as the poems go 

as the poems go into the thousands you
realize that you've created very
little. 

it comes down to the rain, the sunlight,
the traffic, the nights and the days of the
years, the faces. 

leaving this will be easier than living
it, typing one more line now as
a man plays a piano through the radio,
the best writers have said very
little
and the worst,
far too much.


forget it 

now, listen, when I die I don't want any crying, just get the
disposal under way, I've had a full some life, and
if anybody has had an edge, I've
had it, I've lived 7 or 8 lives in one, enough for
anybody.
we are all, finally, the same, so no speeches, please,
unless you want to say he played the horses and was very
good at that. 

you're next and I already know something you don't,
maybe.



decline 

naked along the side of the house,
8 a.m., spreading sesame seed oil
over my body, Jesus, have I come
to this?
I once battled in dark alleys for a
laugh.
now I'm not laughing.
I splash myself with oil and wonder,
how many years do you want?
how many days?
my blood is soiled and a dark
angel sits in my brain.
things are made of something and
go to nothing.
I understand the fall of cities, of
nations.
a small plane passes overhead.
I look upward as if it made sense to
look upward.
it's true, the sky has rotted:
it won't be long for any of
us. 

from The Olympia Review - 1994


the American writer 


gone abroad
I sit under the tv lights
and am interviewed again
I am asked questions
I give answers
I make no attempt to be
brilliant.
to be truthful
I feel bored
and I almost never feel
bored.
"do you?..." they ask.
"oh, yeah, well I..."
"and what do you think of..."
"I don't think of it much. I
don't think too much..."
somehow it ends. 

that evening somebody tells me
I'm on the news
we turn the set on.
there I am. I look pissed.
I wave people off.
I am bored. 

how marvelous to be me without
trying.
it looks on tv
as if I knew exactly what I
was doing. 

fooled them
again. 

from Dangling In The Tournefortia - 1981



Poem For My 43rd Birthday 

To end up alone
in a tomb of a room
without cigarettes
or wine--
just a lightbulb
and a potbelly,
grayhaired,
and glad to have
the room. 

...in the morning
they're out there
making money:
judges, carpenters,
plumbers, doctors,
newsboys, policemen,
barbers, carwashers,
dentists, florists,
waitresses, cooks,
cabdrivers... 

and you turn over
to your left side
to get the sun
on your back
and out
of your eyes. 

from "All's Normal Here" - 1985


here I am ... 

drunk again at 3 a.m. at the end of my 2nd bottle
of wine, I have typed from a dozen to 15 pages of
poesy
an old man
maddened for the flesh of young girls in this
dwindling twilight
liver gone
kidneys going
pancrea pooped
top-floor blood pressure 

while all the fear of the wasted years
laughs between my toes
no woman will live with me
no Florence Nightingale to watch the
Johnny Carson show with 

if I have a stroke I will lay here for six
days, my three cats hungrily ripping the flesh
from my elbows, wrists, head 

the radio playing classical music ... 

I promised myself never to write old man poems
but this one's funny, you see, excusable, be-
cause I've long gone past using myself and there's
still more left
here at 3 a.m. I am going to take this sheet from
the typer
pour another glass and
insert
make love to the fresh new whiteness 

maybe get lucky
again 

first for
me 

later
for you



Three Oranges 

first time my father overheard me listening to
this bit of music he asked me,
"what is it?"
"it's called Love For Three Oranges,"
I informed him.
"boy," he said, "that's getting it
cheap."
he meant sex.
listening to it
I always imagined three oranges
sitting there,
you know how orange they can
get,
so mightily orange.
maybe Prokofiev had meant
what my father
thought.
if so, I preferred it the
other way
the most horrible thing
I could think of
was part of me being
what ejaculated out of the
end of his
stupid penis.
I will never forgive him
for that,
his trick that I am stuck
with,
I find no nobility in
parenthood.
I say kill the Father
before he makes more
such as
I. 

from ONTHEBUS - 1992
subscribe:


the house 

They are building a house
half a block down
and I sit up here
with the shades down
listening to the sounds,
the hammers pounding in nails,
thack thack thack thack,
and then I hear birds,
and thack thack thack,
and I go to bed,
I pull the covers to my throat;
they have been building this house
for a month, and soon it will have
its people...sleeping, eating,
loving, moving around,
but somehow
now
it is not right,
there seems a madness,
men walk on top with nails
in their mouths
and I read about Castro and Cuba,
and at night I walk by
and the ribs of the house show
and inside I can see cats walking
the way cats walk,
and then a boy rides by on a bicycle
and still the house is not done
and in the morning the men
will be back
walking around on the house
with their hammers,
and it seems people should not build houses
anymore,
it seems people should not get married
anymore,
it seems people should stop working
and sit in small rooms
on 2nd floors
under electric lights without shades;
it seems there is a lot to forget
and a lot not to do,
and in drugstores, markets, bars,
the people are tired, they do not want
to move, and I stand there at night
and look through this house and the
house does not want to be built;
through its sides I can see the purple hills
and the first lights of evening,
and it is cold
and I button my coat
and I stand there looking through the house
and the cats stop and look at me
until I am embarrased
and move North up the sidewalk
where I will buy
cigarettes and beer
and return to my room. 

