“If you can hold the moon in your hands
turning it slowly like a slightly tarnished platter
you’re there” H.D.
Go…Buk…go…turn the moon slowly in your hands…like a slightly tarnished platter—and tell me what it was like. Only H.D. knew. If you can write “out of essence” & dissociate between essence & instrument then it’s stale to write about whores & pussy—
Cant you SEE—you ARE the Life of this Place??? “Spot the rot” is good—but Buk—you are a BIG boy now—don’t drag your private life to the page—just you from your mountain top—tell us from there—you are taking Corrington like a ghost in a tree & ripping him like a wild tusk’d creature.
O Savage One—write these things—then REwrite them—extracting all the private life—employ your pithy salty phrases / perceptions / insights—but mellow my Raw Whiskey—then slide into our heads like the burning bitter liquid life you ARE /
I had to ‘grow UP’—to turn & rend that green ego—centric, really AWFUL monster from Greenwich Village—I had to stop cussin’ and Miss Kickin’ IT—egotism leads to that death of no life/ O YOU stir’d me out of the dust with yr savage boar tusk rending of the now mellow Corrington—send me mas mas more more
Los Angeles, Calif. April 9, 1966
Sheri, Sheeri, Sheeeeeriii—
going through your letter, rec. this morning. regarding “I can lie to a hot blonde”—this was showmanship, clowning, to keep the audience awake. a trick but perhaps not a very good one. but speaking of lying to women, I had a piece of paper around here that I had written something on—lost it now—but it said: “the average woman loves the lie so much that she usually marries it.” this is why I have preferred my certain type of whore—no fuss, no muss. I have only met and lived with one woman that I could get straight through to personally—who could hear my voice and I could hear hers. she had to die, of course. may the angels, if they are there, bless her eternally.
Leslie Wolf Hedly said “we all write badly at times.” Liesly Wolf was more famous then than he is now but I fear his bad writing was more than “at times”.
I did read H.D. you sent me a book of hers when she was dying (in Switzerland?) and asked me to write her a card. I did. I made the card as kind as possible without telling any lies.
Joyce: “sad as a seagull is when flying all alone.” do you really think these lone seagulls are sad? I think that we are thinking too quickly here, picking up the first thread. I always feel that these lone gulls are mad, that they have popped their cork. especially at that time when the last of the sun is going into night. it’s like they’ve spun off the wheel and when they come down over me, these lone ones, their eyes are almost torn from their heads in the agony of mad hate that seems much more than the lost hunger of sadness, and they would rip my eyes to replace theirs, they would do horrible deeds upon me there on the beach, if their devil were larger, if I were drunk, asleep, dying…
yes, most men can endure poverty; that’s why they like to pretend it’s brave. I have been poor most of my life because it is more comfortable—I mean that it has allowed me to do some of the things I wanted to and stopped me from doing the things I didn’t want to do—like factories.
I don’t know about “the mountaintop”. you can’t go there until you are ready and my time may not come. I know what you mean by “mountaintop”. I know that it is there but I’ve got to work through slag, white hot slag first. the tool is good if we are true to it. but I cannot move on until I am done where I am and it may well be that my time will be finished far before I am ready. many consider that where I am now is lower than where anybody is. they think that I delight in muck, expose, talking out of class. I am only trying to find out where I am wherever that may be. and then muck is never muck, it is only called muck. that the moon is clean enough to behold does not mean that a whore is not a moon.
rather flattened today. wrote poetry last night from 10 p.m. to 4:30 a.m. then couldn’t sleep. haven’t slept yet. don’t want to. must get poems typed up. Christ, come to think of it, I wrote poems from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. also. I must be going mad. I have submissions out to 17 magazines at once.
wrote a review of Layton for some Canadian mag—Evidence. I told them that Layton was pretty damned good. so don’t think I go around ripping and tearing because I figure ripping and tearing is easy and glorious. ah, you know this!
the doctor still twaddling and torturing me. but it will soon end. either that or I will break both of his arms. I tell him, “Now you get up on that table and let me work you over.” “but I am not sick,” he tells me. “that’s not the idea,” I tell him. “he isss a very strange man,” I hear him tell the nurse as I leave. and I am thinking about them: 2 puppets on a stage, glass hunks of shit.
