Mr. Bukowski’s been told but Mr. Bukowski will persist in his un-doing—that sort of art work on cover, to a very busy person doing research up there ahead of us in the 21st onward centuries, will signify to our busy future scholar that Mr. Bukowski’s book aint worth readin’ because its Art Work’ll serve as a sign post saying: LATE LATE VICTORIAN ERA SCHOOL OF PICKARSSS-O & the ugly kind of drawing will disqualify Mr. Bukowski’s poetry from being read by those who come after us & Mr. Bukowski HAS GOT A SUBJECT MATTER: A POINT OF VIEW HOWEVER DOWNWARD IT IS CAST: A POINT OF PERCEPTION & WORDS OF MULTI-COLOR THAT HE USES TO INDICATE THE INNER SPACE WHERE THE MOON REALLY IS. IF Mr. Ezra Pound had read his Charles Bukowski he would NOT have EVER attempted to “save th’ United State of Murka.”
The printing of Targets is elegant & its only real art work. Egg-shell white with black print is the cover/ inside cover is sea-foam white & a half-page handsomely prints Mr. Bukowski’s signature so we may judge his character in his brush strokes. The half-page colour is brown-egg-shell tan & sits on the inner pages whose colour is gold diluted to its thinnest yellow & little decorations of strange nature exist on each page.
Mr. Bukowski: “Write it
so’z a man on th’ West Coast a
Africa could
understand ut”;
The “man on the West Coast of Africa” looking at his English-African Dictionary trying to translate—wd want to know WHAT MEANS “DECORATIONS OF STRANGE” etc—well, the first one is a goat with eyes under his horn’s root & a tongue like a mechanical part from an automobile carburator & polka dots under his eyes & ears like Babylonian wedge marks/ his horns are like a clown’s hat & his fur has lightening crossing it & he’s big’s a U.S. 25¢ piece of silver. A silly-strange but effective decoration/ I mean when the Aztecs use this kind of fantastic animal it hath an arcane meaning but this arcane animal is meaningless in any religious or artistic sense & is a silly but effective dec.
The little horse used on page with Horse on Fire is not a serious horse & I will not take him seriously/ Mr. Bukowski is warning Mr. Pound that:
“self appraisal of poetry & love has proved more fools than rebels”
which is harsh but correct with this exception: IF WE CANNOT EVALUATE OUR OWN SELVES’ WORTH WHO IN THE HELL IS GOING TO DO IT WHILST WE WALK THIS EARTH?
DOES MR. BUKOWSKI WANT MR. POUND TO WAIT SEVERAL AGES TO HEAR SOME DRY BONE UP THERE SAY WHAT MR. HOT BLOOD RIGHT NOW KNOWS TO BE TRUE? THAT IT IS “AMONG THE BEST LOVE POEMS IN THE LANGUAGE” (CANTO 90)
MR. POUND HAS THE MAP OF LOVE POETRY INSIDE HIS HEAD & KNOWS IMMEDIATELY WHERE A LOVE POEM STANDS IN RELATION TO THE RACE OF LOVE POETRY.
Mr. Bukowski says: “and he proceeded to write the Cantos full of dead languages…”
Doesn’t Mr. Bukowski understand that “Our Man on the West Coast of Africa” hath a love of culture? Cannot Mr. Bukowski imagine him seated in the boring heat & dither calmly translating the Cantos from his various dictionaries & when he gets to the Egyptian hieroglyphics of Kati’s that the princess Ra Set got into the book—Our Man will be caused to write a letter to an European Egyptologist or mayhap an American Egyptologist & peace on earth, at least among the cultured, shall be the rule of the day. Language is important. The Hebrew language kept the Jews together as a clan more than any one MAN could ever do; men come & go but the symbol is eternal. Dr. Lovell says the “Torah” of the Jews was also the “Tara” of the Irish. Mr. E. P. Walker asks “what does the word ‘tara’ mean to a contemporary of the Irishry?”