from "All's Normal Here" - 1985
Ruddy Duck Pre


sleep 

she was a short one
getting fat and she had once been
beautiful and
she drank the wine
she drank the wine in bed and
talked and screamed and cursed at
me
and i told her 

please, I need some
sleep. 

-sleep? sleep? ya son of a
bitch, ya never sleep, ya
don't need any
sleep! 

I buried her one morning early
I carried her down the sides of the Hollywood Hills
brambles and rabbits and rocks
running in front of me
and by the time I'd dug the ditch
and stuck her in
belly down
and put the dirt back on
the sun was up and it was warm
and the flies were lazy and
I could hardly see anything out of my eyes
everything was so
warm and yellow. 

I managed to drive home and I got into bed and I
slept for 5 days and 4
nights. 

from "poems written before jumping out of an 8 story window" - 1966


curtain 

the final curtain on one of the longest running
musicals ever, some people claim to have
seen it over one hundred times.
I saw it on the tv news, that final curtain:
flowers, cheers, tears, a thunderous
accolade.
I have not seen this particular musical
but I know if I had that I wouldn't have
been able to bear it, it would have
sickened me.
trust me on this, the world and its
peoples and its artful entertainment has
done very little for me, only to me.
still, let them enjoy one another, it will
keep them from my door
and for this, my own thunderous
accolade. 

from The Olympia Review - 1994
subscribe:
3430 Pacific Ave. SE
Suite A-6254
Olympia, Washington 98501 



the rat 

with one punch, at the age of 16 and 1/2,
I knocked out my father,
a cruel shiny bastard with bad breath,
and I didn't go home for some time, only now and then
to try to get a dollar from
dear momma. 

it was 1937 in Los Angeles and it was a hell of a
Vienna. 

I ran with these older guys
but for them it was the same:
mostly breathing gasps of hard air
and robbing gas stations that didn't have any
money, and a few lucky among us
worked part-time as Western Union messenger
boys. 

we slept in rented rooms that weren't rented
and we drank ale and wine
with the shades down
being quiet quiet
and then awakening the whole building
with a fistfight
breaking mirrors and chairs and lamps
and then running down the stairway
just before the police arrived
some of us soldiers of the future
running through the empty starving streets and alleys of
Los Angeles
and all of us
getting together later
in Pete's room
a small cube of space under a stairway, there we were,
packed in there
without women
without cigarettes
without anything to drink,
while the rich pawed away at their many
choices and the young girls let
them,
the same girls who spit at our shadows as we
walked past. 

it was a hell of a
Vienna. 

3 of us under that stairway
were killed in World War II. 

another one is now manager of a mattress
company. 

me? I'm 30 years older,
the town is 4 or 5 times as big
but just as rotten
and the girls still spit on my
shadow, another war is building for another
reason, and I can hardly get a job now
for the same reason I couldn't then:
I don't know anything, I can't do
anything. 

sex? well, just the old ones knock on my door after
midnight. I can't sleep and they see the lights and are
curious. 

the old ones. their husbands no longer want them,
their children are gone, and if they show me enough good
leg (the legs go last)
I go to bed with
them. 

so the old women bring me love and I smoke their cigarettes
as they
talk talk talk
and then we go to bed again and
I bring them love
and they feel good and
talk
until the sun comes
up, then we
sleep. 

it's a hell of a
Paris. 

from "Mockingbird Wish Me Luck" - 1972
Black Sparrow Press 

a threat to my immortality 

she undressed in front of me
keeping her pussy to the front
while I layed in bed with a bottle of
beer. 

where'd you get that wart on
your ass? I asked. 

that's no wart, she said,
that's a mole, a kind of
birthmark. 

that thing scares me, I said,
let's call
it off. 

I got out of bed and
walked into the other room and
sat on the rocker
and rocked. 

she walked out. now, listen, you
old fart. you've got warts and scars and
all kinds of things all over
you. I do believe you're the ugliest
old man
I've ever seen. 

forget that, I said, tell me some more
about that
mole on your butt. 

she walked into the other room
and got dressed and then ran past me
slammed the door
and was
gone. 

and to think,
she'd read all my books of
poetry too. 

