Beerspit Night and Cursing

by Charles Bukowski

  back from hospital last Sunday. surgery for 15 years’ or more hemorrhoids and distended intestine. sitting with very great delicacy upon these pillows as my radio finally gives me some decent symphony music (Mozart). you are lucky for me. it is a painful time, of course. I wish you could hear my monologue during bowel movements. you would have to laugh but I am in dead earnest about my cusses and pronouncements during all this…shitting. I will be unable to work for from 4 to 8 weeks, which doesn’t bother me at all. there is something wrong with me: I am never bored when I am alone; I am only bored and distressed and hammered while I am around people. take away the physical pain and this is a pretty perfect time, although I cannot sit at a typer too long. they tell me that my liver is in bad shape too. my drinking days are over—if I am able to stop, and don’t think I’ll have any trouble. it is almost a relief, it is as if I had been carrying around a heavy stone that I didn’t need to carry at all. but, hell, no regrets, even at physical breakdown—there were some wild great times, but now I pass among the tombstones and palms and look around more gently, still seeking those things which lift me, make me complete enough to gamble a bit longer. there’s still plenty left, both of me and of ways to get in and out of trouble, and still things to do like paint and sleep and listen and read and not read and not sleep and not paint, and drink water, and tangle with women, and sun gaze and change flat tires, and spit, and walk down the sidewalk being 4,000 years old; I can look at lettuce and eat it, I can write Sheri Martinelli, I can drown myself or clip my fingernails, I can look in the mirror at this crazy chopped-up face and laugh; I can do nothing with the greatest of pleasure. I am more aware now than ever of my fingers, my nose, my feet, my ears, my elbows, MY ASS!!—what strange things, eh?, goofy what? there’s plenty to go by, there’s plenty left. sailboats. rats in the halls. rats in clothing. I could run out of paper. I could run out of time. I could run out of sunlight. what I mean is, Sheri, that everything is all right. we work up and down, fall into hoary pits, shoot past angels making love; we ride tigers and are ridden by them…we are covered with shit and clouds and energy and unfolding.

  now my ass is starting to holler and I must end this. paint it, sweetheart, paint it blazing you good woman, I’ll meet you on the Nile, 5009 a.d., we’ll eat dates with Ezra. now I am eating lettuce and oranges and apples and all my ghosts are puzzled; small cats peer into my windows, smile like humans, and everything is fixed o.k.

  love,

  Buk

  p.s.—the Sungod Apollo is to be rebuilt in aluminum.

  15. March 66 pobx 1044 pacifica calif

  Buk:

  good for you to get 4 to 8 wks vacation—stretch it out man—

  gave yr book to Kay Harrison & she is taking it to her lit teacher here & you are being read by young painter Pat Green & her friends—man you are traveling!!! Stay well—it will OPEN up for you dear Buk of the opal lights—

  I am making a special surprise Bukowski edition of the A & P & it is going to be a good one—cant write much as am banging away at stencils—but one day in mail…luv…it’ll come…and with

  l u v /

  Shed /

  [drawn around the type is a picture of a cat saying “’allo mon” with SM’s query “This yo’ cat smiles like people?”]

  l.a.

  March oneseven, one9six6

  Sheri, Sheri:

  yes, you drew my cat, my cat loves me more than birds but the reason is different.

  you keep speaking of my “book” and I wonder which one: It Catches My Heart in Its Hands, or the recent Jon Webber colorscope, Crucifix in a Deathhand. well, it doesn’t matter. I wrote both books.

  you got Bukowski in your next A & P? you worry me, as I don’t know about myself, how can you know? well, maybe you do. and I like your strange mystic ancient-eye classical and wisdom magazine (?) anyhow. it is like a painting, a rumbling, talking, shining bloody painting, yes. then you are busy. good. but drink coffee, don’t forget the plants, the sun, the seaweed…I am busy too, so this must be short, I am cutting some tapes for Webb who is going to put out a longplay of me talking. not poetry. just talk. talking into the thing and hardly knowing the why and how. no strain. like frying an egg or looking out the window. you understand. anyhow, with the talk-record he hopes to get enough money to get him into Outsider #4, the Patchen issue, and then he’s running a book by Henry Miller. Miller gets the breaks although he seems to no longer need them. well. anyhow, I will ship you a record when it comes out. but right now, there’s the work and pleasure and dream of doing it. damn, I keep pulling back the curtain everytime a woman walks by. they think I am nuts. they must have stuffed a lot of cabbage into me in the hospital. these gals all dressed in their bright colors as I sit here in the kitchen on my sore ass (had operation on my poor ass) and drink coffee and write you. well, anyhow, it is Los Angeles and I sit in the middle of it. tenderly, I sit. and now the tapes, the tapes! onward! ya.