It is a SOUND & it brings a rush of emotion; wild battle cries & hilaritas of dealing directly with one’s foes; when the Irishry cannot die fighting & wildly singing or laughing…then it is their proud disdain of the “dog’s life” that they’ll die drinking & be in their imagined world of wild strange sounds like “TARA” & I do hope that answers Mr. Walker’s question.
Mr. Bukowski wd rather Mr. Pound write about “straight things in bird-light the terror of a mouse…” I have NO idea what Our Man on the West Coast of Africa wd translate that as because we have no “bird light” far’s I know. Of course “mouse terror” is world-wide/ This is a good place as any to record: the cat plays with the mouse because he forces his captured victim to teach him more about how to catch other mice/ the female wd do her cause well to play with the male like that/ free him & see which way he runs & then she’d know better how to catch another male—of course they CAN run faster/ there’s a danger!
Mr. Bukowski says: “the terror of a mouse reaches dormitory levels”
One has no idea what that signifies here OR on the West Coast of Africa.
Mr. Bukowski records: “and reading Canto 90 he put the paper down Ez did (both their eyes were wet)”
Canto 90 when properly read hath power to wet the eye from the terrible blast of its heated force rising upward. The Cantos will be more intelligible to Our man than Mr. Bukowski’s poem on the subject.
The back drawing on the cover is the female form divine seen through a pair of eyes that wobbled & done by a pair of hands that shook. The drawing a rivoting machine wd make cd it draw. NYC hog-wash: “but don’t you think Botticelli is TOO beautiful?” No, one did NOT but one does think this set of drawings on Bukowski’s book are TOO UGLY & that is much worse than being too beautiful. Those collecting CONTEMPORARY AMERICANA are advised to snatch up this book—the price is 50¢ & one orders them from EDITORS/TARGET: Casabuelo, Sandia Park/N.M. or Bukowski: 1623 N. Mariposa Ave/Los Angeles 27/Calif.
SM
Appendix 2
Bukowski’s Contributions to the Anagogic & Paideumic Review
[The first four poems appeared in A&P #5 (January 1961); “Poem for Liz” and the series of drawings appeared in #6 (September 1961)]
I GET ALL THE BREAKS
I burnt my hand, he said, trying to light a cigarette
with an ox’s tail, and so your book won’t be out
for a couple of more weeks yet, but you’ve been
very patient; of course, I’m having trouble with my
printer and it’s possible that O SO MORE GREESE
by Ricardo Willinsi and DAWN BOWN GRITTING by
Alan Roach will be out before yours; printer only
mailed half your pages (postal regulations) and
when the other half came, they were wrong sequenced
so I had to send them back, then had auto accident
but sent my brother down with your covers and
Villinsi’s, and any day now you should be getting
something in the mail. I know that 2 years
have been a long time and you’ve been very patient
and I’m going to be proud to have your book
in my series, but, of course, unless sales increase
I may have to drop the entire project, although
I do hope to get yours out. As you may know,
this is a one-man operation coming out of my own
pocket, my own time and effort, and, if you’ll reflect,
you will realise that we have been more than
hospitable to you.
POEM FOR MY LITTLE DOG WHO ALSO GROWLS QUITE WELL:
dog walking intestine through days of dog dream
not hearing the scheming of cornhusks in Nebraska
or a dirty river with a big name,
or a dirty name for love,
not seeing angels with diamonds on their wings
winking at clouds,
not reading about Dostoievsky
the guy who kept trying to figure out
new ways to beat roulette;
not bothered with trying to like Dylan Thomas
when you really don’t,
or a wife who wants to all night;
my dog, you have never stared at alligators
trying to find your name,
or watched the roaches walk the walls all night,
falling from the ceiling onto your whore—
a fat scream—while y
ou tried to figure
Hemmingway’s bulls, right or wrong,
or trying to play it smart:
marrying rich, trying to hang onto cold bedsheets
that freeze in your hands like dead knowledge;
friend dog, I walk you now,
you and I, alone,
pattering up the leave-torn sidewalks,
and although you haven’t read Kafka,
and until you do—
no woman will share
our bone.