I just hoped she wouldn't tell
anybody that
I wasn't pretty. 

from "Mockingbird Wish Me Luck" - 1972
Black Sparrow Press 

rhyming poem: 

the goldfish sing all night with guitars,
and the whores go down with the stars,
the whores go down with the stars 

I'm sorry, sir, we close at 4:30,
besides yr mother's neck is dirty,
and the whores go down with the etc.,
the whrs. go dn. with the etc. 

I'm sorry jack you can't come back,
I've fallen in love with another sap,
3/4 Italian and 1/2 Jap,
and the whores go
the whores go
etc. 

from "All's Normal Here" - 1985
Ruddy Duck Press
(originally appeared in Wormwood Review 1963) 

writing 

often it is the only
thing
between you and
impossibility.
no drink,
no woman's love,
no wealth
can
match it. 

nothing can save
you
except
writing. 

it keeps the walls
from
failing.
the hordes from
closing in. 

it blasts the
darkness. 

writing is the
ultimate
psychiatrist, 

the kindliest
god of all the
gods. 

writing stalks
death.
it knows no
quit. 

and writing
laughs
at itself,
at pain. 

it is the last
expectation,
the last
explanation. 

that's
what it
is. 

from blank gun silencer - 1991
subscribe:
1240 William St.
Racine, Wisconsin 53402 

bumming with Jane 

there wasn't a stove
and we put cans of beans
in hot water in the sink
to heat them
up
and we read the Sunday papers
on Monday
after digging them out of the
trash cans
but somehow we managed
money for wine
and the
rent
and the money came off
the streets
out of hock shops
out of nowhere
and all that mattered
was the next
bottle
and we drank and sang
and
fought
were in and out
of drunk
tanks
car crashes
hospitals
we barricaded ourselves
against the
police
and the other roomers
hated
us
and the desk clerk
of the hotel
feared
us
and it went on
and
on
and it was one of the
most wonderful times
of my
life. 

from "you get so alone at times that it just makes sense" - 1986
Black Sparrow Press 

cows in art class 

good weather
is like
good women-
it doesn't always happen
and when it does
it doesn't
always last.
man is
more stable:
if he's bad
there's more chance
he'll stay that way,
or if he's good
he might hang
on,
but a woman
is changed
by
children
age
diet
conversation
sex
the moon
the absence or
presence of sun
or good times.
a woman must be nursed
into subsistence
by love
where a man can become
stronger
by being hated. 

I am drinking tonight in Spangler's Bar
and I remember the cows
I once painted in Art class
and they looked good
they looked better than anything
in here. I am drinking in Spangler's Bar
wondering which to love and which
to hate, but the rules are gone:
I love and hate only
myself-
they stand outside me
like an orange dropped from the table
and rolling away; it's what I've got to
decide: 

kill myself or
love myself?
which is the treason?
where's the information
coming from? 

books...like broken glass:
I wouldn't wipe my ass with 'em
yet, it's getting
darker, see? 

(we drink here and speak to
each other and
seem knowing.) 

buy the cow with the biggest
tits
buy the cow with the biggest
rump. 

present arms. 

the bartender slides me a beer
it runs down the bar
like an Olympic sprinter
and the pair of pliers that is my hand
stops it, lifts it,
golden piss of dull temptation,
I drink and
stand there
the weather bad for cows
but my brush is ready
to stroke up
the green grass straw eye
sadness takes me all over
and I drink the beer straight down
order a shot
fast
to give me the guts and the love to
go
on. 

from "poems written before jumping out of an 8 story window" - 1966 


CONFESSION

waiting for death
like a cat
that will jump on the
bed

I am so very sorry for
my wife

she will see this
stiff
white 
body
shake it once, then
maybe
again

"Hank!"

Hank won't
answer.

it's not my death that
worries me, it's my wife
left with this
pile of
nothing.

I want to
let her know 
though
that all the nights
sleeping
beside her

even the useless
arguments
were things
ever splendid

and the hard 
words
I ever feared to 
say 
can now be 
said:

I love
you.



my first computer poem 

have I gone the way of the deathly death?
will this machine finish me
where booze and women and poverty
have not? 

is Whitman laughing at me from his grave?
does Creeley care? 

is this properly spaced?
am I? 

will Ginsberg howl? 

soothe me! 

get me lucky! 

get me good! 

get me going! 

I am a virgin again. 

a 70 year old virgin. 

don't fuck me, machine 

do.
who cares? 

talk to me, machine! 

we can drink together.
we can have fun. 

think of all the people who will hate me at this
computer. 

we'll add them to the others
and continue right
on. 

so this is the beginning
not the
end. 

from The Last Night Of The Earth Poems - 1992



Some Poems that I think are cool (by Bukowski)



True Story 


by Charles Bukowski 

They found him walking along the freeway 
all red in 
front
he had taken a rusty tin can
and cut off his sexual
machinery
as if to say,-
see what you've done to
me? you might as well have the 
rest.

and he put part of him
in one pocket and
part of him in 
another
and that's how they found him,
walking along.

they gave him over to the 
doctors
who tried to sew the parts
back
on.
but the parts were
quite contented
the way they 
were.