o, I am burned out my lovely flexible warm angel, Sheri, invisible love, listen here are parts of a long poem I wrote & you see I am still far from the mountaintop—(but don’t show these lousy excerpts to any writers. some dogs have been stealing my lines…out of letters sent, out of poems submitted…)—
oh, hell no, I won’t bore you (I trust you, that’s not it. it’s tempo, tempo & stretch & [illegible]. all that’s important, even in letters or anywhere. sure) with my seriousness! here’s a short one:
And the Moon and the Stars and the World:
long walks at night—
that’s what’s good for the
soul:
peeking into windows
watching tired
housewives
trying to fight
off
their beer-maddned
husbands.
my oil paintings that I did with the palms of my hands with unmixed tubes on plain large paper are about dry now. I guess they are not exceptional but it is a spread of color and I spread the color so it would not tire me, and since very few people come to this place, that is the best way, and still would be—the other way around.
love to you, good one,
Buk
THE LAND OF PEACE IS HERE NOW—ALL WE NEED IS A LITTLE LUCK, BETTER DIRECTIVES, MILDER WINE…
los angles, calif.
April eleven, 19six6
sHeRi::::
10th. hour. struck down by waiting. little things in this little cave. woman angry at me but that doesn’t matter because long ago all broken off there—physically, spiritually; but like to visit my little girl without all her snarling. her group, her gang, has now completely lassooed her mind. I am a loner and will not show at their leftwing poetry readings and chatterings and world-saving talk. I gotta save myself. wrote a foreword to a book of poems by a young poet, Steve Richmond. Hitler Painted Roses. phone just rang. talk. where was I? let’s just say that her hand-holders didn’t like the foreword. I asked Richmond to send you his book. maybe you’ve read it by now. anyhow, I am playing with the girl and I can feel her (the woman) bristling, I can feel the fangs of her ugly 1/8th. soul in the air.
“Richmond’s always writing about reaching up into his ass for shit,” she snarled.
“Which poem was that?”
“all his poems. in all his poems he is talking about reaching up into his ass.”
“ah, yes, dirty poems,” I said.
I can’t haggle with them, Sheri. I don’t argue in the marketplace. I learn from them. generally by reversing their feelings and opinions, I get the truth. people are valuable to me in this way. if they all run up one road, I know that the other road is right. why is this? what games do the gods play?
there is enough treachery, hatred, violence, absurdity in the average human being to supply any given army on any given day.
I can feel this woman slipping away, drowning, melting, dissolving into hate, into little cubicles of shoddy, 2 bit, obvious ideas. I believe she senses it too, can feel the damnation coming down, the no-light. she is drowning in the crowd. that’s it—she is drowning in the crowd, and it seems so easy, it takes no resistance.
the last time she came over he
re she brought one of her boyfriends over with her, along with the little girl. introduced me. “this is John.” fine. John was wood, 55 years of wood, the eyes drilled-out. he sat, sat. “Mr. Bukowski, I was introduced to your poetry last week.” I didn’t say anything. was I responsible for the fact that he was introduced to my poetry? my responsibility was over after I finished the poem.
just had a visitor. 2 hours. jesus, forgot what I was saying.
this was the guy who gave me this typer, paper, envelopes…an admirer? I am going to have to tell him I need more time. no time for chitchat. shit. you can see how he broke me off. danger. there’s always this danger—people popping heads in. nice people, in a sense. but no soul. they can destroy. I’ve fought too long to be melted away by the handshakers. the clock is my love. going. I need words, rocks, things to carve with. bless the dead emperors. lousy letter. but will mail.