  loooove,

  Buk

  [followed by a drawing of a cat looking back at the sun]

  4-1-66

  Sheri, my vury good one:

  have asked Richmond to send you his collection of poetry Hitler Painted Roses, for which I did the foreword. as soon as it [arrow pointing back to title] is assembled. am also sending you Steppenwolf #1 with my review of Corrington’s poetry within. some of this stuff may not get through to you soon because of the train strike. I hear that only airmail is going through.

  my ass coming along all right and I have 4 more weeks of loafing, powerful loafing, looking at walls, writing, writing anything that jumps into my head and feels good. even painted 3 oils which now hang in this place. painted with my palms, mostly, on plain paper because I don’t like to waste time mixing colors and dipping brushes and playing at artist. not many people bothering me, so it is a good time, yes. must go see doctor in 10 minutes so this must be short but Martinelli jumped into my head right now and I go with what occurs, so here we are.

  actually, today is a down day…I should have slept 4 more hours. sleep to me is just like getting drunk. it puts me there.

  a few people angry at me now it seems, mostly because of things I have written—reviews or poems. but it is better to have enemies than a typewriter that lies. at the age of 45, I do not intend to dress in one of their precious monkey suits. have finished cutting the tapes for the record Webb has advertised. so that’s that. now he can finance his Patchen issue and run his Henry Miller book. what a good boyscout I am, never asking royalties. or maybe I am a fool. but I don’t want to get tangled in all that.

  time certainly may not fly but it certainly does run like a young filly to my drunken advances. how’s that for lousy writing? my god, if I get much worse I will be ready for Esquire. so then, this dead letter, to let you know that Bukowski still has his gentle and beautiful and rented walls with Bukowski inside of them, piddling, scratching, 1/4 thinking, residing, waiting, jelling, mumbling, shitting and shaving; kissing his typewriter and bending a little, not too much, to the heavy gods…I know that the electric things run through you, huzzah and huzzah, good sweet sun and eggs and a way to walk, Sheri, and a way to move in a room, Sheri, and a way to stay alive with them, account of them, in spite of them and 2500 years of almost worthless culture poured over us, yes. the doctor now, the doctor, god damn him! but not

  my love,

  Buk

  Sheri, dear—

  back, a bit of Handel on radio, haven’t mailed letter, prob. can’t for a while. he had to find an “adhesion” to slice, so this old man will be moving slowly for about 12 hours. but cigar going and the women walk past my window, so fine. maybe one of my favorite editors (x-favorite) now gives me his chilled silence because he figures I have cancer and can’t go ten rounds for him anymore. but to hell with the game. I still have typer and paper. members of the human race are fitful, touchy, frightened, and a lot of the so-called leading lights seem to have antiquated Christian morals. I can’t be bothered with that crew. if th
ey want to be offended on the grounds of what I write or because I take advantage of their female friends by screwing them, then too bad. I’m going to continue writing and screwing. if there are women of love good and generous enough to lend me their bodies and I like the bodies and the spirit within, I will screw, with love, and pleasure.

  went to see my little girl today, she is 18 months old, and she saw the car, the old ’57 and she came running, “HANK! ANK! ANK! HANK!” (that’s my name, that’s my first name: Henry. middle: Charles. I write under Charles because my father’s first name was also “Henry” and he was the enemy.) anyhow, she came running, laughing. we’ve got a pipeline going between us. we read. each other. it is so easy. I know exactly what she wants and doesn’t want. she’s a doll from out of the clouds, dropped by some magic hand, come to lift me out of the blues. but enough.