I think sometimes of all the good
ass
turned over to the
monsters of the 
world.

maybe it was his protest against 
this or
his protest
against 
everything.

a one man 
Freedom March
that never squeezed in 
between the concert reviews and the 
baseball 
scores.

God, or somebody,
bless
him.

I Met A Genius 


-Bukowski 

I met a genius on the train
today
about 6 years old,
he sat beside me
and as the train
ran down along the coast
we came to the ocean
and we both looked out the window
at the ocean
and then he looked at me
and said'
"It's not pretty."

it was the first time I'd
realizd
that.


footnote on the construction of the masses:

another poem by Bukowski

some people are young and nothing
else and
some people are old and nothing
else
and some people are in between and
just in between.

and if the flies wore clothes on their
backs
and all the buildings burned in 
golden fire,
if heaven shook like a belly
dancer
and all the atom bombs began to 
cry,
some people would be young and nothing
else and
some people old and nothing
else,
and the rest would be the same
the rest would be the same.

the few who are different 
are eliminated quickly enough
by the police, by their mothers, their
brothers, others; by 
themselves.

all that's left is what you 
see.

it's 
hard.

Back up to poetry


Walk

I take a walk
It seems lately I've been doing a lot of walking
And I'm alone
With only my thoughts to keep me company,
Walking down the road to another endless day
Of flipping eggs and beer battering perch
Or walking home to an empty apartment
Where I'll flip through the channels 
And watch reruns of TV shows I've seen 312 times before
Down the road twice a day
Cars pass me by
Faces stare at me
Wondering why I'm walking
"Where's your car" the eyes ask
As they stare for the two seconds it takes to pass
And their thoughts turn back to work or kids or groceries
What they don't take the time to think is, 
Maybe, I like my walk.


Rhyme Poem


I want to know who you think you are,
With your huge bank accounts and Mercedes car,
Tellin' me stories from what you see,
Your life has no relevence to me.
You sit there bein' waited on in your easy chair,
I've got news for you buddy, I don't wish I was there.
You gave away what you care about
Your life, your love, so don't scream and shout
I want to tell you I enjoy my life
Suprising as it may be, I enjoy my strife
Because, when you're real and living
There's an equal amount of taking and giving
I don't see life through rose colored glasses
Like you and your friends with all your free passes
To the best clubs and the best dinners
In the end we'll see who comes out as winner
So don't look at me and shake your head
And wonder who'll remember me after I'm dead
If I don't care neither should you
Cause I don't have anything I'd rather be doin'
Than workin', thinkin', writin', and booin'
You who give up, sell out, and die
When you're gone life will have passed you by
Real life comes with hardship and pain
It also comes with friendship, happiness, and gain
So sit there and think of all you've given up 
And next time you see someone homeless, pretend you're holdin' that cup
So, wave goodbye to your useless life
Say goodbye to your kids, your dog, and your wife
Get out there, live life for what it's worth
Before you're pushin' up daisies from under the earth.

THE BLACKBIRDS ARE ROUGH TODAY



lonely as a dry and used orchard
spread over the earth
for use and surrender.

shot down like an ex-pug selling
dailies on the corner.

taken by tears like 
an aging chorus girl
who has gotten her last check.

a hanky is in order your lord your
worship.

the blackbirds are rough today
like
ingrown toenails
in an overnight
jail---
wine wine whine,
the blackbirds run around and
fly around
harping about
Spanish melodies and bones.

and everywhere is
nowhere---
the dream is as bad as
flapjacks and flat tires:

why do we go on
with our minds and
pockets full of
dust
like a bad boy just out of
school---
you tell
me,
you who were a hero in some
revolution
you who teach children
you who drink with calmness
you who own large homes
and walk in gardens
you who have killed a man and own a
beautiful wife
you tell me
why I am on fire like old dry
garbage.

we might surely have some interesting
correspondence.
it will keep the mailman busy.
and the butterflies and ants and bridges and
cemeteries
the rocket-makers and dogs and garage mechanics
will still go on a
while
until we run out of stamps
and/or
ideas.

don't be ashamed of
anything; I guess God meant it all
like
locks on 
doors.



