Beerspit Night and Cursing
Page 24
And later, as I was getting well. “Who is that horrible woman who comes to see you? She was drunk. You are going to have to stay away from women like that and you must never drink again.”
And at the age of 13 I became covered with boils the size of baseballs. Not pimples, baseballs. And they sat me under the electric needle and drilled drillllled drilled deep into the flesh I could feel the little needle getting hot…like a wood drill punching into wood…and I could smell the oil…another charity hospital…“Jesus,” said the doc, “I never saw a guy go under the needle like that.”
“I’m used to it,” I told them, “every other day for 3 years.”
And you do get used to it. But not when you get on a streetcar and some kid tugs at his mother’s sleeve: “Mommy, what’s wrong with that man’s face?”
I could understand it now, but then it rocked to the center of me, cutting away whatever liberty I had built up in forgetting.
Other things, of course, that happen to us all. But now you want me to sputter a few god damned words I have written into a microphone while out in the audience 30 or 40 bitches feel “sorry” for me because I have a “soul,” and would like nothing better than to fuck me 3 or 4 times to let me see what they have and then marry me and turn me into something like anything that walks down the street, anybody you might pass at any time. It is not my intent to be different; it is my intent to remain myself. I have been taught by some very hard gods, some stone gods, and what I wring is from stone and iron.
Don’t set me up in front of a microphone like the silhouette of a duck to be shot down in a cheap shooting gallery. I don’t want any of their glory and I don’t want to “educate” the bastards. The world will turn on its own. THE GROWING OF ONE MAN PROPERLY IS OFTEN MORE THAN ONE MAN OF THE GREATEST STRENGTH CAN HANDLE. And by “properly” I do not mean the fixed targets of a society deadened with the massglue of its crawling. I mean the way we must pull up a shade in the morning and scratch our belly and yawn, and the way we must understand that what appears to be holy is often the greatest evil and what appears to be evil…is the source.
H.D. fails.
What I mean, is this. We must ask ourselves, is this person trying to write POETRY or is this that we read—that we hear, see—coming unwinding from a self that is highly improbable and unwinding, say, like the thread from a spider’s gut?
H.D. tries too hard to write “poetry” and gives her weakness away, but in this respect she has much so-called good company: Shakespeare, Keats, T.S. Eliot, Tennyson, Auden, Wordsworth, Whitman, Dylan Thomas, Burns, Robert Frost, Coleridge, Poe, Swinburne, Sandburg, Ransom, Aiken (although Aiken is the most glorious fake of the lot with Shake); Cummings, Graves, Hart Crane, C. Day Lewis, Eberhart, Spender, Shapiro, Henry Reed, and so forth.
There are very few poets of pure aspect: Chaucer, John Skelton, John Donne, Milton, Dryden, Blake, Edward Lear, Emily Bronte, Melville, Whitman, Christina Rossetti, Henley, Francis Thompson, Yeats, Walter De La Mare, D. H. Lawrence, Pound, Jeffers, and perhaps—George Barker.
Ginsburg is a complete ninny running up the mare’s ass for the pussy of fame. He throws up a big smokescreen but his soul is the size of one grain of salt and will wash away in the first faint sprinkle.
I disregard your constant slurs that I can’t write English and therefore you can’t read parts of my letters. You can READ THEM ALL RIGHT BABY,—it’s just that you don’t WANNA READ WHAT IT SAYS BECAUSE IT HITS HEAD-ON INTO THE SOFT PARTS OF YOUR BELLY-WEAKNESS
WHICH SUCH A GOODGODESS LIKE U
SUCH DON’T SUPPOSE TO HAVE, HA HA AH HA.
H.D. gives herself away in Epitaph (last page) as a stringer of beads for others to see. Stars Wheel in Purple could well thrill all the lady readers of the Ladies Home Journal.
Hell yes, I’ll ask that question too: where is the nightingale? (Page 52)
Yeah, when they want to find out what makes me work I’ll CRACK them a can of beer and say: here it is: the nightingale. Here, Sherry, have a nightingale: 26 cents a can.
