Beerspit Night and Cursing

by Charles Bukowski

  Well, what happens? My purple horse-child drops her wastebasket, puts one hand on top of the fence and vaults over, her skirts whipping up to her waist, long new nylons on the miracle of legs the new world will walk on, and all the sunlight and all the plants growing, and the purple, the purple, bunched around her waist, and in front of the little pink flat a bush covered with more orange flowers than leaves.

  Old Buk—who like an idiot wants to be older—lifts his beercan and drains it surly to a simple maiden who made his German blood sing.

  Sherman wrote: God damn you, god damn you, why in the friggin’ hell won’t you write? He’s gotten a job as a copy boy with the Examiner, I suppose with all the publicity on the ticket mess he got himself into and with his ambition he’ll probably own the Examiner in ten years. I know Sherman is of your camp, so I will not say too much. I did one time, and I heard about all my “asshole palaces”, and again when I said something about Wang, I thought y’d never run out of paper and invective. You protect your fledglings, your nestlings quite well, Sheri, but I’m glad that most of the time we are on opposite camps. I haven’t any fledglings, only Buk, and that sloppy drunken cur in his old growling yellow robe is more than I fk can handle.

  Now, your Pound and your young Jewish boy, I leave that to you. There are too many things working against each other here, and I think for the first time in a long time you must realize that your inner spirit is bumping heads in many manners and ways, and actually this is not good but sometimes the not good happens. We are challenged continually along the road and we are forever given one of two (or more) choices. That is why so FEW of us make it.

  My guess is that you are making the wrong move. But you are to be forgiven. You are a woman and Pound is far away. I understand his silence. You have broken a tenet. A tenent, with Pound, is not to be broken. Like the Imagists: a set of rules grown out of reason. And I guess H.D. is the last of the Imagists. But H.D. is wrong in holding so close; although originally it was a force, forces grow dull. And perhaps the force of Pound has dulled (a little) within you. And another force is closer to you. And you are a woman.

  I leave it to you.

  Thank god my crossroads are ok if only that fat lovely simple cow will stop vaulting fences in her Sunday best as I wish for old age so I can see more clearly the word that must be put down.

  Oye, I know a coupla nice ladyies who by mee shirts and radios, but***oye.

  I think yr Gib, in a sense, very strong, and may well outlast and outthink us all. Tell Gib I say hello, and Walker too. I hate and love you all.

  Concerto Grosso of somebody playing. It doent mata.

  Oh, these magazine editors think they’re all, y know. I wrote a poem called The Life of Borodin. And there was a line where I mentioned one of his works: On the Steppes of Central Asia. How did the editors change it to read? In the Steppes of Central Asia. And I don’t even try. Who are these EDUCATED bastards? And worse yet, I won some kind of Memorial Prize for the poem which was supposed to come as a gift of flowers but came instead as a check for ten dollars. The flowers would have meant more to me, but I figure the editors were crossing the donor, trying to help me, thinking I thought as they did: money was worth more than flowers. So I took the ten and put it on a horse which ran out, but anyhow, I still have borodin and he’s ON the steps. Although, I do suppose it comes down to a matter of translation finally and I don’t care to argue. Let me say only?: it was a bad horse.

  You should have gone to Italy with Ezra. But wasn’t there some “ever-present English woman” near-by? Where did I read this? I don’ know? I suppose she had money, and Ezra is man enough to love and fox enough to revalue but not discard money, hay?

  Let’s not worry so much about Miles. Sometimes I have the feeling that he has a gun against your brain? I think, perhaps, that of all the men living upon earth, Payne sees holes in you better than the rest of us. Miles is weaker than you, Sheri, but something in his training aides him against you. He tells me that I am rotten, slaps me across the face with his giant BEE and Moszt etc., but he knows afterwards that he cannot hurt me with what is part of me and I laugh at him, and he learns essentially and finally, that I too am educated and have read all the books and heard all the music, ONLY I DO NOT TALK ABOUT IT LIKE WEARING A GOLDEN MEDAL LIKE MILES DOES. And I still manage to write a different type of poetry not based upon the manners and ideals of the past (although Sheri says I am “late mid-Victorian”)

  Which almost made me mad, finally. And I decided not to write her again. I am a prude, yes, in many ways. I was once married to a millionaire’s daughter. And I gave up millions rather than put my head between her legs.

