Beerspit Night and Cursing

by Charles Bukowski

  No wont give Longshot to Sal Army but to Yale University where you have an audience who admires you in Mr. N. H. Pearson even tho’ he wont believe H.D. visited me day before her departure; thank Godtt something prompted me to write an account of it to Rev. Swabey on the day she was dying & I cdn’t have known about it; to my discredit I thought it was a head of Christ because it was so holy & mysterious & sacred…

  So much for now is now 9/45 & so long Buk & we discuss yr visit/& take yew vitamins/minerals IF yew gotta zrink pbeer/

  Love//Shed

  Sheri

  L.A.

  Nov. what? 13, 1961

  Hello Shed:

  Walking down the street the other night, East side of town, there are not too many lights, I came across this body laying in the curb and the body was dead, I know death, I have seen dead roses and flies and moths, I have seen dead people, and his hat was dead in the curb, and people will die anywhere, they have no neatness, they will die on streetcars and meatmarkets, they will die in the bath or on the pot or on their love, they will die, they will die, and I looked at his body, the curious emptied-out feeling, and I thought, that will be me, I will be that and then it will be too late, I will not be able to do what I should have done, and I walked one halfblock or so and I saw a prowl car and waved them over, “There’s a man down on the corner,” I told them and the one on the door side, thin little moustache, too young, smiled at me knowingly and said, “Thank you, sir,” and he thought I meant a drunk had fallen, I guess I do not talk too excited, and I went on down the dark street and into a bar and the place was full of angels except for the bartender who was a bull without balls and I lifted the drink as if in a toast and then tossed it down and he said, “Who’s that for?” and I said, “For a friend, my friend.” For a friend. And I went out and the rats were still in the gutters and a black and white dog, his tail looped in, was eating a piece of cardboard in the parking lot, and well. well, well, well. I walked on…

  Look, oh lofty one of the rarified air, I have enclosed 2 Longshots for which you will not be silly enough to send me 2 bucks for as if I were some grubby little merchant, but I know you were just going through a formality there…Your tabula rasa, Ernie, if he thought my morals bad, which they are and my vulgarity excellent, which it is, I am pleased, for by these

  any acceptance would mean failure.

  —I did not select the poems that appeared in Longshots. Many of them I do not care for either but I let the editors have their head and it looks as if their head were not so good, but I cannot be bothered because these poems are behind me and to slosh around in them again is only so much stale jazz on an old record, and since I am not preparing for any type of immortality they can damn fuck well do wat they please, and so. soo, so, so.

  Ah, I am aware I down with the fish, and being in there I think fishthoughts and so am locked in a small area of watery whirling…

  Lord, Shed, you sure got it in for the Jap broads. I think they shake it nice. Some little slanty steal a bull from ya in the far past, eh Princess? You curse classicly in your letters and I got a cigarette and a beer and my face smiles at your vocab. I’ve worked on the docks and the railroadyards and never heard anything like this; the only difference being that their cussing is pewkingly sickening and without soul but yours comes through like the sound of sledgehammers on the sides of a steel barn.

  I do not think the 2 lonelies who printed Vegas in Quicksilver know who Sheri Martinelli is. They cannot “cackle” at what they do not know.

  Jon Webb writes that the English audience especially liked my album in Outsider #1, and sure enough I sent some poems to an Henglish mag, Satis, and he took 2, and not only that, said he would run a free ad for Longshots, and who knows? my pub. and I might sell all 245 copies for which we might buy one small chinchilla to turn loose in the weeds.

  My grey around the ears which showed at 38, left at 40, came back at 41 and then left again 2 months back. It is one hell of a thing. I am a blinking neon sign…Thanx for yr formula but seems a lot of trouble to go through. I’d rather be grey. What’s the difference? Some foxes (foxii?) are grey and still haven’t gotten their asses trapped.

  If Pearson doesn’t believe H.D. visited you it means he has a strong working intelligence and you’ve got to hand it to him because he does not buckle down before you and buy it, but I buy it because similar things have happened to me, and although the boys try to explain it away as electricity in the air or madness, they’ll have to do better than that before I’ll wipe it off as nothing. And so. soo, so.

