don’t make enemies, simply reajust your sights, means: take it easy, if you bark at dogs they still will not hear you.
I did not imply John too low down, I say a man should not READ A TRIBUTE TO HIS OWN GOD DAMN SELF, or what or what or what. This is basic sense to me and I cannot see you so much missing the point.
Wang is average poet. Stock has read too much.
A real poet has one fist of steel and one fist of love.
You are a good person, Sheri, but you have taken in too many stray dogs.
Sherman sits there and tells me, don’t laugh, don’t.
I’ve got to laugh. He tells me he gave a poetry reading at Unicorn and they passed the plate and all he got was a quarter.
Jesus, I was laughing for him. I suppose if he had collected 65 dollars he would have assumed he was a good poet, a good reader, et al. Why do people always get everything backwards?
Sherman can lance but can’t take the lance. Fry used to say, Why do you always laugh at yourself? Why do you always mock yourself?
And I say, why not? Who are we trying to sell? I see nothing but grave stones and hundred dollar whores everywhere. Or ten dollar whores who call themselves housewives.
I don’t know what color my eyes are. They have told me that they are green. But I have looked into the mirror and I have never seen this color god damn before in art class or sunsets or what, although it does look a bit like the pan you clean your brushes out in. So Ez is prob still only GREEN EYED poet and he can relax…
Clarence Major is just another ass to fuddle up the stream.
gv Jricharson a brk, means: give him a break with a vbrick. Now u can ast me wot this means.
On the morning of August 16th: I will light 40 candles and die with a can of Schlitz in each hand.
Yes, yes, is like taking a rolled-up piece of paper and swatting a fly from the curtain. Writing is so easy it makes me laugh to know the secret of it. One must simply not be greedy, that is all. DO NOT SWAT THE SHIT CURTAIN WHEN THERE ARE NOT ANY FLIES ON IT.
“Wings down like broken love” has to be in spite of West Coast of wot because I saw that bird and my hands were on the steering wheel and I saw the wings and they were down like broken love, the wings said that, and the cat moved away from the wheels of my car that way a cat moves and I’m sick as I write this, and all the broken love of the world and all the broken love birds, and the sky said this covered with smog and cheap clouds and miscreant gods. I was not on the West Coast of Africa. I was driving North on Normandy Blvd, half drunk after dropping a hundred on the ponies and I realized soon…that the hundred was nothing…a quarter on a tray for a poet who could not laff.
oh Sheri, I cannot forget Wm Pillin’s 20 yr old son playing the piano. He is all artist, there is no flesh on his body, his eyes twitch little narrow things, but he knows, he feels his power and I see the lips grrinn inward, inward, and he is marvelous boy, you would have loved him, Sheri, I am so sure. There wasn’t any woman in him; I do so like to see the delicate man without that homo homohomebitch bitch running up and down inside. And Jory irritated me awfully—this boy sat down to the piano his hands really making song without falseness and affectation and Jory said out loud, STOP BITING YOUR LOWER LIP! and the boy stopped playing and faced Jory and said, what? And Jro. said, never mind, I was talking to Felicia. And the boy started again and then Jory reached forward and touched the old man on the chest, meaning lean backward so I can watch HIS HANDS. Awful, Sheri, I was awfully embarrassed. I am not a stiff-neck although I am a little nervous and tense, but there are so many natural things one knows that just aren’t done. And the boy was so realized and released at the piano and I was so happy for him and the great music he was bringing us and himself. You should have seen him Sheri, he was a god at the piano, he was made for it, it was made for him. And Jory with his city witticisms.
On “wings down like broken love”, I take it you do not like metaphors mixed or otherwise. It is usually an easy way out, of course. And you may be correct. Perhaps the poem should have been held within the cat-bird context. I don’t know. But it’s all over now. And I don’t flare up under criticism. You have me mixed up with somebody else.
A statue of love. I wish they could do it.
There is a poor dear dying in Denver who writes me letters. I wish I could touch her. But now she is nothing but paper.
