Beerspit Night and Cursing

by Charles Bukowski

  this time is the most dif. to pass…this 7 p.m.ish waiting…

  am so bored with ezra’s critics; it was the time of condensing many books into one book & he got the job; usually that means almost total destruction of the cultures that got their books condensed into the one & for those that got left out it means a blank for them…he chewdon all of it & they are ALL chewing on his one book…shows you his relative size/

  now nears gloaming…he shd show soon…

  buk i am too lonely; i am waiting for gramps to die so i can be with him…this world is silly without him

  L.A.

  June 14, 1961

  Hello Princess:

  Well, now, H.D. and Pascin again. Pascin I will not mention again as I see he bothers you, although I grant that many of the things you say of him are true. And H.D. H.D. may be great. I don’t know. I can only say what H.D. is to me. I need more than—or perhaps less than the Grecio-Roman purity, the beautiful thorn. I need black bread and my own particular madness.

  Some idiot has attached himself to me. They are always doing that. He’s like a sucker-fish attached to my belly, drawing the life out of me. I must eventually knock him against a few rocks in order to make him see that I prefer to swim alone. Whatta sucker-fish! Well-read, spewing vocabulary and opinions against the walls like vomit, chatter chatter chatter eyes suddenly blinking shut and open in nervous spasm. He claims intelligence of the highest order but is unable to understand that he makes me ill.

  Other horror stories, a bit in jail and court, but of no matter except to go along with the rest and disturb, for the time, my hacking at whatever marble sits before me.

  Yet—horror upon horror finally and almost brings a plateau of calm reason in the face of anything.

  Of course, the disgusting thing is that one ends up with a mop, cleaning a latrine, when the inner part is ready to walk up the sides of mountains.

  But complaint is only a surly bitch crying for more and better luck, luck without the loss of pawns or blood. One cannot learn without bleeding, and by learning I do not mean education or book-lore or the correct way to pronounce; I mean when you can look at sunlight and feel the bone and tendril burning, or some such, whatever is lighting your mind at the moment, lighting out the darkness of universities and caves and the chattering ego. And particles rust and pass, without grief.

  The world is not “silly” without Ez. Martinelli, you need more German in you. You do the “illuminations”, baby. I love your hands and feet both and your paint better than all.

  Buk

  ps—The judge told me that I had a drinking problem. It seems to me that the main problem with my drinking is the police: if they would leave me alone when I miss a step in the street, my problem would disappear.

  cb

  Los Angeles, Calif. June 22, 1961

  Hoy Sheri:

  Got your good letter, and I am in a bit of trouble now, but should clear, don’t know; so therefore this will tend to be short, as I have horrible bulls to slay and time is needed.

  Picturephoto bit of Swarm-family shows the American masses that they are not the only ones having larvae crawling across the rug, and so they feel better. The family, the nation and the church are the 3 sacred nails that hold the average man where he belongs.

  Sherman and some painter in here at 2:30 am in the morning, stayed 2 hours. I was not comfortable with them but they did not know it. Painter had red beard, Rick Beck-Meyer, or some such; appeared to have more sensibility than Sherman, but they are both staying with some homosexual editor up in Hollywood, and the whole thing is less than appetizing. Jory wanted your address which I would not give him; also complained because I ran out of beer and because you did not send him a copy of last A and P.

  Complainers must realize that when they invite themselves in at 3 o’clock in the morning, the host quite well might run out of beer or out of manners. The painter asked me directly, as if I were in court, “Mr. Bukowski, why do you seek isolation?” or some such. Jesus, there were 2 answers sitting before me, but I gave him an answer which was true but minor, and that was that. And so much for drab ill gossip and drab ill door-knockers. Except that J. says he is going to seek a job down here; and if he does, I’m in trouble.

  Sheri, I don’t need friends. The old woman I know is enough; she washes my backside and squeezes my knick, and for it all, she knows more of what is true than what is false, which is also important.

  I will drop H.D. a card.