  novacaine wearing off and old ass singing the blues a bit now but there’s been worse pain than this and surely there will be worse coming. but I’ve got a typer and paper and I’ve painted 3 paintings and I’m writing Sheri Martinelli, another magic one from out of the clouds….o yes, something else working up in Oregon, some young madman, Bobby Watson, assembling via mimeo a book of my poems—Poems Written Before Leaping from an 8 Story Window. just inked him a cover. also a prose bit of a book coming out via Ole…about the hospital, the operation: All the Assholes in the World and Mine. will get this to you as soon as out but some of these things take a while because most of the people putting these out, all of these people, are poor and must work between milk and eggs and sweat and squeezed hours. these are the best people; I tend to distrust the vaunted professionals.

  some people have said that I am too prolific, that I might be tending to write too much and that this could be dangerous. what the hell are they talking about? I figure that I sit at this typewriter very little. I compare, say to my job where I work ten to twelve hours a night doing something that I don’t care to do. do I sit at this typer ten to twelve hours? certainly not. I’d rather; I’d rather bang 12 right here. and I could. I can write forever. there’s enough within me to write away 2 dozen lives and happenings. it may not be grade-A stuff but it doesn’t weaken me or endanger me either, not nearly as much as the job. and they never speak of the main killer—which is the job. as usual, they miss the essentials. too many people talk without thinking; I wish they’d think without talking.

  the month of March is over. I went into the hospital on the 2nd., was sliced on the 3rd., and there was a bit of horror and disbelief—locked in with the whining crowd. and their T.V. sets and many of them with imagined ills, only wanting the great Mother because society has cut their balls off and they have lost touch with the undiscovered and important gods. no souls—just mouths, bodies pewking the misery of the sell-out. the bit of pain from the knives was nothing compared to being locked-in with them! at least on the job, you know that in a dozen hours you will be walking down the street alone—4 a.m.—with the last of the moon sinking into your skin and bones, the quiet air giving you no con-game…you slowly fill again, you go home. the mirror is hell, but that’s where you came from. but there’s always that stirring inch LEFT! that something you held all the way through. a seed. a lucky charm. love. guts. spinach. you name it. you know it. but in a hospital—that’s it. they’ve got you—(the docs and the nurses and the patients)—to talk to, fondle, slice. arrg. but I found me a little Mexican mop-up girl—all eyes and sadness, we had some laughs, corny stuff, I’d say, “Hey sweetie, you come to mop my white socks again?” “do they need it?” “oh yeah, once lightly!” and the little wench mopped my socks again! laughing. I always seem to meet these little Mexican girls working at dirty jobs, for nothing. beautifully real and easy. “If I could get out of this bed I’d chase you all around the room!” “why don’t you try it, you might catch me!” silly stuff, I guess. she’s 25 years younger than I am. old horny goat, Buk. but a lift. sure. she brought me a new pair of stockings when I left, threw them on my chest. “here! for your big stinky feet!” I didn’t have the guts to ask for her whereabouts when she wasn’t working. age, age, age! Age!

  well, I’ve dragged on long enough here. don’t write until the space arrives, until the moments juggle properly. I understand.

  the birds fly high high the drunks fall off their stools

  milkmen cry over their grey hair

  newsboys sell me death

  I hear songs so sad I want to cry

  why can’t it work, why can’t anything

  work? ah, maybe it

  is. cold showers. sewers. armies.

  myself shot down like a captive

  spy. great, great

  great. the waters pumping over

  everything.

  sitting on the edge of the bed

  thinking of St. Louis or oranges or

  tombs.

  ah.

  lub,

  Buk

  [followed by a large abstract drawing with letters of the alphabet]

  8. Aprille. 66 “they call this Friday good” s.m. pobx 1044 pacifica calif.

  Precious Steel Splinter:

  Before me lies you review of Corrington’s book of boems—p/54—“I can lie to a hot blonde” nay Buk—there’s been too much lying to our Psyche…our seeing eye dawgs—that’s how the mess started—no lying to our hot blondes—or history—or the invisible reader—

  p/57 “because it does not come out of essence but out of instrument”—that’s THERE—“I do not write these poems from a will but from the love that moves me to it” or words to that effect. A quote from E.P. quoting a troubadore. Or howhellspelled.