the secret of my endurance 

I still get letters in the mail, mostly from cracked-up
men in tiny rooms with factory jobs or no jobs who are
living with whores or no woman at all, no hope, just
booze and madness.
Most of their letters are on lined paper
written with an unsharpened pencil
or in ink
in tiny handwriting that slants to the
left 

and the paper is often torn
usually halfway up the middle
and they say they like my stuff,
I've written from where it's at, and
they recognize that. truly, I've given them a second
chance, some recognition of where they're at. 

it's true, I was there, worse off than most
of them.
but I wonder if they realize where their letters
arrive?
well, they are dropped into a box
behind a six-foot hedge with a long driveway leading
to a two car garage, rose garden, fruit trees,
animals, a beautiful woman, mortgage about half
paid after a year, a new car,
fireplace and a green rug two-inches thick
with a young boy to write my stuff now,
I keep him in a ten-foot cage with a
typewriter, feed him whiskey and raw whores,
belt him pretty good three or four times
a week.
I'm 59 years old now and the critics say
my stuff is getting better than ever. 

from Dangling In The Tourne






to the whore who took my poems


some say we should keep personal remorse from the 
poem,
stay abstract, and there is some reason in this,
but jezus;
twelve poems gone and I don't keep carbons and you have
my
paintings too, my best ones; its stifling:
are you trying to crush me out like the rest of them?
why didn't you take my money? they usually do
from the sleeping drunken pants sick in the corner.
next time take my left arm or a fifty
but not my poems:
I'm not Shakespeare
but sometime simply
there won't be any more, abstract or otherwise; 
there'll always be mony and whores and drunkards
down to the last bomb,
but as God said,
crossing his legs,
I see where I have made plenty of poets
but not so very much
poetry.

"to the whore who took my poems" Copyright© 1974 by Charles


Come here, nasty words, so many I can hardly 
tell where you all came from. 
That ugly slut thinks I'm a joke 
and refuses to give us back 
the poems, can you believe this shit? 
Lets hunt her down , and demand them back! 
Who is she, you ask? That one, who you see 
strutting around, with ugly clown lips, 
laughing like a pesky French poodle. 
Surround her, ask for them again! 
"Rotten slut, give my poems back! 
Give 'em back, rotten slut, the poems!" 
Doesn't give a shit? Oh, crap. Whorehouse. 
or if anything's worse, you're it. 
But I've not had enough thinking about this. 
If nothing else, lets make that 
pinched bitch turn red-faced. 
All together shout, once more, louder: 
"Rotten slut, give my poems back! 
Give 'em back, rotten slut, the poems!" 
But nothing helps, nothing moves her. 
A change in your methods is cool, 
if you can get anything more done. 
"Sweet thing, give my poems back!" 

adeste hendecasyllabi. quot estis 
omnes. undique quotquot estis omnes. 
iocum me putat esse moecha turpis. 
et negat mihi nostra reddituram 
pugillaria si pati potestis. 
persequamur eam. et reflagitemus. 
quae sit quaeritis. illa quam uidetis 
turpe incedere mimice ac moleste 
ridentem catuli ore Gallicani. 
circumsistite eam. et reflagitate. 
moecha putida. redde codicillos. 
redde putida moecha codicillos. 
non assis facis. o lutum. lupanar, 
aut si perditius potest quid esse. 
sed non est tamen hoc satis putandum 
quod si non aliud potest ruborem 
ferreo canis exprimamus ore. 
conclamate iterum altiore uoce. 
moecha putide. redde codicillos. 
redde putida moecha moecha codicillos. 
sed nil proficimus. nihil mouetur. 
mutanda est ratio modusque uobis 
siquid proficere amplius potestis. 
pudica et proba. redde codicillos.


Charles Bukowski (1920 - 1994)
HEMINGWAY, DRUNK BEFORE NOON


she knew Hemingway in Cuba
and she took this photo of him one day
drunk before noon-
he was stretched on the floor
face puffed with drink
gut hanging out over his
belt, hardly looking
macho
at all.

he heard the click of the camera,
lifted his head a bit from the
floor and
said, "Sister, don't you ever publish that
photo."

I have the photo framed now
on the south wall
facing the door.

the lady gifted me this
bit.

now her book has just been
issued by Rusconi (Italy) and is
called
HEMINGWAY.

there are photos:
Hemingway with the lady and a
dog.

Hemingway's work
room.

Hemingway feeding a
cat.

Hemingway's bed.

Mary Hemingway with the
lady.

Hemingway and Mary, Venezia, 31
ottobre 1948.

Hemingway and the
lady.

Hemingway and
Ettore Sottsass jr.

Hemingway, Venezia, marzo
1954.

but
no photo
of Hemingway
soused before
noon.

from a man who was very good
with the word

the lady had kept
it.


