Beerspit Night and Cursing

by Charles Bukowski

  The Stupid Are Best at the Cruelties

  beware women grown

  old

  who were never

  anything but

  young.

  The Sex-Obsessed Ladies Walking by Me after Work

  certain devils in our heads fear

  Tuesdays

  as certain asses in our midst

  fear devils’ asses

  on stormy

  Thursdays,

  but I’d say

  the most wintry

  spilled goblet of them

  all

  is

  the ever-passing lady on the

  sidewalk of the world

  who won’t look me

  in the face

  because she thinks her beauty is so

  great

  I’d want to rape her

  if I saw

  the color of her

  panting

  eye.

  I await A & P. you did me honor recognizing my existence, no matter what you say…please be careful. do not let the mob burn you, trap you, fool you—if possible. my love goes with you, in your purse, in your pocket, wherever you go. you are one woman in 90 million women; please be careful, continue to live. I act tough but my sadness often gets impossible, too close in range, stomping me. sometimes a word from out of the world gives the heart a little place to look to.

  Buk

  l.a.

  april 14, 1966

  dear Sheri:

  letter I wrote yesterday enclosed. Marina and Frances came by yesterday and I got held up. Marina had a cold, now I have a cold. you should see her eyes, Sheri, wild large, large with beautiful color, and now wild, either, calm, very. I was thinking—wild, in terms of life. some people say, she has your eyes. meaning me. this is quite a compliment.

  went over to some editor’s place last night (John Bryan) (Notes from Underground) but there were other people there, and everybody trying to be clever, and laughing all the time. everything is a god damned joke, nothing sacred, everything flip. cigars, grass, beer. Idolization of the hipness of Neal Cassady. I see more and more that I don’t belong with the people, have got to crawl back into my hole. having to throw in a chip because I was there, I recited part of a poem I had written:

  DeMop had the siff and

  got in a rowboat and

  rowed until he was

  crazy.

  all for a piece of

  ass. France’s greatest

  short story writer

  sent babbling by the

  unwashed pussy of a

  4 foot Parisian whore!

  “say, say, you come on, but you’re a little brutal, you know?”

  They always want their whipcream. yet Bryan puts out a pretty strong magazine anyhow.

  Thanks for the A & P, which I got this morning. Marina’s copy will be preserved for her until such time as she becomes [old] enough to grasp it. Your reading of the charts sounds pretty much like the persons involved—I would say, especially Blazek. I am pretty well under, having gotten fairly high last night, and will dip more into your charts at an easier time. my many thanks for the work involved and for putting the starlight shine on my friends. By the way, Marina’s chart IS VERY MUCH LIKE HER. there’s got to be something to this: it seems so accurate. Richmond too. everybody. did he send you his book? I will mail you something for your amusement in next day or so (need large envelope first)—Bryan’s Peace Issue, wherein I try to explain what PEACE is and what WAR is, what the ever-war is, so on. Also will send you this month’s Catholic mag Today which has an article on one “Charles Bukowski: Outsider No. 1” a priest or somebody on the magazine wrote and asked me to tell him what I thought of the article. I let him have it straight and I hope he can get in and out of his smock for a while after I finish.

  got a couple of rejections this morning, and now I must read them and decide whether the writing was bad or whether the magazines simply weren’t there.

  stay on with us.

  love,

  Buk

  [handwritten at top:]

  Buk—came ’cross this…was in dif mind…maybe U enjoy—yesss? SM

  21. June 66

  BukO:

  Blaz sends me Ole w/yr poem in: Drunk Again & Wondering, Wondering… Wang Shou-jen: “the mind of man is Heaven” and Hell—this fr The Way of Chinese Painting—& E.P. has it in the Cantos that Kati said “a man’s paradise is his own good nature”—& Artie Richer said it “but first we must invent paradise” in order to go there/ I know the mind-state you were in that evoked the poem—it is cheerless—HOW to reach this paradisial mind-state where we know that we, ourselves, are ‘god’ / atomic parts of the aforesaid. That way we can only blame us—murder in your own self what you hate in the others…that’s the ONLY way—& for the REST of the Woe—I guess the Chinese is best: “SEE no evil/ hear no evil/ speak no evil”—

  & this coming from this person who could have been seen this a.m. early walking in the wet salt sea barefoot along the cold dark sand, weeping salt tears (very wet) praying to the Nereids who live in the sea caves (H.D. says “Nereids who dwell in wet caves…” she also gives us a handle to hold onto in the Burning Pot: “and each god-like name spoken is as a shrine in a godless place.”)