Perhaps nowhere does H.D. give away her strivings, simply, to write POETRY of such unmitigated vent as in Heliodora, page 43…
Well, enough. You drink your poisons and I’ll drink mine…
Now—YOU WAIT A GOD DAMNED MINUTE ON PASCIN!…I will tell you about Pascin. Pascin grew tired of the lump-colored blobs laid bare and naked upon the canvas ass…He wanted a woman like the one who passed him in the hall or on the street or sat across from him drinking wine. It is not a matter of immortalizing women. It is a matter of bringing them down to where you can see them and remember them in their small unnoticed magic, that only a man can notice. There is nothing more ugly than a completely naked woman. A woman is built to receive and reproduce; she is a machine blossomed and stored by man. A woman is ungainly: her ass is larger to bring forth birth and to engender the eye of man, and when her body bends naked, the hopeless breasts swing loose like things that want to fall away. See in nature who is the most beautiful. Eye the color the gods give to the smallest of birds—wren and sparrow, and all the way up, rooster, eagle, deer, lion…It is only at times when nature stores such inward female beauty in some…such as Sappho, Martinelli, Rossetti, and even H.D., in spite of herself, that man must reajust his judgments of the gift; and for it all, woman of the crudest sort must never be looked down upon unless they are vicious in a spirit beyond their female nature…And it was sometime after my thoughts on this subject that I came across in some reading…somebody asked Degas why he made his women so ugly, and he replied, in surprise, “But women are ugly.”
I don’t know if I’ve made myself quite clear on the value of Pascin, and the fact that you tell me…he was a Jew…of course makes little difference, except, I suppose, if a Jew can overcome his instincts to become an artist, he will probably become a good one. Except Ginsburg whose instincts keep dragging him back.
Now, Sherri, you sent me the Myrrh Gum…and thanks…and I enclose couple bucks for costs…but…what hell, baby, yam I supposed to do wit it? Eat it? Set it on fire? What wha wha? You gotta enclose instructions…I am like a child cut loose into a bush of cottonwillows.
Forgive me for moving so fk hard against yr H.D., I will still love you, Shed; it is only that we must move forward, and H.D., while she did her good part early, 3,000 female writers sound like H.D. now—which is not her fault but her strength, but we who are on the edge of the present day creation…cannot see and, are in a sense, hard toward the past which gives us much of our heritage and strength to go on, but the going on overtakes us, and we must go on…just as those who swallow us up…will look back in a declining and indefferential sense upon our bones. It is sad, but right now…we are alive and the sound is ours. H.D. is unmistakably dead and she must realize it, and if she doesn’t…then she is less than she is.
You needn’t sketch my portrait. Enclose one sketched by myself.
Still working on small shack deal. Won over 500 dollars Monday. Tuesday lost 2 bets—one for 10 dollars on 9 to one shot and other for one hundred to win on 2 to 1 shot. Both horses won easily but they took down my number on inquiry of very minor technicalities by the stewards. took in 20, 30 dollars on succeeding days, hardly anything, but it rained today and I stayed here.
To hell with Ezra; I took him to my bosom early, when I needed strength, but now I’ve got strength. I’m going to carve my own jade. It’s very simple. If only they’ll give me a few more years. But I cannot stop drinking. Drinking fills me, it doesn’t empty me. I can’t explain. In some later years, if we are still here, somebody will come up with some very simple answers but I will be just so many more bones sitting under sod somewhere and the hot kisses and music and poetry will belong to someone else. It is a hard fact to take, in essence, if you look at it from the Life-side, which is all we can do, no matter how much we kid ourselves that we can see forward and that all will be okaydookay.
yes, yes, your paintings very good from little booklet you sent me…do not like your sketches…bu
t paintings yes. I do not know what it is. But do not try to be modern, like the mostly red and square-shaped thing, I forget what you called it. You stay old. You are touched with a good dust and what you say about bones is true. I love you and I know what you are. Keep it moving. Your color shades call to the eye of the worm and forever. What you think you see in H.D. is only a small part of you. H.D. is only a small stopsign on your way. You see that Gib keeps you stocked in paint and paper and gives you a few clothes because you can’t help being a woman. But don’t be too hard on Gib. He is not as mad as the rest of us. But then, who is?