  From my way of looking, you were pretty much on the mark in dis-cussing some of the poems in Longshots. Letter from the North caused some resentment from a couple of people who bothered to figure out the initials, although I changed some of them. One editoress wrote: “I don’t see how you can accept information from such a shallow source. No one knows anything about our private lives except etc. etc.…” Now who the hell said anything about accepting INFORMATION? I was writing about letters received that often made me physically sick. I do not accept information from a choirboy driveling at the mouth for fame.

  I will say this. I did come across a few poems of Jory’s in a mimeo sheet that showed some excellence, and since I judge a man more by his work than his ways, I wrote him a short note telling him this, and he is a boy, a troubled boy, but he has time.

  Look, Shed, I must go out for the Racing Form and a little more beer and cigarettes. There is one good one going tomorrow that I know of. I am drinking Miller’s in the pint glass bottle now and it’s very good while it lasts. I have chiragra. Must stop.

  love,

  Buk

  Los Angeles, Calif.

  Nov. what, 1961

  La M:

  Enclosed copy of Satis requested. Satis: satis/fied, saturation, full, or as they explain in the inside cover—enough. Finish.

  “tabula rasa, Ernie” means or equals: blank tablet, Ernie.

  “I have chiragra”, a stiffness or paralysis.

  I told you not to send me money for Longshots sent unless you care to insult me. If you want Outsider one please send one dollar to Outsider, 618 Ursulines st., New Orleans, La. This is their new address. I would send you my copy but it seems as if how somebody came by and borrowed mine and I am waiting its return.

  On death in gutter: D.H. Lawrence wrote a poem, don’t recall title, perhaps Ship of Death in which he stated that one must prepare the soul for death and then its transport through the wastes into the final state of its destination.

  Most men don’t die. There is nothing that has lived; there is nothing to die.

  The jap females are not professionally put upon us by anybody, it is only that the American male is attracted by: 1) the bone structure of the head which gives a moulded and classical look not obtained by our softer white females which have sprung out of IrishEnglishFrenchSweedishItalian putty. It is true that the outer classical look is not, in the japbitch, welded to an inner classical strength (yr boy Ernie wd use the term “inner classical beauty”). 2) the jap female attracts as an opposite to what we have been getting, and the darkness is not the heavy burnt coal of the niggerfemale which is really too much for us unless we simply turn the head and fuck.

  You will note that the poem I wrote about the Jap female was about another man’s reaction to same, not my own.

  Yes, I am down with the fish and they are a mealy lot. Often I come home so physically ill that I can neither eat nor sleep nor think nor see; they have stung me with their snouts and fish-gabble and watery looks. Yes, it is possible to get out; it is also possible to get so FAR out that one becomes inhuman and misses the point entirely.

  Editoress Epos upset and wrote me about Jory-poem too much opening of private window in her life but also on the other hand accepted another of my poems, The Priest and the Matador.

  I have very bad cold and it is raining and I am drinking orange juice and shivering like a witless fink so must cut this short and get back in bed. Yo
u heard from kaja? She has sent me a couple of little paintings which are very good. Sneezing now, idiot sneezing, and out.

  love,

  Charles

  Buk

  ps—enclosed some blurbs from publisher. if you know anybody who can be dominated or influenced by this approach, mail em out, help make me rich. love. c.b.

  South part of California

  full of niggers, bad opera

  and idiots; and almost Dec.

  nineteensixtyone, all these

  years after the passing of

  the Lord or a part of the

  Lord, 1/3, on a very bad day,

  it w’d seem…

  Deah Shed:

  now hold!—I have seen some copies of Agenda that have made me feel like a crab-shucker, yes, there was won issue predicated to one long pome, a rust-fungi thing, some Frenchman in his dotage, ah, who was it? shit. mabee Shot-toe, certainly something of sort, 19th. century classicism that might have looked pretty forward to Corneille, Pierre, shuffling with his grave hairs, butt to me jus more dead horns up the asss…ya. Did Ezra O.K. this page mass of homo-cream and water-moccasin turds? Ho, lady, good fine one, I have moments when I wonder if Pound is getting alla his calories, or perhaps his systole is wrestling with some soft wormwood of the brain…But that’s all right. I will allow a mistake or 2 to ol’ Ez. He never did deserve the cage except for courage, or in a world’s small light, swimming upstream. Satis is not bad, it is only that they are printing the wrong people, which I know is 9tops the battle, but I’ll be in Spring Issue and everything will be looking up everywhere and people will be hollering from tops of mountains and jumping into pure blue springs of water. Ya.