Michael Estabrook
BEFORE GRANDPA DIED

he was so tired hunched forward
wrinkled.
I'm beginning to understand why he was this
way because of having children because of
relatives & friends mortgages taxes heating
bills marriage wars bad food pesticides x-rays
debts alcohol cigarettes illnesses suicide broken
bones lawyers political rhetoric poverty
stupidity street gangs sit-coms car accidents
arrogant stupid baseball players making a
million dollars a year handguns heroin plastic
drift nets gay-bashing pens banks and credit
card companies trying to fuck you out of your
money fat-faced moronic plumbers ants
cockroaches misogynists earthquakes hornets
ethnic cleansing rats the post office autism lust
rudeness money-grubbing doctors greed
religious fanatics murder rape child abuse
miscarriages abortions the death penalty
cowards who beat their wives racism
christianity pollution broken promises
insincerity rabies bad breath cheap wine tumors
diarrhea nausea pharmaceutical companies
AIDS snow storms Arabs & Jews the Irish &
the English blacks & whites the Japs & the
Chinese nuclear bombs space travel sex & blah
blah-blah blah blah.
oh yes it's easy to understand why Grandpa
was so tired so damned tired before he died.

THE OLDER I GET

the more it seems I'm
becoming my father, shaving
with a Remington Electric Razor,
using Old Spice, feeling
patriotic, drinking ice cold glasses
of milk, listening
to old Western tunes from the 40s
by the Sons of the Pioneers.
At least I'm not
as bad yet as my wife
who's becoming her mother,
talking to herself all
the damn time and dribbling food
down the front of her blouse.

Upon The Mathematics Of The Breath And The Way 

I was going to begin this with a little rundown on the female but 
since the smoke on the local battlefront has cleared a bit I will 
relent, but there are 50,000 men in this nation who must sleep on 
their bellies for fear of loosing their parts to women with wild- 
glazed eyes and knives. Brothers and sisters, I am 52 and there 
is a trail of females behind me, enough for 5 men's lives. Some 
of the ladies have claimed that I have betrayed them for drink; 
well, I'd like to see any man stick his pecker into a fifth of 
whiskey. Of course, you can get your tongue in there but the 
bottle doesn't respond. Well, haha among the trumpets, let's get
back to the word. 

The word. I'm on the way to the track, opening day at Hollywood 
Park, but I'll tell you about the word. To get the word down 
proper, that takes courage, seeing the form, living the life, and
getting it into the line. Hemingway takes his critical blows now 
from people who can't write. There are hundreds of thousands of 
people who think they can write. They are the critics, the belly-
achers and the mockers. To point to a good writer and call him a 
hunk of shit helps satisfy their loss as creators, and the better 
a man gets the more he is envied and., in turn, hated. You ought 
to hear them razz and demean Pincay and Shoemaker, two of the 
greatest jocks ever to steer a horse. There's a little man outside
our local tracks who sells newspapers and he says, "Get your paper, 
get your info on Shoemaker the Faker." Here he is calling a man 
who has ridden more winners than any other jock alive (and he's 
still riding and riding well) and here's this newspaper guy 
selling papers for a dime and calling the Shoe a fraud. The Shoe
is a millionaire, not that that's important, but he did get it 
with his talent and he could buy this guy's newspapers, all of 
them, rest of this guy's life and into a half dozen eternities. 
Hemingway too, gets the sneers from the newspaper boys and girls 
of writing. They didn't like his exit. I thought his exit was quite 
fine. He created his own mercy killing. And he created some writing. 
Some of it depended too much on style but it was a style he broke-
through with; a style that ruined thousands of writers who attempted 
to use any portion of it. Once a style is evolved it is thought of 
as a simple thing, but style not only evolves through a method, it 
evolves through feeling, it is like laying a brush to canvas in a 
certain way and if you're not living along the path of power and 
flow, style vanishes. Hemingway's style did tend to vanish toward 
the end, progressively, but that's because he let down his guard 
and let people do things to him. But he gave us more than plenty. 
There is a minor poet I know who came over the other night. He is a 
learned man, and clever, he lets the ladies support him so you know 
he's good at something. He is a very powerful figure of a man 
growing soft around the edges, looks quite literary and carries 
these black notebooks around with him and he reads to you from them.
This boy told me the other night, "Bukowski, I can write like you 
but you can't write like me." I didn't answer him because he needs 
his self-glory, but really, he only thinks he can write like me. 
Genius could be the ability to say a profound thing in a simple way, 
or even to say a simple thing in a simpler way. Oh, by the way, if 
you want to get one angle on a minor writer, it is one who throws a 
party or gets one thrown for him when his book comes out. 