SCALED LIKE A FISH
casuistics and memory, a magdalen hospital
swinging on the end of beads; scaglia and dream,
odd dream: birds and pistols; and so I think we write
now in order to capsize self and reality down to reason.
reason and finally, disintegration; the salina of our tears
really has dried; families have fallen like a brush before a roller,
maps have been torn down like posters:
quick little men
in offices of gold
drink down cups
half-poisoned, peering
at walls of clouds and
rockets like the sides
of elephants that will
not forget; and Nothing
nods Its head and smiles,
scaled like a fish, put
in a Sunday pocket, patted,
forgotten;—yet the stress
is gone and the halfcrazy
dead knit the earth, but
but wait, Miss Smith, god damm it, where’s the report from Holcomb?
and figs grow in the valley, sticky as love, and each of us,
day-drowned, sits in a cafe, a nightcap in a blue necktie,
drink it like you mean it; Holcomb was drunk, didn’t
send in report; Miss Smith cried; you will either
have to give her a raise, fire her or reach be-
neath her dress; the bombers are nearly over
Brazil now; boys still steal watermelons
later to become nothing but seeds, but
suffuse the discophora: at half-past
nine, some night, some morning, it
will rain a good one, cups all
spilled over the old maps,
Miss Smith, scaled like a
fish I reach beneath
your dress. I say::
don’t cry, it’s
only 8:30.
A DISORGANISED POEM ON A DISORGANISED DAY, WITH WOMEN RUNNING IN AND OUT AND THE PRICE OF BEER UP 2¢ A CAN.
los angeles…Sunday mostly, gloom necktie, rot grass,
unenchanted lake,
and she has just taken the towel from
her magic hips and hung it across the screen door
like a drape, and it is dark and it is Doomday,
5 o’clock.
there is more fucking in the graves.
monolete lorda all the big guys built bigger than God
meant them to be
bringing in the music
while the eggs fry in their simple pans.
birds fall out of sky heavy with golden rock.
tend the mizzen, sing: o ye, o ye go damm.
girls so keep running in and out of doors downstairs
changing bathing suits, putting little blue ribbons
in their hair, donning china kimonoes, and there are
little dogs whirling like fleas, one or two roses
hang the fence, and an old man sits on the edge of his
chair like a cliff, afraid to fall.
rondo brilliant with Peter Haydn doing Mendy,
dog feet running grass and keys/ door slams,
birds everywhere bleep bleep they have atom bomb
dreams that struss their feathers.
(I died for you many a night feeding my love
my goofy love into your writhing
when I should have held a poem in my hand
like a sword
and cut you in half)
now they are torturing a little girl and fighting over
a dog: fucks of the future to drive a man crazy
to burn his hair when he sleeps and write his name
on the bottom of a vase…Cleopatras, your blue ribbons:
cheesbait for micemen/ I am cracking another beer like a walnut.
turkeyneck and lorca, poet smiling upon his fingernails
on Melrose Ave., weak lights, fat cats of blackbirds,
shoes always old, cops always young, spiders filled with
blood and moonlight…a poem is love even when it hates,
and Mr. Phillin, I want to tell you:
a poet has one fist of steel and one fist
of love/ manolete on the horn before the crowd,
the sunshine coming out red…
even the flies and pebbles are stunned,
and the bull
the bull is manolete now and this poem hopes it finds some undead.
