it’s Borodin…4:18 a.m.,

  symphony #2,

  the gas is on

  but the masses still sleep

  except the bastard

  downstairs

  who always has the light on

  all night, he yawns all night

  and sleeps all day,

  he’s either a madman

  or a poet; and has an

  ugly wife,

  neither of them work

  and we pass each other

  on the steps (the wife and I)

  when we go down

  to dump our bottles,

  and I look at his name

  on the mailbox: Fleg

  God. No wonder. A fleg

  never sleeps. Some kind

  of fish-thing waiting

  for a twist in the sky.

  but very kind, I must

  remember, when the

  drunk women up here

  scream or throw things

  Fleg ignores it all,

  yawns, and this is

  fine. There used to be

  an Anderson, a Chester

  Anderson always at my door

  in his pants

  and undershirt,

  red-eyed as a woman

  who has lost a lover,

  manager behind his shoulder

  (and one night 2 cops),

  “God, I can’t sleep.

  I’m a working man,

  I’ve got to get my sleep

  Jesus. I can’t SLEEP.”

  Fleg? Sleep? I’ve never even

  seen him. I don’t think

  he does anything. Just some

  kind of shoulder of mutton

  with silver eyes

  looking up at his ceiling,

  tiredly smiling,

  saying softly to his

  ugly wife: “That Bukowski

  up there, he’s a kick

  for sore balls, ain’t he?”

  “Now, Honey, don’t talk that way.”

  “He had a colored woman up there

  the other night. I can tell,

  I can tell.”

  “Now, Mission, you can’t tell no

  such damn thing.”

  (Mission? Mission Fleg. Christ.)

  “Yes, I can. I heard her screaming.”

  “Screaming?”

  “Well, moaning, kind of like you

  know. What’s this guy look like,

  baby?”

  “Passed him today. Face kind of smashed

  in. A long nose like an ant-eater.

  Mouth like a monkey. Kind of funny eyes.

  Never saw eyes like those.”

  It’s about 4:38 a.m. Borodin is finished (yeah)

  not a very long symphony. I turn my radio down

  and the Flegs I find

  are listening

  to the same station.

  I hope we never meet,

  I like Fleg the way he is

  (in my mind)

  and I’m sure he wants me

  the way I am

  (in his mind),

  and he has just yawned now

  up through the ceiling

  his ceiling

  which is my floor; ah,

  my poor tired Fleg

  waiting for me to give

  him LIFE;

  he’s probably slowly dying of

  something

  and I am too,

  but I’m so glad

  he doesn’t call the police

  while I’m

  at it.

  Interviewed by a Guggenheim Recipient

  this South American up here on a Gugg

  walked in with his whore

  and she sat on the edge of my bed and

  crossed her fine legs

  and I kept looking at her legs

  and he pulled at his stringy necktie

  and I had a hangover

  and he asked me

  WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE AMERICAN

  POETS?

  and I told him I didn’t think very much

  of the American poets

  and then he went on to ask some other

  very dull questions

  (as his whore’s legs layed along the side of

  my brain) like

  WELL? YOU DON’T CARE ABOUT ANYTHING

  BUT IF YOU WERE TEACHING A CLASS AND ONE OF THE

  STUDENTS ASKED YOU WHICH AMERICAN POETS

  THEY SHOULD READ

  WHAT WOULD YOU TELL THEM?

  she crossed her legs as I watched and I thought

  I could knock him out with one punch

  rape her in 4 minutes

  catch a train for L.A.

  get off in Arizona and walk off into the desert

  and I couldn’t tell him that I would never teach

  a class

  that along with not liking American poetry

  that I didn’t like American classes either

  or the job that they would expect me to

  do,

  so I said

  Whitman, T. S. Eliot, D. H. Lawrence’s poems about

  reptiles and beasts, Auden. and then I

  realized that Whitman was the only true American,

  that Eliot was not an American somehow and the

  others certainly not, and

  he knew it too

  he knew that I had fucked up

  but I made no apologies

  thought some more about rape

  I almost loved the woman but I knew that when she walked out

  that I would never see her again

  and we shook hands and the Gugg said

  he’d send me the article when it came out

  but I knew that he didn’t have an article

  and he knew it too

  and then he said

  I will send you some of my poems translated into

  English

  and I said fine

  and I watched them walk out of the place

  I watched her highheels clack down the tall

  green steps

  and then both of them were gone

  but I kept remembering her dress sliding all over her

  like a second skin

  and I was wild with mourning and love and sadness

  and being a fool unable to

  communicate

  anything

  and I walked in and finished that beer

  cracked another

  put on my ragged king’s coat

  and walked out into the New Orleans street

  and that very night

  I sat with my friends and acted vile and

  the ass

  much mouth and villainy

  and cruelness

  and they never

/>   knew why.

  Very

  I take the taxi to Newport and study the wrinkles in the

  driver’s skull; all anticipation is gone:

  defeat has come so often

  (like rain)

  that it has assumed more meaning

  than victory; the player is good at

  the piano

  and we wait in a corner

  (this poet!)

  waiting to recite

  poems; it’s like a cave here:

  full of bats and whores

  and bodiless music

  moving at the back of the world; my head aches,

  and seeking a deliberate door

  I think gently of successful papa Haydn

  rotting in the rainy garden

  above copulating

  tone-deaf gophers…

  the sun is in a box somewhere

  asleep like a cat;

  the bats flit, a body

  takes my hand (the one with the drink:

  the right hand is the drinker)

  a woman, a horrible

  damned woman,

  something alive

  sits

  and blinks

  at me:

  Hank, it says,

  they want you up

  front!

  fuck ’em, I say, fuck ’em.

  I have grown quite fat and

  vulgar (a deliberate death

  on the kitchen floor) and

  suddenly I laugh

  at my excellent condition

  like some swine of a businessman

  and I don’t even feel

  like getting up

  to piss…

  Angels,

  we have grown apart.

  The Look:

  I once bought a toy rabbit

  at a department store

  and now he sits and ponders

  me with pink sheer eyes:

  He wants golfballs and glass

  walls.

  I want quiet thunder.

  Our disappointment sits between us.

  One Night Stand