Hemingway studied the bullfights for form and meaning and courage 
and failure and the way. I go to boxing matches and attend horse 
races for the same reason. There is a feeling at the wrists and the 
shoulders and the temples. There is a manner of watching and 
recording that grows into the line and the form and the act and the 
fact and the flower, and the dog walking and the dirty panties 
under the bed, and the sound of the typewriter as you're sitting 
there, that's the big sound, the biggest sound in the world, when 
you're getting it down in your way, the right way, and no beautiful 
woman counts before it and nothing that you could paint or sculpt 
counts before it; it is the final art, this writing down of the 
word, and the reason for valor is all there, it is the finest gamble
ever arranged and not many win. 

Somebody asked me, "Bukowski, if you taught a course in writing what 
would you ask them to do?" I answered, "I'd send them all to the 
racetrack and force them to bet $5 on each race." This ass thought I 
was joking. The human race is very good at treachery and cheating 
and modifying a position. What people who want to be writers need is 
to be put in an area that they cannot manuever out of by weak and 
dirty play. This is why groups of people at parties are so disgusting: 
all their envy and smallness and trickery surfaces. If you want to 
find out who your friends are you can do two things: invite them to a 
party or go to jail. You will soon find that you don't have any friends. 

If you think I am wandering here, hold your tits or your balls or 
hold somebody else's. Everything fits here. 

And since I must presume (I haven't seen any of it) that I am 
being honored and criticized in this issue I should say something 
about the little magazines, although I might have said some of it 
elsewhere? - at least over a row of beer bottles. Little magazines 
are useless perpetuaters of useless talent. Back in the 20's and 
30's there was not an abundance of littles. A little magazine was 
an event, not a calamity. One could trace the names from the 
littles and up through literary history; I mean, they began there
and they went up, they became. They became books, novels, things. 
Now most little magazine people begin little and remain little. 
There are always exceptions. For instance, I remember first reading 
Truman Capote in a little named Decade, and I thought here is a man 
with some briskness, style and fairly original energy. But basically, 
like it or not, the large slick magazines print a much higher level 
of work than the littles - and most especially in prose. Every jack-
ass in America pumps out countless and ineffectual poems. And a 
large number of them are published in the littles. 
Tra la la, another edition. Give us a grant, see what we are doing! 
I receive countless little magazines through the mail, unsolicited, 
un-asked for. I flip through them. Arid vast nothingness. I think 
that the miracle of our times is that so many people can write down 
so many words that mean absolutely nothing. Try it sometime. It's
almost impossible to write down words that mean absolutely nothing, 
but they can do it, and they do it continually and relentlessly. I 
put out 3 issues of a little, Laugh Literary and Man the Humping 
Guns. The material received was so totally inept that the other 
editor and myself were forced to write most of the poems. He'd 
write the first half of one poem, then I'd finish it. Then I'd go 
the first half of another and he'd finish it. Then we'd sit around 
and get to the names: "Let's see, whatta we gonna call this 
cocksucker?" 

And with the discovery of the mimeo machine everybody became 
an editor, all with great flair, very little expense and no results at 
all. Ole was an early exception and I might grant you one or two 
other exceptions if you corner me with the facts. As per the better 
printed (non-mimeo) mags one must grant The Wormwood Review 
(one-half hundred issues now) as the outstanding work of our time 
in that area. Quietly and without weeping or ranting or bitching or 
quitting or pausing, or without writing braggodoccio letters (as 
most do) about being arrested for driving drunk on a bicycle in 
Pacific Palisades or corn-holing one of the National Endowment for 
the Arts editors in a Portland hotel room, Malone has simply gone 
on and on and compiled an exact and lively talent, issue after 
issue after issue. Malone lets his issues speak for themselves and 
remains invisible. You won't find him beating on your door one 
night with a huge jug of cheap port wine saying, "Hey, I'm Marvin 
Malone, I printed your poem Catshit in a Bird's Nest in my last
issue. I think I'm gonna kick me some ass. Ya got anything for me 
to fuck around here?" 

A vast grinding lonely hearts club of no-talents, that's what the 
littles have evolved to, with the editors a worse breed than the 
writers. If you are a writer seriously interested in creating an 
art instead of a foolishness, then there are, at any moment, a few 
littles to submit to, where the editing is professional instead of 
personal. I haven't read the mag that this piece is submitted to 
but I would suggest, along with Wormwood, as decent arenas: 
The New York Quarterly, Event, Second Aeon, Joe Dimaggio, 
Second Coming, The Little Magazine and Hearse. 

"You're supposed to be a writer," she says, "if you put all the 
energy into writing that you put into the racetrack you'd be great."
I think of something Wallace Stevens once said, "Success as the 
result of industry is a peasant's ideal." Or if he didn't say that 
he said something close to that. The writing arrives when it wants 
to. There is nothing you can do about it. You can't squeeze more 
writing out of the living than is there. Any attempt to do so 
creates a panic in the soul, diffuses and jars the line. There are
stories that Hemingway would get up early in the morning and have 
all his work done at noon, but though I never met him personally I 
feel as if Hemingway were an alcoholic who wanted to get his work 
out of the way so he could get drunk. 