She read me her poems on the sand. A life work in a red notebook. 12 pages. All about her hot panting sex. I found out later she was a 32 year old virgin. But now she is nothing but paper, and dying, dying, writing me letters full of unoriginal thoughts, transferences of other people, trying to impress me. Poor dear. damn it. I’d like to take her on the springs now and bring her back to life. Doctors don’t understand women. I know why she is dying. They have fancy words for it, something to do with the lungs. Yeah. From 55 to 80, women can live without men; anything earlier they will either turn to another woman or embrace some disease like a lover and die. Life is so beautifully tragic, metempirical…I cannot even hate Sherman.
I am heaving over this typewriter now. So awfully sick, I must soon die. Sherman and Winski admired my muscles, but inside, it’s all rot.
I went to work in a slaughterhouse because I had to eat the fresh dead animals that I carried upon my right shoulder. I was also so hungry once that I went to work in a dogbiscuit factory (Kendall Foods, 62nd. and Western, L.A.) and ate a couple of dog bis. when nobody was looking. Flames 60 feet high, and men sweating burning their hands, the machines pumping off the dough, no guards, you had to grab the trays, your hands wrapped in gunnysacks to keep off the burning, but there were holes and you had blisters full of fists like holding marbles in your hands and each paycheck went drunk to forget, and the bastards wonder why you’re so tough and love the piano sounds, love Beethoven and Chopin and the god that laughs and spits.
I admire Graves, I wish the hole earth were Robt Graves but really fur me, he is too learned and dull. Learning is good until it begins to pull you into the hole.
Then it becomes like stupidity.
Now G. Stien took it the other way around and took all the heart out of it and Hem. added a little sex and a right cross and became immortal. But after S. died he forgot some lessons and his later novels all shit, big Holly productions. Well, ok, he re prob needed green. So does whore.
What I’m trying to say, we have Graves on one end and Stein (Stein?) on the other and a big fat god nobody can pinpoint laffing at alla us. We are all good, we are all fighters, even Hem. who has rep. for one but really isn’t because mama gave him alla lessons.
The biggest fake in amer. lit. is Wm. Faulkner but it is going to take them some time to find out. Kerourac or howerr you spell who is under influ. is already showing fake hand. Awful stuff.
Ker. has set back letters and intelligence 30 years and that’s all he’ll be famous for.
To hell with the Roman army. They ended up shitting in their skivies like the rest a them.
“Will you explain to me why you must be hanging ’to a fat wrinkled woman for love…that is old enough to be maw…”
Sheri: can you explain to me who would apprieciate (misspless, I know) love MORE? Can you expoalain (misspell, I know) to me hoo would tk more a my drunken ravings, mora my braggin up my god Pound—the only man I feel inferior to on this earth? An can you explain to me the way her hole ugly face lights up when I come through the door with a bottle of wine and say, OH SHUT UP YOU LOUSY BITCH, DON DON G ME ANY TROUBLE. One minute she’s a dead lumpa clay and the next minute she’s crawling on me like a roach and she listens to all my wild talk and she don’t care what I say, she LAUGHS, and she cusses me, and anything I hate: a god damned admirable audience. It keeps you from growing. I’ve got to keep growing. God damn it all, don u understan, all a young bitch wants is marriage and admiration…I can’t live with anybody anymore so I settled for the wrinkled dead I can bring back to live. Lazarus, ye.
Sherman does not have it. His soul only reaches to the
top of his skin. I hope I will never meet you personally, Sheri, I will probably hate you within ten minutes. I am sorry. Fry told me this thing wrong with me, and she is correct. I do not know what it is. I only know I am in my own way and nobody can follow. If I am incorrect, it does not matter, the way must be followed, polotic or withering soul.
I am trying to follow yr letters thro hear, they are quite. Why do u have spiders reading poetry. Think of what the fly could tell?…Yes, Fry is mean, especially to ordinary people; but I understand wot she is going thro and I wish her best along she leaves me alone.
Well we will all be good and dead and welldone verysoonsoon so wy all the screaming, and those hoo come behind us, more Shermans n Buks…wait will there be any Buks?
I donno I’m trying to be fair.
There certainly will not be any more Sheri M’s. You have completely astounded me and reasounted me, and you are the only person in the last 20, oh hell I should say 40 because the books are nothing, I have learned anything from.