lovekisses, baby, from one you’ll prob.
never see, and it doesn’t matter—
Buk
Buk
[postcard dated by SM 25 April 1961]
Shed:
o, o, I find out now
m. wood little rocks that burn…cracked one a my only saucers. now sky and ceiling filled with grace. little spiders without legs floating down in air…Pascin alcoholic, prematurely gray, at age 45 looked 20 years older. Suicide, June 2nd., 1930. Born 1885…
well,
Buk
25/april/61 sm pbx 46 san gregorio calif
in dealing with superior people—total freedom of action & truth at every degree is necessary & possible
in dealing with inferior people beware of setting even a minor model for action…because…the inferior person is apelike & does not know the Laws of Harmony but only the Law of Imitation…& will APE any model set before he/she
a good rule to discover the inner man…observe if what you place before him is carried on by him in a way which harmonises…or does he merely ape…or imitate…& stop all flow of intelligence/
April, perhaps 29, xtywon, nited states
Yes, Shed:
You tell McNaughton kitty I am quiet old man who drinks gallons of beer because his insides missing people who meet me (and I try to keep this from happening) say like poet William Pillin,
why, I thought you were a YOUNGER man…
or like a woman I once lived with:
said:
I don’t know, I thought you’d be more…
More WHAT?
oh, more fiery! or something. I thought from reading your poems…
They don’t understand that a man can be sitting in a chair blinking like a staid frog and it is a gentle seeping of the light, in…and if you ever do finally throw a fit as all creatures finally must do when the nerves are caught raw…they run to the secret lover to tell about the beast.
;;;this pighead won’t read; I come to grips with plenty of shit elsewhere, and I must draw down my laws for non-shit hours so that I may breathe.
The boys evidently think I am something. I am amused at a letter that I rec. today, beginning: “I am extremely pleased that you are willing to have your poetry read at our session May 5.”
They are getting a boy to babble my words into the mike. Fine. But they suggest I meet the “reader”, if I want to. Hell, I might as well do it myself if I have to meet some goddamned “reader”. Why I wanna meet a reader? They want buttons off my shirt, or what? I’ve always been a loner, and because a few people have read my poems I am not going to skid off half-cocked and let them piss on me. If the poem bothers them enough, let them make it walk on their airwaves. I brought it out of the singular odd womb that is Buk. I will not cut the head off my poem and say it cannot go on the air, but I will not curl its hair and dress it in Sunday best for a few admirers to paw over…Where were these bastards when I was starving & freezing in Atlanta in shirtsleeves trying to get up the guts to reach over my head and touch the raw wires that hung globeless like the snakes of Hell while I tried to put down the word? Where were they? They were slobbering up the milk from some warm mother’s tit…and they still are.
Don’t be mama shed slapping at my bloody mouse soul and telling me to go warble in a mike…What can I tell them when they say—
Could you give us any information you’d like used concerning publication and life history?
What can I tell them? Doesn’t the poem SAY?
Jory fooled me and still does because now and then he manages to get off a poem in completely original (compared to others) vernacular.
But the hours I have watched him on my phone dialing the powers-that-be. Some editor. “This is Jory Sherman. I just got into town. I’m over at Charles Bukowski’s and, etc. etc., I want to give some readings and etc. etc.”
Jory never knew it. He thought it was perfectly natural. And I did not let him know that his soul had pewked before me.
And the way he dragged me around like a lame dog when I told him I did not want it, and I finally had to say no.
And he still writes very well, at times, and I am puzzled.
That is why I do not break it off completely with him. He was one time blessed by some very dark and quiet god and it is this core of a blessing that keeps him running halfway toward a sinking sun no matter how many times he leaps the rails. He’s lucky but doesn’t know it.
I took a lashing of fire to even open my eyelids.
If any half-pale god speaks through me it is because I lifted rocks and killed rattlers across my path. I am not blessed; I have been beaten witless and mumbling. I know very little besides shades of light and that one man must always be one. The Jorys stun me with their easy victories.
Jory would spew his guts readily into the mike, into the assembled throng…I only WONDER what the assembled throng is??? Duty, or Pound with the term “education” always ready, or Ginsburg following the “line”—it’s not god damned NEARLY ENOUGH!!!