  There are times when my shoe-laces are falling apart at the seams upstairs when I shreik at the Dough Balls: “Bukowski UNDERSTANDS”—Blessed are the Dough Balls that can be shrieked at—and cursed be they who are too evil for even a whisper to pass out of the mouth—Buk—it is better to say ANY name that is sacred to you than to cuss God(tt) but you better tell me too’ countta I slip in low gear especially in the early a.m.

  life—jeezzz chriss—it “aint possible”—I think most of our agony comes from our lousy society that is spiritually dead—on the other hand—if we are its antaenne!!! the tip top of it!!! what a thought…

  The chinese idea that when we draw paint or write we are keeping this ‘god’ or this ‘heaven’ alive in us is a joyous mind-state to enter—When you wrote you so-sad poem I wept bitterly—& you wrung this letter from my soul—and I enclose a letter (lost some how but will find & send on) I was scribbling to you & as I draw I recall Dr. Wm Carlos Williams at St Liz watching me draw E. P. saying in a cool, clear voice over my shoulder…“ah! I’m GLAD you gave him such n i c e whiskers…he hasSUCH AN UNNNNNN fortunate CHIN”

  The big boys—so gentle & amusing in their ego digs—somehow The RoughHouse Set dont come off—but YOU—I understand you—but only as a person—I find I do not understand the male or female part of the person—it seems to me that it is more a conditioning than a real being—and a thing we must get the hell OUT of—follow the Light moth & you’ll fly—all for now—

  S

  · 1967 ·

  10 March 1967

  Bukowski:

  the Steve Richmond sent one an edition of Earth 2 containing a ‘poem’ (?) (is it?? of yours??) untitled/unsigned…these lines: “are you Charles Bukowski” & ending “I was Charles Somebody”

  Did YOU write that one? or is it a take-off on one of yrs?? MUST you cackle over yr cock Bukowski?? What’s worse you’ve got them all off cackling o’er their cocks. That’s arse backwards//

  “The human soul is not love but love proceeds from it therefore it does not take delight in itself but only in the love flowing from it.”

  YOU’d make some telephone luv’…you’d be so busy cackling “I’m talking, I’m Charles Somebody” that no goddessa could get through.

  I’d like to read more in praise of love & less in praise of your battle-stick Charles. my 12 dogs all feel the same way ’bout same subject matter as you do…why ought one read above poem when one can get a really straightforward account from observing the dog population?? only the dogs display such a sense of responsibility to Doll or Nikki (their wives)—there’s none of this hop-to @ first op to—

  O! Telo Rigido! or how th’ dickens EP spells / an orgasm is not ecstasy—ecstasy has power to ele
vate the soma weightlessly…every cell participates…th’ cock is a local stop…Love ‘e forma di Filosofia’

  You lead the female down the Ego-path when you move her mind towards thinking she SO irresistible that the Grit Poet loses his will power @ sight of HER—the Gods are very different in their Way of Love than you poets (said she)

  Yr photos looking tall & otherwise good day to you Charles

  4-16-67

  3 a.m.

  [handwritten letter]

  Sherrieee:

  You keep picking at the Word!

  When I said that Pound “knew too much” I meant that he studied too much & that when a man is studying he cannot be doing something else.

  Now, of course, your next move will be to tell me to be exact with the language, that you don’t have the time to play around with half-words, you have WORK to do!

  All right, do your work & stop being cranky with me.

  I never received the painting you promised. But did rec. a photo. That’s all right. Photo’s all right. Do you want me to ship ya won a mine paintings? I paint too, tho not very good they tell me. But if I listen to them they will stop the flow of all my natural movements, including shitting, eating, fucking, so forth. I do what I do and what I do is nec. for me.