Isn’t it odd, so very odd, that one of the loves of my idol should be writing me now? Perhaps life so works in stronger currents than we think.
Sure I spell lousy. I rite rite off t pyerwirter, do u think I can go back and douch it off?
Don’t gi me any more Garth Allen and his “Astrological stud of Alco.”
I am surprised at you, Sheri. Let me die among my leaves and horses and 20 year old boy stalks playing immortal music that makes my elbows itch.
You know what gets me, Sheri, love, when I find someone else in the world as alive as I am.
Defend Wang if you must, just don’t thrust him upon me. I like a woman to be a woman and a man to be a man. Hell, I do understand the theories, we are all betwixt and tweeen, I am supposed to be part homo but don’t know it. Then don’t remind me of it.
No, Jesus, Fry not amongst immortals, so far as I know.
Wang is a catcher of the coattails of the living immortals, as is Sherman, they both realize their shortcomings…
Pound, I sometimes don’t know about and almost grow angry about because he’s had a lot of luck and I haven’t. But it really doesn’t matter, because where he is now he must realize that fame is no saving and shaving down into a grapefruit and walking around the corner and handing a dime to a newsboy and the way the dime goes across to his palm is god or devil or the running of the machine. Ez has been lucky, an best of all, he’s got guts, and he so deserves it, but I do wish he would disintegrate a few Sherman tanks for me.
Now. where were we?
I’m glad Po’Li could laugh at Payne inferences in letters and I have always loved the Chinese privateness of self, and I usually eat dinner at a Chinese cafe where they run out all unchinese clientele but me. The Negroes they simply cannot stand because the Negroes have given up what could have been an original and beautiful mask for the dream of ugly white skin, and I do not blame the proprieter but the whites too, they have run out, and I take it as a simple or sort of salaam that they understand me and that I understand them without showmanship or any word of recognition. It is quiet and they serve me quietly and I enjoy eating. And my face is very ugly, scarred from disease and fighting 4 rounders (opening bouts) across the river from Philly. And winning them all in the last round. And finally quitting because my heart would take no more.
J., if i ever make fame, I will make Villon look pale.
Let’s keep Villon the way he is.
Ezra is the greatest liv. o pisser and greater than Shakey and Donne an wot although and the same, he realized that langbitch was a coot secret QUIVERING with lighting and mush, and sleap slap and turn, something became…not because they were god or good but because there was nothing else but the gd damn fly upon the curtain. n they waited and watted when they were full of, ov, stove, beer, guh, piss, wonder, gu gu, n out it came ESAR PUND my idol, but not so much so any more.
Do u know how it feels to be insane and not locked up? that is, Sheri, how I feel.
but your gd r dam stray dogs are sickening. Give rich the brick. BUT DO NOT HURT HIM!!!!! Give him food and kindness, but do not gut be taken (I am german the gut goot pharaphrase sub.)
I am told over the radio that musierior Cariterier is worried about what goes into my guts. Very enlighting. Cafe Parie, 7038 Sunset Blvd. Shit, I didn’t know he knew me. List. to metz. soprano now…
Don like human voice. Hum instr. compo ok. Jory has so long way to go. Do u think he will really get there??? What will he use for godface? is all blank…
do u know anybody, Sheri? Or are u just prenting, trying o bring back Pound era?
One thing, u never write pound and tell him i care or u and I thru. I like my hero worship at a distance. I might even find out he shits or pisses. Gods cannot be allowed to comb their hair. Do you know that Sherman will die in his cradle. He will be published quite a bit in the future, but for all the editorlove he is going to die because he wants so badly.
(let’s try an. page.)
I can hear Po’ Li saying now, “He sure loves to type.”
Jesus Po’ Li, go over and purrr yourself a beer; I admire the Chinese as a race, the Germans as a gut, and myself as an insanity that makes a minor self.
In fact, u want to nooo something shitty Po’Li, I consider myself in a league wit dr. Pound. [Handwritten in margin:] Forget this, Po’ Li, it is only the running of typewriter and happened to fall in this place. I am reading this later and realize how awful.
I have seen too many people to know otherwise.
?”Ez did forget quotes did not show us all in the contemp poet in nature of poetry.