  My book is supposed to be out in July (new collected poems) and I sketched the covers myself when I did not care for what the artist submitted. However, I had not heard from the ed. since I told him I would accept the Metropolitan Poetry Award, but would suggest rather that he give it to a younger man, somebody who is ready to jump out of a window. I suppose I hurt him, but anybody can think up a fancy title for an award, but now it appears to me that I have told you all this before. I am getting addled. Anyhow, I will have to go on supposing the book is coming out, July, August, sometime.

  Good you got one Prussian grandfather. I had one too once. I was a kid and he gave me a tin box all full of old war medals, old ribbons, copper and bronze crosses, old wars, blood on the ground, cannon, and he had a whole head of white hair and drank schnapps and he stood straight up and down and his eyes were full of things.

  …yes, Mexicans corrupt to gringo because M. poor and gringo strut in land not his and think every Mexican girl a whore at his call, and so they overcharge and doublecharge, and I have been taken down there but keep quiet, for I know that then the police come and all the police know is jail until things are settled, and by settled, I mean paying them and the merchant. I once saw a sailor shot in a Mexican whorehouse and he deserved every bit of it, especially since he wasn’t even drunk. I don’t mean he necessarily deserved the bullet which caught up with him, but he did deserve being shot at.

  Jews tend to have more love toward those they know, but only that.

  Yes, of course it’s possible to tell what kind of person by the walk. I can become almost unbearably ill when walking behind the wrong person.

  Ernie is too well-read. The time comes when a man must put the book down and face the mirror of the unwritten.

  You like to bring Ernie in, then hold him off, then bring him in again. A fish-toy. Luck. But you cannot endow him with genius simply because you know him; he will have to make his way…Ernie by Ernie…and…luck. Let him have his monkey-talk; he is trying to begin; that is what they teach young boys. It is a code: they send them up a ladder in a high wind with a bunch of balogna and if they lose the balogna and come back down, they have made it. Any other combo is failure. Jory Sherman went up with the baloney and came down with it. Pound wouldn’t even mount the ladder; he laughed up and down the whole stinking ship and they threw him in irons.

  The Greek wisdom does not help me now. Each thing must now be taken one at a time and combed out of its defeat. The world is continually closing in like a dirty sea full of condoms and poisons; you reach for a god or a drink or pull down the shade, and then the fuzz bangs the door and tells you it’s lock-uptime for some obscure reason.

  Darling, we would never get along. We are 2 bullheads, and both of us must learn more to listen; there’s plenty wrong with both of us, but in growing the wrong comes along with the right, like the thorn with the rose, but of course, we ignore a lot of our own thorn, thinking we need to prick off the enemy, but what’s the enemy? but our face in the mirror, a roll of fat death around the belly and side, and…assurance, stability, Rightness…the American gringo of the soul trying to fuck the whole Mexican girlhood of belief, lo, or what or what or what? These stringy words say so little; sometimes I think it’s just the light from a globe thrown from under a dusty lamp; sometimes things are so sad, really sad, and we try to buk or buck up under them. You good gal, Shed, I don’t think I’d really ever argue with you; first, I do not argue, and second, you burn with your own fire.

  Sherman on phone again, wantin
g to come over. I am his dad, when he in trouble, come see Buk, drink beer, spill his piss before me. A formula. I told him no. I am in some trouble. He told me stuff and stuff, sharp, glib American voice, humorous, cold, energetic, undefeatable, false, money-mad, woman-mad voice…unable to sit still for a moment and watch the centuries come down in wonderful dust, the names, the ages of man, monkey-man and man-man all coming down to wistful stone; no, no, he wants assurance and talk talk talk and beer beer beer, not alone, but with somebody, weak this Sherman; I have told him to take the stars and the seas out of his poems and bring in real blood, and over the phone I told him no. God damn, I am no wet-nurse for 2nd. rate poets. If Jeffers wants to drop in for a beer, I’ll reconsider.

  Why the hell don’t we forget Pascin like we forgot Fry? I’ll take your word on Pascin. But do remember, I did not make any claims for him.

  The herb article I enclosed earlier was badly written by an old woman who puts out a flowerry poetry mag, but remembered you said you were looking into herbs and thot I cd. ad a wee to your gathering.