love,
Buk
12. April 66 pobx 1044 pacifica calif
Charles:
and I do SEE—to “keep audience awake” & that wd be legit / and you DO “keep” them “AWAKE”—
O Buk—“the average woman”—if I were a Bukowski & would put word to life describing what they have done to me—but my way is to turn away & never employ their name nor ever again see their face in my life—I shut them out—what crimes they commit—no wonder E.P. laughed when I modestly said I wanted to enlighten my sisters—the pus sacs full of 7 deadlys or the young unpaid whores full of the most vain egotism—let us forget the average woman—sing of the unusual females—society is mean to them—only the poet retains his balance when faced by the luminous eye of the she-male—or maybe you did well—“the hot blonde”—(this a.m. one is not feeling even—) cause it be a public fact that it’s o.k. to lie to HER—Only it is not “the hot blonde” who destroys our thread of life down here in The Shytte Factory but the female maggots who feed upon our garbage buckets like succulent maggots crawling through stale shells—chewing away at our old turds & keeping dead shit alive with their mouths and tongues. Give us a tombstone for that breed—
well—Hedly—but that line is full of sweet humble modesty—it touched me// o.k.
YOU D I D N’T read H.D.***!!!)(‘‘&_%$#+”$%_&’(**:*)($% you haven’t digested her—Christ—begin with H.D.—maybe your eye read her—but go to her as to a woman needing your love—read her as if she spoke in a living voice to YOU—Charles Bukowski—as if she were telling you her wistful secrets—E.P. failed her—it was his early scorpio sting-tail phase—scorpio sexiest sign of the zodiac—he cdn’t over-come that—he thought SHE failed HIM—
Don’t TRY to read her with yr soul’s eyes until you hit a day when you cannot go out…when no one knows where you are nor would you receive them if they did—when loneliness is like a serpent with many heads tearing away at yr middle brain in centre of body…when tears are bursting out of yr eye & inside yr body—when no phone is near & you cannot eat…and the windows are covered with steam & you cannot see out & what you see in aint worth looking at—& all yr ideals have turned into illusions…and each hero that blew in blew OUT—& there is no one around for thousands of miles that you could even talk to—& when other room renters call you “th’ dutchess” behind yr back because they see agony as being “stuck up”—that’s the time to reach for H.D. and she puts beautiful fragrant musical silence throughout your cells & your beyond pain spirit lifts its dumb head up to gaze upon an enormous room where snails show us the way because they have a shell…built second by second—that is the “mountain top”—wait for such a day & then read H.D. “from hunger”—
I have found my mountain top—and I saw a pixie man that had his—He was walking up that street in San Francisco lined with hock shops—shorter than I—sort of roly—poly—pink face—with the merriest expression ever seen…I suspect he was not quite human—an element—and drunk as a lord—sort of floating above the ground—he was going up to The Living Dead—almost poking them in the breast bone—saying things to them—precisely pronouncing their fates to their dumb ears—he did that to me too—our eyes met—he was such FUN to see—he told me “oh youRRRall right”—my god but I am not—otherwise I would have snatched him & taken him into my life—what a fool I was…he had found his mountain top—one of the Immortals passed me by on Hock Shop Street & stupid lets him pass on!!!! O my loss bugs me right now.
Lor’ man but you right—’ bout Joyce & that line—I was hearing the sad lone tone—you more right—the bastids are only hungry—I guess Joyce ought to have put “sad as a sea gull seems” etc or word meaning signifying sadness rather than being sad/
O NO no one I have talked with & it includes Ye Square—thinks that (“delight in muck” etc)—they think that you are honest…alive with life—“muck”—that is how you move them—They need the shock—The whores I knew in NYC were girls too intellent to subside into soupBURPPia—yet cdn’t wander the wilderness trusting in the Hawly Ghost—and who don’t blame them iz me—They are EP’s “priestess astray in the streets” or words to—
Yes—the Dogs do steal—for they are imitators—they ape—monkey see monkey do—from The Chinese:
“The superior man is in HARMONY with the Process the inferior man imitates” competes by imitation—
They stole from E.P. & they steal from me—do not be surprised that they will also steal from you—that’s also part of The Process—It’s a world of ME FIRST…or ME TOO…They want/need that drink of life water—the first to say or do (It starts to pall near 40) don’t care doll—don’t care—laugh that last laugh that knows you snuck life into their shut skulls—
I once saw an exhibit of the italian master of fantasy: Di Chirico—a most clever eye had hung the show—it was Di Chirico & some of his more famous or locally well known & more successful competitors / they had all stolen from Di Chirico—Each one had stolen something—and Clever Eye had hung The Imitators on each side of the wall with the original Di Chirico in the center of the room & one’s eye spun down each opposite wall & they stealers’ colours/lines/forms etc led straight to the glowing Di Chirico! [a drawing of the exhibit follows] His seed shown bright & you could see it had spread into their minds!! They uptown artists with galleries were at that time stealing from the poor wandering painter—alone—and that exhibit made me laugh—
Imitation makes the Original more bright—& Time proves life right—But I don’t blame you for being drug when others steal what you were first on earth to SEE—
Animus humanus amor non est sed ab ipso amor procedit,
et ideo seipso non diligit sed amore qui seipso procedit” Canto 95 EP
“The human soul is not love but love proceeds from it; therefore it does not take delight in itself but only in the love that flows through it” or words to /
The Muse is your Goddess & you are their God—cosi sia (so be it) Buk / And you so right—about the tired housewives in yr terrifying small poem!!!