For Sherman it would just mean more clean linen, a photograph in an honorable position, and shoes for baby. Ginsburg and Pound, of course, are rock-hard in SIGHT—that is, whatever they see
THEY SEE ROCK-HARD AND ALL THE WAY, and this is important.
But Ginsburg fails hard as H.D. fails soft. They both fail in unnatural poses, duty and the Greeks be damned. You tell me that once you were unable to understand H.D. Perhaps someday you will be able to understand C.B. And I don’t mean Christ’s Balls.
There are only 2 contemporaries I look up to—Pound and Jeffers, and as the days go on, it is almost becoming a level stare. Martinelli is the most beautiful female I have ever known, and I can only place it in these simple terms.
…look here…the horror I related, I know it was wrong, but I am saved because I have others others that have not happened to the average, and they will not know. Balls, what does it matter? What does even the poem matter? I can feel my bones now rid of my rotten belly my rotten mind I can feel my bones now straightening and sighing and what can they do with me without their microphones and Shermans, and their Cubas to chew like tough steaks?
Shed, I have something that will amuse you. I don’t know, it is the Chinese or somebody something like that
I read sometimes but fail to get it straight.
They say this—that the way you live NOW will cause you to be what you are in reincarnation—that is, if you have been pretty tough straight baby, you prob. lion in reincar. If you pretty poor piss, maybe you end up next time being snail rat what have you…lowest of forms.
I do not disclaim this view any more than I disclaim boy on cross with nails. All views good to me in what they bring—I will drink beer with a capitalist or a red and fuck either of their wives when they are not looking if it seems within the proper mainspring of unwinding, the living thing to do.
But what I am saying now is that I see people now with the animal they are going to be ALREADY TAKING SHAPE WITHIN THEM while they are still supposed to be homosapiens among us.
There is one person I know that perfectly well reminds me of an ant-eater. o, it is so plain, I do wish you could see it! And another, not even an animal, just a fuckin’ bunch of sunflower seeds in pod to be pecked dry by the passing birds. Many are not so easy to pinpoint, and the animal-god may have troubles too…segregationist troubles to make Georgia and Alabama seem well G. and
A. only. Anyhow, out at the track today it was hot and as usual I was hiding my coat over an empty counter that is never used except on Saturdays, and I noticed a little rat-face watching me. I sensed the evil there; I thought simply not much good, that one. And sure enough, after the last race, I reached for the coat and it was gone. Nothing tragic, certainly. He’d even put up a little box so he could reach over and get it, short-legged nothing of a nip of nothing. And when he got it home he found out it couldn’t, wdnt fit. What then? A hock shop? 2 dollars? I would not even burn this type in hell. They do not even deserve to suffer pain. Let him be just a bit of sand caught in somebody’s sock in the year 5000 A.D.
I hearby consign him to return as SAND.
Sent an English teacher, dept. of Louisiana State College, your way, A and P with some pomes. Maybe he won’t show. Has a tendency to be blithe and clever. Writes a strong letter but poems, so far, weak. William Corrington. Maybe you can straighten him, if he shows.
Sorry, darling, you must stand these with me.
It is a test of our love.
And he is far more idealistic than Sherman. And, I think, down under all the coating ok if you can shiv it away.
…I may not be able to write for a while, some bit of minor trouble, so trying to get as much out of way as possible…do not sleep off yet…
I must turn my back on H.D. because we do not fit. She started basically wrong because she was afraid to use her real name because Hilda Doolittle did not sound like poetess. And other things I attempted to explain in last letter back, but maybe I had a “skinful” or you thot I had or wot whot wot.
always have a skinfull, how you expect meee to keep moving on, woman?
…Man is not supposed to understand the “nature of the female”. If he did he would avoid her entirely and nature’s natural plan would go down the drain.
Perhaps you are right in saying I have never had a woman, and only the fear of Buk, but it’s a buk wanting to live to see a natural daylight and not an accessory to a pair of breasts and a womb like it seems he just got away from not so long ago, and here we are looking for another MOTHER sucking teats, begging, slobbering…