  “As far as a poet goes, I don’t want to insult you, but you’d make a good race-car driver.”

  “You look like a successful but a cheap gambler.”

  “Why don’t you open your eyes? It was a year before you opened your eyes and looked at me, and when you did it looked as if you were in agony.”

  Of course I do everything backwards. How else could I write poems.

  One thing I will not do is to take crow from a woman. When there is a woman in the room, I am the man. And when there is another man in the room, I am the man. And as I have told you, I am very quiet and very calm and I only seek peace, but a set of facts and mathematics and a stomach and a cock, sometimes tears me from my peaceful bearings. This, as death, comes to all men, and it’s the way you handle it that matters. It’s the way u handle it.

  I SAID, I COMMAND THEE: READ ROAN STALLION.

  Jeffers is not in the “bowels of life”, it is only those who want us to hate him hoo seee sew. Jeffers presents the dahlia against the brick wall and although he is upon the side of the dahlia he knows that the brick wall will finally win, and the part of him I don’ like is his secret admiration of the brick wall; but in his poetry, it is the working of these 2 parts alwayes ALWAYS, and that is the secret and the strength of Jeffers’ poetry, and you cannot compare him with Pound because they are 2 different damned trains running down 2 different tracks about the same time, going, perhaps, in different directions. But these men are strong, both of them, and their dirrectikns don’ mata. Their energy does. Shit! Art can be ANYTHING! It can gd be a religious ass like v.g. drowning in the shotgun corngufffield of color, or a homosexual like D. H. Lawrence building up the womanhood of sex while wanting to sleep with the sloppiest pig of a man available.

  To me, Art is forgiveness without God and with the little availability of light offered.

  To you, something else. Education of the masses.

  But, god, Sheri, you must damn you bring the masses up to us! And have them step upon our toes and crowd us out of some line or tother for a hot dog or a boxseat upon a holiday…the masses just mean THAT: the masses. What are YOU going to have us do? Exchange first sheets of hidden Shuberts instead of trading stamps? I know it was Schopenhauer who said (in my words), well, hell yes, we’re suffering, but if we ever stopped suffering, wd know we were them.

  Jeffers is a genius in the preservation of the soul to the natural attrition of fame. Frost and Sandburg and Hem and Faulk have little or no resistance to applause.

  Sherman, if he ever made it, wd be a complete and horrible mess. Sure, Sherman can grow salty; it is a natural and human reasoning. There is a man down where I work every night

  who is FAMOUS for his anger ANGER ANGER ANGER yet I never say anything

  everybody fears him, he has bluffed the world but he comes to Buk: what’ll I say? what’ll I do?

  And so I tell him. Well, hell, I don’t care really, what you do. I don’t like you.

  …aw, fo Kriwts sake Sheri stop wotthehell screaming bout romantized orangsucked bankers, so MUCH old stuff STUFF

  the owl screaming…u make me feel like a much older man than I am.

  AND, HELL, AM NOT GONA FORGIVE U FOO THAT!!!!!!!!

  Jeffers’ old “aunt-voice” on the phone was the best protection he cd have. Never judge a face by its beard. I think that
in the long range Jeffers’ poems will be more SECURE than ur Pound’s because although now many of Jeffers’ words appear to be in the form of plads clicks old saws, and Pound’s were the new cut raw, it has appeared to me, finally in the line of reasoning, WHERE POUND WAS TRYING TO IMPRESS WITH A POEM, Jeffers was merely trying to WRITE a poem. Pound was, and is, entirely, too busy. Jeffers knows. Buk knows what Jeffers knows and is a little mixed on what Pd sass. But still, both good.