  The Henglo-Sexon, as ya say, Caesar’s buggers, believe originally branched off from the Tuetons, which to me is one hell of a fine thing. Wen you say Tueton I get the feeling of teeth in the hair and great bug power. Present strong races are the Germans, Slavs, Russians, Chinese. Rome has really fallen off to the floppy shoed Italian of Mouth and bluff, a front-runner with a backbone of cheese. Tha Jews, as always, will endure but…their endurance is not strictly honorable. And honor is what the mind and soul sharpens its blade upon. To simply endure is not enough. The jew is correctly dispised as a nutchewer, a muncher of small foul things and a backstabber flat-falsesmiler lier for a small bag of rusted coin and nutmeg, and beside this, his god cannot make us [sic] His mind, which is one helluva thing. The Negro, as you know, is now enjoying a new recognition, but he is going stricly punchy as are the recognizers, all slober adultation in an effort to right the boards to the tune of some outside voice that commands not entirely within reality. The Nigger is rummy rampant like a child with a toy gun that he finds can shoot real bullets.

  The holy order is disorder; those who survive may not be the best but they won’t be the worst either. What is left over, we eventually become.

  I enclose a copy of Satis which will not satisfy but which includes a couple a pomes by yr Wangboy, Rapheal David. I have little doubt but that his first name is really Chung but that doesn’t matter. What matters is that in many of his pomes he ends up on his knees in a suculent mood, or if not that, he is intent upon DEDICATING his pome to SOMEBODY. This puts him IN. IT IS A FUCKPOOR TRICK and if he ever deficates one to me I will come up there and throw him out of the nearest window. Ja, he thinks he can get in by hanging his ass out the back door, as Sherman thinks he can get in by kissing toes and noses and wrapping them in the gabble of telephone wire. I would not bother with these people at all, only it gives me some light to go on, to see them so weak, and no breach crossed. It is wrong, however, in mentioning them, I give them light. Grab garbage, dump it, forget it.

  Darling, I wd not mind your SCRUTINY on any visit or anything you ever wrote about me, bad, or whatever, I am not that way, I am not that way at all, being, perhaps as Ernie told you, I am a pretty hard nut, vulgar and so forth; but, of course, u might be worried that I might spread you across the horizon in my cheap and chitty gossip column poesy, I am all and absolutely no good at all, so ya better keep me out. Still now, you will never be in my memwaws, and that is not only one helluva thing, it is just too bad.

  I wrote 7 poems last night in one hour and I must retype them now and send them out, so I must be going. Caught cold standing in shirt sleeves at Los Almomitos watching them go 350 yards in 18 seconds and the beer was so green I could not drink it. Yes, I know, vitamen C. I am mixing my beer with orange juice.

  love to you, my beauty,

  Buk

  she: small swine in pen, knotted tails,

  c’d ask no more than this, c’d they?

  he: I dunno, I dunno.

  she: ya think the moon makes the mind

  maddern’ it is?

  he: shit. why not?

  she: how can an idiot like Man go on when he knows his sting

  will run out?

  he: didn’t Shakespeare answer that for you?

  she: yes, but then one wants the modern answer…Do you think it’s fear of the unknown that keeps us from going there?

  he: No. Some go. Early. It’s that with the rest of us, we know we are going there…no matter, so we play out the string…knowing there’s no 2nd chance here. Or, surmising as much.