  P/58. “here in the United States we over-respect education, the doctor, the lawyer, the professor—and we allow them to shit all over us while we smile.” THAT is how the end came with a “whimper” not a “BANG”. It is not strictly American Bukow—it comes from our root—it’s “old as th’ hills” & just as dusty—man’s downfall is the worship of other men / women’s too.

  P/59—“We all write badly at times”—who said that? Buk—even E.P. says that—it’s a good thing once said—tell me who said that???? You shdn’t send anyone THAT honest to a “priest/rabbi or preacher”—howly Chryst that’d corrupt such a humble honest soul—TELL ME WHO SAID THAT I PRAY THEE.

  P/60: “Art makes life”/ you SAID it—nothing happens in this shitty universe except Ye Creative Act—that was SO in the beginning by the Prime Mover—and it’s ALL we got to GO on—The 7 Deadlys are they who stop The Process/ The Process is like Snowflakes that make themselves as they fall—“moving slowly like a dancer”—we catch hold of one another at the appointed time & place—this is the meaning of heav’n & eart’—(I Ching’s line) You’ll SEE that soon’s I git yr issue out—how we catch hold of one another to make patterns—we swirl through time like snowflakes—Pythagoras: “Time is the soul of the world”

  P/61 “Christ, when are we going to BEGIN” Christ…we are going to BEGIN by reading H.D.’s Collected Poems—O Wilde Beaste!! Corrington has found a “respectability”—while he is here & while it is now—and he feels he can afford a “TONE”—He takes that TONE…like an echo…from H.D.’s tone / Mr. Eliot’s / E. P.’s tone / James Joyce’s tone “sad as a sea gull is when flying all alone” Corrington is wearing his trousers rolled/ now is when we’ll SEE the real Corrington / as Abe Lincoln said “most men can endure poverty but power is the real test of them”…or words to—

  Corrington now has his pat on the head & it will prove him or unprove him/ The Greeks said it too, something about Fate raising up the children of Destiny only to let them fall again—Abner Dean has a drawing—a nude male is at the top of a desperately long flight of steps & he is just about to open a door marked “appointment with Destiny” & of course the door opens to a sheer drop down to the bottom of the bin again’—Corrington in his solitude hugs the Tone of the Masters to his naked self—He’s more frightened than he ever was.

  Respectability is death. His Late L
ate Show is a thirst that follows our most reverend Eliot’s drink: “Let me disclose the gifts reserved for age”—and as usual—you are the only thing worth reading in the book/

  Yr drawing of a wolf is wolfy/

  Know WHY you won’t read H.D. Buk?? You are afraid you’ll lose your heart to her—the females you hang out with are wise but unpure—soft—and H.D. is wise & pure & hard—you never knew such a woman—soft as the sheen on polished jade & just as hard/ the classic woman—the ideal/

  Corrington hath caught her scent—the white stag—he WANTS to be old so he too can wear his trousers rolled. Eliot “measures out his life in coffee spoons”…Cor/ says “these veins are full of tea”. Cor is mellowing—but at what age???

  Take a chance Buk—read H.D. as her lover—although gor’ knowz (E.P.’s) H.D. would terrify you—she’s a tall TALL woman. I’m not fit to wash her buddha feet with dew/

  Cor uses his social backing to take a chance now—to leap OFF into the DEEP—he turns his back on his raw yout’…he has this age upon him—he can now AFFORD that distant tone—he catches from the craig where Ezra mates with his own wild kind/

  You are not going to be tamed—but you must mellow—you are a plant—you will mellow—then your tone will come to us from a far place where you live—I said L I V E—

  This is a world of ME first or me TOO!—the competitive dogs—we all have it—some times we compete with ourselves—most compete with the nearest person—E.P. felt this dog in us…and he wisely turned to the living Dead—Dant’ / Kung / etc. E.P. lived—I lived for a brief moment on Wednesday / knew what it felt like to LIVE—not this animal decay—the stench of the filth of the world/ I see now that what I thought was LIFE was death—

  And you O Buk!—that yen to shock—it’s raw—Go to your mountain top…What IS your mountain top??? I found mine in D.P.—H.D. for her sacred word…and D.P. for her TONE—leave your paradisial dancing girls…your zen back alleys—and go to your mountain top—and write to us from THERE—