  Pound was a fool to give his formulas. Because once the many have uo pon the hands of the few,

  THE MANY WILL MAKE THE FEW NOTHING,

  and that is why doctors put their prescrivbitchiions in greek BECAUSE THEY REALIZE THAT THE KNOWING OF KNOWLEDGE IN THE HANDS OF THE FEW PASSED INTO THE HANDS OF THE MANY WILL AND WOULD CAUSE KNOWLEDGE TO BE USELESS…like too much gold or cold or too many wives.

  I wuld never be Ezra’s thane and even well when I fell drunk upon rugs, I still called his name through the names of horses because I knew I come on strong if they let me live.

  ON YOUR KATS: The ancient Egyptians elevated Man and Cat, woman and dog shunned.

  Sure, yv got to fight me because you KNOW IN YR MARTINELLI WAY that I yam a master of the future and you are catching one cutting me in my sloe growth

  befoo it’s tu late

  and meanwhile I will talk to u and not be silent

  lak Ez or Rob

  hoo both know u are alive,

  and I don’t know

  but I know they are alive

  LIKE SEBELIUS WHO WHEN HE STARTED GROWING OLD

  SHAVED THE TOP OF HIS HEAD

  AND WOULD NOT STEP OUT OF THE DOOR,

  well, here was a giant and it gave the boorish mob something to pick on and show sickness no? and when a beautiful man of face and spirit and body, when a man of such men is put upon earth, a man of giant strength of the pure plant in search of sum and sun, a man in search of the 3 or 4 women hoo will and would hand him the palm, such a man will shave his head in shame when he realize the end of the spirit and mind are walking hand in hand toward the altar of death while leaving him sitting here there, and some day it 2 will reach me, and I very much believe I will kill myself rather than will I suffer thro a cane this mind that at its growing strength is only looked upon as a side tune and the exit of the monkey and the organ grinder for nickels that will no longer feed or hold still the wind of the starving banyan tree.

  On fk cats, Shri: KAT: the ancient Egyptians elevated man and cat; Man and Cat, I should say it; woman and dog expelled. It is only in distillation, the selective cruelty of a formulated concept engendered from basics that we get power. Your Pound realized this. Hitler did. Nap. The Romans thro dominance of class, the Greeks thro dominance of mind. Pound has a Greco-Roman complex grown out of an inferior background that should have made him as invalid as a grocer selling you a piece of bread and saying, “Nice day, isn’t it?” But Pound’s courage got so good it carried him past the mark, so although, allow me to say this, his selling out of America was the best thing he ever did, and I think the Russians are younfer-kristsakes and stronger than we

  hoo are worried abt next hear this, car model,

  and we grow young guys like Gib and Ernie

  who are most interested in carburaters and Martinellis,

  but I love them both, all 3 of ya and I hope hell the bible

  u don’t inhale any fancy tinfoil and shit hot yr shitters.

  I sometimes laugh to maybe myself and realize I can spare it because I have so much I can give some of it away [in] 8ball letters like this, but that’s the way it goes, and if yu take yr shots at me, that’s ok, but I think

  someday these letters to u, like the letters to Sherman must cease. Not out of anything, but my sense that it DRAINS. Perhaps this haz ct up with EzraPd. Remember anybody hoo haz gone az far nose the essential rules.

  You go ahead and draw Ernie all the time. Whatever is needed is needed. If Ernie is good for you, I give u Erns. If Pond is good, eye giv.

  It doesn’t seem plausible to me, pardon me, that “the Gods sent a son of the Jews to love Ezra’s PoundKake”

  “sent to sass Ez and grab him by his one handle.”

  Your deal with Pond is not “international scandal”, dontletus outgrow ourselves.

  Jews know enough to DO, yes, but they can never sit still enough to figure out WHY, and a Jew will never have an Art collection or a wife except to show to somebody else, and he will never CEASE TO WANT, RICH OR POOR, and that is the weakness of the Jewish race, and I cannot hope to help them and they do not even think of helping me. But that’s ok, I never ask for help.

  I have sorryly worried and worked many factories in this candy land to pay my rent, and I have found the Nefucknegroes to be my most interesting companions, but I knew what they were fuck suffering from as I suffered from something else, quietly, and we drank our sick wine on lunch hours together and we had our backalley fights, some of which I won and some of which I lost. My hands are very much small for some reason and I have to hit harder and faster, which I generally do after losing the opening rounds and reaching down DEEPLY for what is stored in a small packet just above my asshole.