  29/nov/61 s.m. pobx 217 Pacifica Calif

  Buk lamb: note change pobx—it is within evening drive from frisco shd I not want to make 1 hr trip to half moon…the weather no longer nice to drive at nite…rain is here / grey today—wd be rain/fine snow back home but here just fog/rain…just got here @ 8/30 & flew about doin’ this & that—stuff der lunch on der window sill in back room ally window & then come here & sit by front rm window by BUTCHER & TIEDJE Gas Station @ 4 corners—find that when my view is just 1 road going up & down I become downhearted & traced it to the one way traffic which makes me feel left out but hell when they are wizzin all over that’s NO direction & I’m cool sittin’ in my Private World

  Now re: yr recent Satis wh by way has a fine “A” on it/ & yr “rough customer” note is funny…re: David Wang—he just don’t understand the language he is writing INto…He cannot make up such HIGHlarious gems as “a moth just flew by doin’ ½ mile an hr”—or words to in yr’s recent. David is a water’d down cup of tea from the petrified records of China/// It is often called: “precious” writing or painting because it stems from a withered or petrified stalk & adds nothing new but oftime may be gemlike due to its isolation & petrification…David is no threat because he has not yr life/// the rest of yr NOT enough aint worth my brain cells

  now the real problem is—as po li & i discussed last night when we went to get the mail & sat in our hurricane lamp lit old country shack with the pines moaning & the sea roaring & rain pouring—a wild night much maker of thought—are we selfish to let you stay out there all alone being the only Live Person??? ought we join you instead of keeping us for the FEW??? I truly do not know Buk/// it seems to me—that no I cant figure it out—I am always working—inbetween painting & correspond. cooking & shifting papers from half moon to s.f.—working on my own book // that will appear when it’s supposta…& often we write something that wd amuse ‘us’ (all) & if knock out some today then will enclose for yr amusement// but I do not ever go beyond that…then have I a right to complain about the LOW level of all the ‘little maz’???? I just have no time to think on it//

  The only thing I can do Buk—is this—send you several copies of any of the latest & if you believe it will DO SOME GOOD…either refine their ears or merry up their hearts too sober now or larn ’em somepin…then I here/now give you permission to send them out along with any of yrs…you may leave Po Li’s name on his but kindly cross my name out & type in: Wishes to remain Unknown…or rather WANTS to remain UNknown—it wd be better that way// do as you please Buk// I did rather feel a coward knowing that I’d send things to you but wdn’t give you any help in yr little pubs & yet insist upon criticising them// tiz a problem—I suppose I’d detest you if you hadn’t sent me those drawings fo
r the H.D. issue///

  yes—all you said in yr last letter is CORRECT—

  Listen you Krout Head—it aint my scrutiny on YOU that worries me but yours ON ME—I can hardly take any more of the world—no Ernie didn’t tell me much in his letter—he’s due here frid. or thurs. his maw very ill & he’s getting out to help pay off the mortgage/ I will go dithery in this small nut house of a hotel—no you bastid you aint no gottdamm gootttt when it comes to eggsposin’ the vanity of der female & I aint gonna let you see me in my outdddd house…there are too many people who wd adowre a view of Sheri of the ShitHouse.

  VITAMIN C CAN NOT BE GOT FROM ORANGEJUICE U N L E S S YOU PURCHASE IT FROM ORGANIC VILLE 4207 West 3rd St Los Angeles 5 Calif// where the oranges & so forth are grown without chemical sprays & poisons// I wish you’d drive over or wherever & let me know what kind of joint it is/// if you were ONLY a reliable moder-fkr I cd mail you down a list plus some $$$ & have you get us some organically grown foods & just stick it in to the Railway Express—we’d get it inside of 2 days/// OrganicVille wants a $10. order of produce organically grown or a $2. bit for handling small orders & how in hell are Gib & I to eat $10 worth of apples oranges celery & beets & so forth in one sitting with NOwhere to keep ’em?? no ice box down country nor hotel room// ’s a bitch to try to live healthy…as it is we go to a store here but the prices are high—still if you have ever eaten a vegetable grown naturally you’d never go back to the chemicals// you see my dear Buk—if you feed a vegetable chemical fertilizers & spray—the vegetable also is what it eats & when you eat it you might as well eat the chemicals & the poison because that is what you get// When you eat natural unsprayed foods you get full value/ it wd pay you to visit the store & just purchase ONE real orange or apple—the difference is mad…! I am having some vitamins sent to you—lemme know when/if they get there//