  Shed, I have grown very oddly and slowly, and I feel the mounting day by day like a vine climbing up inside of me; sometimes it is knocked back down, and I try to help it a little, but it is odd, it is as if I had no choice, and no matter what I do, no matter how much wrong or opposite, the climbing continues. I am getting simpler, almost to a state of idiocy; and yet I do not mean that I condone brutality or ignorance in all sense of the word, my sense of the word, not theirs.

  This is the danger of growing older; we think that we are growing wiser because we feel better—meaning we react less to pain: our feelers and outer limbs have been knocked off in the storms. Youths’ anger must always be listened to; they see clearly because they have not been weighted—that is, they see clearly as far as they can see; and age which sees farther cannot see as clearly. Compose, compromise the 2 and you’ll get the wisdom and the leadership—and although wisdom can do without leadership because it is one man, leadership cannot do without wisdom because it is many men.

  Gib, as I’ve told you is a strong man. Gib steps aside for Ernie because Gib is wise and durable, either through race or self, I cannot tell you from this distance. I can tell you, should the situations have been reversed, Ernie would not have been strong enough to step aside for Gib. I somehow dislike Ernie, I don’t know why. You may tell Gib I salute him with the iron hand, and carry on. And enough for petty names and petty gossips.

  All I ask out of life is a job as a dishwasher at any greasy cafe and enough for rent and a can of fk beer, and I don’t know, if any longer, I can even make that. I got 2 bucks for a poem or poems the other day (Mummy, some S.F. pub?) but the horse ran like he had polio.

  Ez should have had sense enough and strength enough to keep quiet at lawn gatherings of his when u an’ Gib conversed o’r breakfast or what. It is only, and he must be forgiven, that genius must no everythin!!! And much imagination, prob. run away with conver., imag. all sorts imaginaries, commie party agents in suculent intwinement, or forevermore, the gangs and fangs or those not in immedeate forcloseure…

  Ez was great but the greater you are the more doubts you have because you see how easy it has been, and then you can see how easy it can be that you will be overtaken, right, genius, or wrong.

  For a short letter this has turned out to be a fucker.

  Will close by quickly running over your letter: I don wana write abot white niggers. Jcrist, m[ay]b[e] the black whites, I dunno. I am sorry but the Japanese bitch is perfect; I’m quite sure by looking at her that she don’t shit, piss, or whipe er hose or nose or her ass, don have too…all copper coloring from sky rusted over alfalfa hills. If a jp bitch ever gets hold of me I am finished and poetry is finished, but I have been unlucky so far. gd it, forget the Fed. Reserve for a while, will ya. Unless I can get in there the system is just that, a system to preserve rot, and what hell you want me to do, sneak in with bomb and bubble out gold bars…shit, that almost happened couple months back without bomb. Conceit wedded to vanity may make good slaves but the best slaves are those without either; the obedient humble who think a breakfast egg in a pan is Nirvanna…Yes, yes, I will send H.D. a card, but she does not know who I am, but maybe she can feel I am something, although this does not matter. It does gd bother me that one of us is in trouble. Will keep it small and simple, like unknown admirer. I am worried about how I am going to stay alive and here is one perhaps dying, and I am clawing my own personal ribs. Shit, buk, more strength!

  I don’t like to “use” people. Suckerfish or not. I’d rather knock ’em lose on the rocks and swim away. The way I see it, there will not be more than 5 or 6 living people in any one century. The rest are fill-ins, dross crap. Now Hitler was living, although in the pages of righteousness and wrongness he was wrong, but it is the electric circuit that stands us up and makes us go, some little tired trickle in the blood. Hitler was born imed. with electricity; I beg time and time may trick me although I am wary. Just a job as a dishwasher until I am 50 years old. Will they let me have it?

  The Irish are more superstitious than the Jews; the Grecians and Italians, both lower and upper India are more sexual than the Jews, or I might throw in the Turks or any dog with a lose bone…Please, Shed, when you make rules take in more than the light rag thrown from a singular exception so seeming to you. I take you at task to keep you clear; I do not argue, only say, you are a woman, which in the long run of history, is unfortunate.