POEM FOR LIZ:
the bumblebee of our meaning
is less than a stack of
potatoe chips,
and growling and groaning
through barbs
searchlights shining into eyes,
I think of the good whore
who wouldn’t even
god damm easy take money
and when you slipped it into her purse
would find it
and slap it back
like the worst of insults,
but she saved you from the law
and your own razor
only meant to shave with
to find her dead later
in a three dollar and fifty cent a week room,
stiff as anything you can stiffen,
never having complained
starved and laughing
only wanting one more drink
and one less man
only wanting one small child
as any woman would
coming across the kitchen floor toward her,
everything done up in ribbons and sunshine,
and when the man next to the barstool
that sat next to mine
heard about Liz
he said,
“Too bad, god damm, she was a fine piece.”
No wonder a whore is a whore.
Liz, I know, and although I’d like to see you
now
I’m glad
you’re dead.
NO TITLE: by Charles Bukowski
I
This is a picture of a man adriving home at 4:30 PM. He usually arrives at 6:30 PM. It can be any man. Any 2 men & a woman. Or any 2 women & a man. Or it can be 3 women. Or 3 men. But, for Christ’s sake, let’s keep it simple—as of above.
If the drawing is poor: he is carrying flowers in his left hand. If he is poor he probably didn’t buy them, but stealing flowers makes sense because they usually die quicker than people.
II
Now, an intelligent man, in a situation, ah, such as this…what does he do? Rant? Kill? Quote from Shelly? Hell, no, he covers the sight from his mind & endures. Art is long, life is short. Huh?
III
Contemplation is the birth of the mind’s tragedy in the vise…vice? who said likker was quicker? sometimes these fks seem to last hours!
IV
The congratulatory palm to the victor. When the swallows came over Capistrano, it was nothing like this…Lie is an intransitive verb & means to recline; lay is an intransitive verb & means to put down. The principle parts of Woman are: lie, lay, lain, lay, laid, LAID. Women & intransitive verbs are a great deal alike; you might as well shake hands with any sentence they bring upon you.
V: Well, so here we go…once again to the library..to attempt to read once again…Tolstoy’s WAR & PEACE. Maybe the old boy knew something & stuck it in near the end; the END, of the book. This time we’ll read it backwards, & let the lover pay the rent as we ride off under watchet skies…endure, endure Bee
lzebub & Atlantis..the Earl of Chesterfield wd have scoffed into a pink hanky at the animalistic infidelity of our soulmares. I still keep thinking, the as the wheels turn, & the library nears..I shda sure as shit left-hook’d him, belly-deep, & when he bent, the old right, uppercut, & then the knee to the magic nuts..but wait.. TOLSTOY, TOLSTOY %)O SHIT#$% TOLSTOY !!!
1. This in case you cant make it out..is a jock beating hell out of a horse, down the stretch. He’s supposed to win. They’re all supposed to WIN. But sometimes there are 12 h0rses in a race, so every body gets a beating, including the winner; but wait…I lost 85$ today, but I still think horses might be good for something & beatings too, but right now I am listening to: SHEEP MAY SAFELY GRAZE by Bach.
2. This is a man beating hell out of the subspecies. In California a common-law wife owns one half of what you have after one year of being under a common roof. Even if you dont own anything. I think this is a vicious law.
We’re never gonna cross the Jordan at this rate.
Aut Caesar aut nullus…why fk around?
Bukowski contemplating his future..We do not expect pity here in the dirty socks & the unwashed of the mind; but sometimes thinking is a game wherein the hounds bound ahead of the fox, & it’s better in a downpour of padlock & silence; or if this is too fancy…it’s better sometimes to get drunk & fall down among the old racing forms & love letters # than attempt to be C.P. Snow or Lionel Trilling…
####### Pound and Hux argueing hell outs each other at St. Liz.
They both knew St. Liz was nothing and #### Pound and #### Hux wuz something…
This was a moment in history only known to the gods, and god damm those…the jailors, the white steeples and domes of Liberty; god damm those who let Van Gogh take life out of the world with a borrowed shotgun, and #3 Melpomene is the muse of tragedy, and America is tradgedy without muse, and I am dying like a yellow leaf in a shaking wind…
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