Ez only showed guts which so comes very easy with a person with guts. his batting down of nations like flies iz only ibsen of gut power losing its head in words and attempting to overtake stupidity. Ez is a god that shits and fucks and loves like the rest of us. let us not forget it.
No, Fry does not pester me. But Sherman visit May says fry going to tear me limb from libido in next Trace. Well, that is ok. She needs some caatles. Cattle. Castles.
“What is a cordilier” Christ, I don’t know! Wuzzit in ur letter or mine?
I am still bastard very much afraid u underfcscote me, Italian foot-tapping mot…I did not try to bring him down under…I only looked at him, subconsciously, he was there, n I could not help my eyes…I don’t know, Sheri, I am quite mad, I don’t damn it get along wit anybody. I just looked or’ my shoulder and there he waz.
Sherman very fast, glib with words. Wonder. Wat he try prove?
Christ, u know wot sherman likes? DeBussy. Evening of a shit, etc.
Has anyone heard of Koldiay? Prob miss.
I, and I asked about Romonyrock at meeting other night and they said, oh hell well he ended up in Insande SillumL.
And do you want to know something? I, the cold clod, informed them that it was only between 2 concertos that he so-called went insane? They didn’t know. Ho ho. So nice as long as one is accepted.
I was in the bum in frisco at the time of his final appearance and I went and I didn’t have money rent, but I went, and they had a sub. for the sick, Alex Brailowsksky, who could prob. play piano as good or not better than the sick and dying Rocy, u know i tol u i was sick.
Frisco has twelve heart beats for one pulse beat of la.
ok, wot?
DO not giggle, angel, any woman hoo goes to concert with me must entangle proper proquietes, only if also alone, to keep creeping crowd creeping.
I feel how you rather underread me, that is fortunate.
I am list. to awful beaut. music on radio now and I fuckcannot believe I am quite alive.
Your soul-starved jew and sincere negro chap…which one scored?
Y are an idiot Martin, stick to ur China chap…on my advice…gd dam it u are lookin for somethin that does not exist
A POUND IS ONLY BORN EV 3 thousand yrs.
You ok mar, b you have a lot to learn.
I would certainly like to meet u personally in order to deater-kuju juzeu U�
�
Jam goin to close…Cant carry.
Im awfully sick an must goodnite.
go by. CheriSheri wot,
zerol, xi;, ¢
Charles Bukoowski,
Charles
los angels
fri nite aug 6
dear Sheri:
wher’in hell are my cookies?
el furioso
Charles
L.A.
Thurs nite, Aug. 11?
Dear Sheri:
wuz only kiddin’ about cookies…course if your woman’s heart is set on making them…I bragged about your sending me brown bread when Jory dragged me to Wm. Pillin’s, hope u don’ mind…
I guess you would say my stars are out of kilt. last 3 or 4, 5 days, sag strummed on bad guitar…stretched on bed sweating like slave nigger, trying to figger out ceiling, so low. luckily I caught a little Rochmoninoff on radio, twice…he very close to me in spirit and I heard him cursing the gods, the dogs, the cats…fustian gloaming…and I laughed inside because I knew what he meant.
don’ take me too hard on anything. I roll with the words like a horse in the field and I pick up a lot of burrs. daddy Pound my boy too: courage ratio, style; famous enough but alone for it all.
wrote you a couple of letters, 6, 7, 8 pages, read them, tore them up.
Guess I was a little hard on Jory, but all that front-running stones me. But you are right: we can’t all be bitch hermits. an I see from his letters he is still going strong. well.
old girl and I broke up: JEZUS, she screamed, I wish just once, JUST ONCE, you would show up here WITHOUT BEING DRUNK!
an’ I said, swayin’ in the middle of floor, oh, aw right, I’m leavin’.
And I walked out and went downstairs and had a beer with a roomfulla people arguin’ about nothin’. Then I went back upstairs and said, see, I’m back, be happy, and I laughed.
but she didn’t even hear me. she was standin’ in middle of room, shuddering big tears the size of her silver rosary, and then she looked up at me, hating like hell, and began cussing and screaming and I left that time for sure.
Beerspit Night and Cursing Page 7