  The idea is to write the poem or the word; what happens after that is up to the dogs.

  love,

  Charles

  BUKOWSKI

  [postcard dated by SM 27 June 1961]

  Dear Shed: they tell me I will be on the radio, my poems, that is, on KPKF FM, July 2 at 11 p.m. and July 3 at 10:45 p.m. Don’t think you can catch it up there; doubt if I will listen either—no FM set. People are beginning to know that I am alive but the test comes in remaining as I am in spite of them.

  There has been much interference from the practical world and I have not been able to get my card off to H.D. yet, but either tonight or tomorrow I will…. Sherman down here remains pest, phoning at all hours of night and morning, always salty, headlong, demanding; Sherman only sees Sherman and I guess some writers are that way, but sometimes I pray for gentility, decency, courtesy, mercy…not the biblical and sugary sort, but away with the bitching and stamping of feet and snarling, and the insane lust for fame. L.,

  Buk

  L.A., Sunday nite Aug 13

  Hello Sheri:

  Well, as you can see, I mailed card to H.D.; evidently she either died or moved or became well again.

  I have been on one as usual, not feeling well. I hear from kaja and Corrington, off and on. Sherman in town, has landed something or other with the movies.

  Presume you are thriving with your herbs, witchcraft and lore.

  Love,

  Buk

  [postcard dated by SM 30 August 1961]

  Princess:

  gt.yrs. Hope you can locate recorder and wen u du it does not disattach us for eternity—u know that the crass and bleeryeyed Buk does not always hold poesy as holy as some of the gods wd wish, and since I do not educate the masses, only the masses of myslf that need straightenin’ and laughs for my friends, I hope u take it in gd and simple order, and I think u will, wise one…You may keep tape, destroy it, or whatever; it was just meant for a moment, unimportant…Jory left town; we did not apprec. him here. There are more soul mates in Frisco to satisfy his moment-byOh every-moment hunger…Waitin’ on A & P; still reread yr last won…and L. with capital plus 3,

  Buk (no pen)

  Buk

  Los Angeles, Calif.

  Sept.ending 1961

  hiyo mamma:

  rec. your pc. of blue paper letter; have been meaning to go ahead an’ say thanks for sending H.D. issue, and in fact, did write letter, 2 pages, but an oddity or a god or an ulcer-impulse caused me to tear her up. No intent of malice or ill-will, just o
ne of those things you do when you get a message from under the rug.

  some one you know, let’s say X, phoned collect other night from Frisco, coming in on jet, wanted me to pick him up at airport. He was there, another face in the crowd, operator, all a lady’s man, a boy, the drivel of small things crawling his dome, worse than ever, more sunk than when I had seen him before. He radiated poison. Talk about the gods leaving; they had only thrown a shadow upon him in the first place—and now, that was gone. He slept on the couch, but not before phoning everybody in town at 12:30 a.m. outa a little black book, many women, telling them all the same thing, which is all too sick to repeat here. I dumped him off someplace the next day and then came back and closed the door, put the chain on, plugged the phone, and the walls were roses, the walls were music, and the blood began to flow back through my heart.

  sometimes it is just a pleasure to stand in the center of a room and drink a glass of water without being disturbed.

  it is people that kill the god. if you are by the wrong people too long he will leave. You can live for ten thousand years in a room full of stones but beware things that walk and are called human. The animals are still pure. I can stay in a room with a dog and nothing radiates but easy warmth. I am a dog myself, I know dogs, cats, tho birds and fish mystify, are out of ken. But I can feel the little round soul of a dog, I can see the sparks of it that are called paws, snout, hair. He is a too good guy, yes; we know each other. But x, x, oh, it’s too sick!…

  I cannot kid you. about H.D. she has her style. I am not much of a known poet. It appears that unless you have fame, your statements are not given credence; but I do not think like H.D., her poems are too honed for me. I am slow, I am slow it is true.

  And so we go along.