  Met an intellectual, one John Thomas X, who has letters from Pound and claims you couldn’t have known Pound at St. Liz and for me to tell you so. I have done so.

  I don’t know how in in the hell I get in the middle.

  From my heart-instinct I know you knew Pound. I tell him this.

  Yet, still, he is a good man, tho heavy-brained & kool toward individual pain toward singular & mass objects.

  So much for that.

  As for me, I am writing better as I get older. I used to run all over the page—now I can say the same 100 words in ten. And I am more in myself & out of myself than before. I once said that if I could live to be 55 that I would be able to write. I said that when I was 30 years old, I had 25 years to go. Now I have 8, if I make it. But, of course, being 55 won’t make it; one has to arrive at 55 in a certain form & shape. So far, sweetie, I am pure as melted butter. There have been little slips & slides but all to the good.

  Any word for John Thomas? He lives at 2245 Lakeshore, Los Angeles. We sit around his place listening to the Horse Vessell Song or however you spell it, and when I leave he hands me little pictures of Hitler dead at the bunker, Goring after suicide, so forth, I don’t know if he is joking or not. The whole thing seems a little melancholy & depressive to me. John is supported by a beautiful woman while I must work for a living—and even tho I might be the better poet, his is the happier life.

  I hope you can read this. I am yours when you need me. Please keep alive & doing what is needed.

  Love,

  Buk

  [SM’s response to the preceding letter is undated and unsigned.

  She later identified the final sentence as a piece of advice Pound once gave her.]

  One awaits a seal & once properly ‘seal’d’ yr chinese scroll will be sent down to you/ as it is it aint yet THERE / patience.

  one refuses to be drawn into any political discussions @ degree of yr acquaintance…her only comment: gentlemen most especially american gentlemen do not “doubt” without representation. There exists (unfortunately) TOO many printed proofs as to those days. Tell him to go look them up in the library and/or book marts. As E. P. wd state: “he aint got ’is ’omework done.” Dismissed.

  Yr letter does not sound like YOU—the spirit of it is wrong—as if it were you being motivated. Never in this long correspondence have you EVER presumed what this person wd do/say/write!! “Now, of course, your next move etc” Just dont understand that tone.

  AND such a seal is not easy to get—am trying—only got saturdays to look for such—you can be certain that one will find a seal OR make one her self & then your little scroll will bashfully stand before yr eye/ yr inner eye/

  all for now—and one rarely writes letters these days…as He said “to very old friends or very new”…& friends are persons who are friendly/ friend: fr old A.S. word meaning: to love /

  Have nothing to do w/the affairs of t/world

  Appendix 1

  Martinelli’s review of A Signature of Charles Bukowski

  [This appeared in A&P #5 (January 1961) immediately following Clarence Major’s review of Flower, Fist and Bestial Wail and three other books. Major’s subsequent review, promised in the first paragraph, never appeared.]

  Targets #4—A Signature of Charles Bukowski (arrived too late to airmail to Mr. Major so the typist must do it & she is not going to “cock” Mr. Bukowski “up with kisses.” As a matter of fact she is reviewing one poem only & the rest will be reviewed by Mr. Major next issue of the Anagogic & Paideumic Review).

  Page 19: Horse on Fire wherein Mr. Bukowski has Mr. Ezra Pound saying:

  “one of the greatest love poems ever written”

  He did NOT say that; he said “AMONG the best love poems in the language”

  Mr. Bukowski has Mr. Pound described:

  “many kinds of traitors of which the political are the least.”

  Mr. Pound was not guilty of any political treason. Mr. Pound’s own statement:

  “W H A T I WD HAVE BEEN GUILTY OF IF I HAD NOT SPOKEN”

  (Of Misprision of Treason/European ’59)

  covers his conduct.