  One of my only friends is now fighting 6 rounders at the Olympic. He is more polite than I and has a bashful smile and his body is a sickly white. And every man he has fought has now retired. I am dumb, he says, I am dumb.

  Only when you are speaking to me, I say, over whatever rot we may be eating.

  Ah shit, Here Sheri, I know E. P. Walker will go on the cover of yr A and P.

  No, Walker is not as noble as Ezra; there are some proving fk ground first. Thus your say alone will not raise a difference because the springs rattle nicely. Both E.P.’s are yours; keep me out of this squabble.

  I don’t want to sleep with you; as far as I am concerned you can go to hell. Give me the leaping Dutch gal over the Sunday-morning fence looking to the voice of God. I’ll give her that voice. She can wash my dishes anytime.

  IF HER ERNIE IS THE SON OF GOD I AM GETTING THE HELL OUT OF HERE!

  JUST LIKE JORY’S CROSSIN THE JORDAN.

  I am Leo the Lion, and I will not mess with second-rates.

  True love does not create ART….

  Whoo givez a damn the secret of the world? This is highschool.

  What we want is the secret of self, one at a time.

  What makes one plant grow makes another plant die.

  I am going to paint one day and when I do I will show the world what color means, as I did one night to my x-wife, Fry and I awakened her and showed her the colors and she said, “Oh, you have color like Van Gogh, you LOVE color, you don’t ACT that way!”

  And I said, I’m going to drown it.

  And she said, what do you mean?

  And I walked in and turned the bathtub full of hot water and I stood there waiting, and she said, so just help me, so help me god, if you throw that beautiful painting into that hot water I will leave you.

  It took her six months to pack…

  Delecto, delectq. q. q. a. delecta. meow culpa?

  I am listening to an opera now that I have never heard. All male pure voices without complaint or gross love, like the Greeks admiring their statues in the sun. What is this?

  Gib’s only hope is that Walker gets constipated and starched-up, and fed-up. Gib is hanging in strong, however, and I am laughing, because I am yr spirit-husband and am Out of it. Ah.

  Don’t get burned, sun-burned, I mean.

  lfff,

  Buk

  [handwritten:] P.S.—there was “communication” between horse and woman (other than spiritual) in Roan Stallion. Gd. damn u, Sheri, why don’t you READ this book! Buk.

  Early Dec., a Friday in 1961

  I mean early Jan. ’61, 1:30 Pm

  and I do not know the date—

  Shareei!

  enclosed copies.

  some technicals: the Signature section is a portion of a larger Targets #4, of which I am enclosing a copy with the o
thers. Garner had a batch of sig. sections printed, however, and sent me a good helping.

  Sometimes my head of hair is curly, sometimes not. Sometimes it’s red; I grew a beard once and it was pure red while my hair was brown, and I was young and felt things running up my arms and I starved so I could have time to sit in the sun; mostly I watched the birds eat the crumbs and the rocks, and they were fat, fat lovely catdreams, and I was bone and I watched their heads as they walked—duck, duck, duck (watch a bird walk: his head moves his body), but I could not find a big enough crumb and certainly the rocks would not do, and one December in Atlanta I stood under a frozen tree, a tree as frozen as I, and the birds were gone and I decided to make a million, to eat and fuck continually, hire and fire slaves, grow dull and certain; but it was only a very bad moment, and I went up to a church door and decided to go inside and get warm but the door was LOCKED in the MIDDLE OF THE DAY, I’ll never forget it or understand it, but God and I had much earlier disagreed upon some finer points. Anyhow, about my hair, if you want to curl it, and my toes—FIRE!!!**—I’ve been in some tough spots (spiritually) (the physical doesn’t count except as you live through it down into the dark growing or dying). So have away, Shed. Pound was your man, and he’s mine. And Jeffers too. Right now, both. Maybe sometime someday if I can live a little longer (I go, I grow so SLOWLY S L O W L Y), maybe neither.