Sir Walter Releigh (orHowHellSpell) said “when others talk or do things behind my back, I figure my tail is a good enough answer for them”—If they prefer the ass to the face—that’s on them!
And as for painting—with me I cannot paint it unless I SEE it—it must be already there before this painting monkey can do it—also I find that I do more when there is that one to move to delight with the work / it is difficult to paint as a prayer—“to work is to pray”—and I find her typing / but she has a few more things to give us—right now I am seeing into my ego self and I am plumb dumbfounded/flaberghasted/aghast etc…every thing I really hate in others I am seeing in that monster who got me through Time to Here & Now—she has GOT to go man—For the simple reason that I want NO more of me around me!! Self does meet self as Edger Cayce said (but the Cayce Foundation & the Cayce—ites (the pus sacs) are not Edger Cayce any more than the xtians are J.C.) He said “Self meets self.”—and this cell(f) is going to go “out th’ smoke hole”…Try to make the Atone—ment scene—It is the only Life—But fir
st to FIND the true One who is the real One of all the us of us—
Yr chicago typewriter blasts & roars O King Leo—yr growls & royal yawls are driving you to your true One—H.D. brings this one more out of all the shes within—and sometimes you can turn to yr inner pack & tell the inner dogs: “BE still & know that I am God”—only make sure (first if you can) that the God of you is not your own personal Devil—What I have taken as my “god’—I know see with true sadness—it was my devil form—If you want a true portrait of self—get a dog & let it live with you & then condemn it with a word “you nervous bastard” etc—dogs reflect the personality of the ‘mawster’. to a former letter:
Buk/ there’s NO thing wrong with accepting payment for yr work or books called ‘royalties’—ask for them & accept them—your life must go on /
am reading Swedenborg now—going on into afternoon—2:04 exact/ “willing is loving to DO”—
Fate Magazine May 1966 issue: adv/ SUBSCRIBE TO THE LITERARY TIMES has in its write up these: THE NEW IMPORTANT WORK of Charles Bukowski & others of course/ amazing to see your name in Fate Mz!!!!! on p/19 find one & have a peek @ page. Fate often has NEWS the blatts do not print/ along w/a lot of ‘mist-stick’ sticks/
17 magazines at once??!!!! It is wonderful to be occupatissima—that is what kills most of those who believe they can court boredom & not die of it/
stay—stay in the mind state of work—maybe I shd stop & let you work / from here: good will
SM
l.a.
April, 13, 1966
dear Sheri:
nothing much. only we were speaking of the “female”. you know, at this lucky time of being sick, or whatever it is, I arise at noon, drink coffee and type out whatever I put on slips of paper the night before. then sometimes a few more poems pop up, straight from typer. anyhow, I fiddle and diddel and diddle in this breakfastnook, and by the time I get to the mailbox it is 5:30, 6 p.m. and the females are landing from the busses after their scratchy day at work, and I must pass them on the sidewalk. it is the time of the sun going down, a gentle easy time for me. I have grown a red beard out of which I spring, smoking cigars. anyhow, the female, since the subject is her, here are a couple of poems I wrote about her, will mail them out along with your letter and other poems—
Beerspit Night and Cursing Page 33