  It was a grim jest to call Mr. Pound a “traitor” & it is a traitorous act to release him in the care of his wife, a British lady, however correct she may be & of high class & the best dressed lady in the world (I mean the tie dots matching the hat feather & glove stripe—that degree of knowing. Whispering in the artist’s ear: “that lipstick’s the WRONG colour for that dress”) but Ezra is an American & he ought to be free to come to us if he wants & he cannot because it needs his wife to bring him & she’s “been here” & that was enough for her.

  We’d need reform ourselves overnight to be good enough for a lady who wore a black silk top-coat/ a river-mist grey knit fez-hat glittering with silver sequins/ a jewel’d ring matching the colour of her strip’d scarf & grey’d tone’d stockings of silk matching her grey’d tone’d silk gloves/ a scarf pin whose colour fit the colour of her eyes & underneath a dress of forest green to match her shoes that she’s put black narrow ribands under th arch & tied criss-cross up her ankles, ballet fashion…on the hottest day of the hottest town in the midi—the swamptown heat of Washington D.C. traveling to St. Liz on a bus full of half-naked red-skins—Mrs. Dorothy Shakespear Pound was a miracle of civilisation & all by herself; without writing any Cantos “you’ve no idea how these tawrsome paradises bowre me” she could have raised our general cultural level & uplifted our society from “it’s goddamn’d dry on these rocks” [Canto 93/643] on toward a proper civilisation.

  The look of pain in Allen Ginsberg’s eyes when the typist said: “he read me Dante translating as he went along & Guido the same & Ovid’s Metamorphosis and his own Cantos starting from XX to spare me Hell”…Allen needs to have his Dante read to him. We all need him: Mr. Major needs him:

  “all of us who do not know what it means to ever have had a Guru or a means to go into ourselves quietly & find the beautiful boundless area of what we call Heaven—we find Hell every time.”

  What good did it do to release him from St. Liz & sign him over to our British cousins?

  A recording of an artist reading his poetry is not it. That is for the mass mind & ALL they got; but any who are of the caste of artists—the muse worshippers ought to stand in the Presence of the Throne & be Knighted. There is a power; there is a living reality & you aint going to get it from any recording of a human voice—the monkey mind is forever concerned with mass production.

  The typist has uncovered evidence of enough intelligence alive & at work in the U.S. to warrant saying: there are men here who are men in their own right & they shd be in the presence of the living reality of a Dante walking the earth. They are being ch
eated of their right to equality—what good does it do to make the grocer’s clerk equal when our best men must resort to plastic recordings of something that is theirs by right of proximity—our best red-skin poets forced down to the factory level. It is a political & ethical crime to cheat a boy of sensitivity & intelligence as Peter Orlofsky of his cultural heritage as a fellow republican & citizen of a free nation. Poor Pete, beautiful of mind & body & ignorant as a goldfish—his inborn love of arts & letters is pitiful in its poverty but persistent beauty: “Sheri, today I was at Sutro Park & I saw a ‘painted ship upon a painted ocean’” & “wheredja get th’ blues?” (forget-me-nots plucked in Sutro Park for Diana striding white in moon ray) How are we EVER going to reach the level of Europe & the Orient? Our one international success has been sold into slavery. O! Go down Moses & pull our Ezra up so’s Pete can sing: “Leafdi Diana, leove Diana, Heye Diana…” [Canto 91/632-33] & Michael Grieg can test his dry, double distill’d wit upon the master of wit & Rob’t Stock can see first-hand the out-go-er sea-farer & know its likeness to the in-go-er sea-rougher…remove the eyes of pain from Allen Ginsberg—hasn’t he had ENOUGH Hell?

  O Ezra who art in Italy—tho’ scandalized be thy name—our renaissance is come & thy word got through in the United States as it did in Europe—Give us this day our daily Ezra & fo’give him his sins as we forgive those who sin’d agin’ him & o let Ezra lead us into Ovid’s temptations & deliver us into delushus evils of the flesh for Pete Orlofsky’s sake & Ez we do have a Kingdom of Kulch & Ez we do have a Power of sorts & if we are let we’ll bring glory—O National Treasure which cannot be changed on th’ market…so long’s we exist as a nation…ah! men! (wot bug jobs they are.)