What I have seen evolve in the littles with most new and fresh 
talent is an interesting first splash. I think, ah, here's finally one. 
Maybe we have something now. But the same mechanism begins 
over and over again. The fresh new talent, having splashed, begins 
to appear everywhere. He sleeps and bathes with the god damned 
typewriter and it's running all the time. His name is in every mimeo 
from Maine to Mexico and the work grows weaker and weaker 
and weaker and continues to appear. Somebody gets a book 
out for him (or her) and then they are reading at your local 
university. They read the 6 or 7 good early poems and all the bad 
ones. They you have another little magazine "name". But what has 
happened is that instead of trying to create the poem they try for 
as many little mag appearances in as many little magazines as pos-
sible. It becomes a contest of publication rather than creation. This 
diffusion of talent usually occurs among writers in their twenties who 
don't have enough experience, who don't have enough meat to pick 
off the bone. You can't write without living and writing all the time is 
not living. Nor does drinking create a writer or brawling create a 
writer, and although I've done plenty of both, it's merely a fallacy 
and a sick romanticism to assume that these actions will make a 
better writer of one. Of course, there are times when you have to 
fight and times when you have to drink, but these times are really 
anti-creative and there's nothing you can do about them. 

Writing, finally, even becomes work especially if you are trying to 
pay the rent and child support with it. But it is the finest work and 
the only work, and it's a work that boosts your ability to live and 
your ability to live pays you back with your ability to create. One 
feeds the other, it is all very magic. I quit a very dull job at the 
age of 50 (twas said I had security for life, ah!) and I sat down in
front of the typewriter. There's no better way. There are moments 
of total flaming hell when you feel as if you're going mad; there are 
moments, days, weeks of no word, no sound, as if it had all vanished. 
Then it arrives and you sit smoking, pounding, pounding, it roars and 
roars. You can get up at noon, you can work until 3 a.m. Some people
will bother you. They will not understand what you are trying to do. 
They will knock on your door and sit in a chair and eat up your hours 
while giving you nothing. When too many nothing people arrive and 
keep arriving you must be cruel to them for they are being cruel to you. 
You must run their asses out on the street. There are some people who 
pay their way, they bring their own energy and their own light but 
most of the others are useless both to you and to themselves. It is 
not being humane to tolerate the dead, it only increases their dead-
ness and they always leave plenty of it with you after they are gone.
And then, of course, there are the ladies. The ladies would rather go 
to bed with a poet than anything, even a German police dog, though I 
knew one lady who took very much delight in claiming she had fucked 
one President Kennedy. I had no way of knowing. So, if you're a good
poet, I'd suggest that you learn to be a good lover too, this is a creative 
act in itself, being a good lover, so learn how. Learn how to do it very 
well because if you're a good poet you're going to get many opportunities, 
and though it's not like being a rock star, it will come along, so don't 
waste it like rock stars waste it by going at it rote and half-assed. 
Let the ladies know that you are really there. Then, of course, they will 
keep buying your books. 

And let this be enough advice for a little while. Oh yes, I won $180 
opening day, dropped $80 yesterday, so today is the day that counts. 
It's ten minutes to eleven. First post 2 p.m. I must start lining up 
my horse genes. There was a guy out there yesterday with a heart 
machine attached to himself and he was sitting in a wheelchair. He 
was making bets. Put him in a rest home and he'll be dead overnight. 
Saw another guy out there, blind. He must have had a better day 
than I did yesterday. I've got to phone Quagliano and tell him I've 
finished this article. Now there's a very strange son of a bitch. I
don't know how he makes it and he won't tell me. I see him at the 
boxing matches sitting there with a beer and looking very relaxed. I
wonder what he's got going? He's got me worried... 

Small Press Review - May, 1973



Bukowski - by Linda Kin


"Charles Bukowski? Never heard of him," I said. 

"He's the best poet in L.A." 

I picked up a small poetry mag...Laugh Literary and Man 
the Humping Guns..."In disgust with poetry Chicago, with 
the dull, dumpling pattycake safe Creeley's, Olsons, Dickeys, 
Merwins, Nemerovs and Merediths..." 
I started reading his poem, "The Grand Pricks of the Hob 
Nailed Sun"...getting to the line..."God tongues out your 
asshole" I asked, "Is this Bukowski guy homosexual?" 

"I don't know..." Just then a yelling and bellowing starts across 
the street. Two guys are wrestling. "That's Charles Bukowski 
coming right now...maybe you can ask him." 

The younger guy comes in first and Peter says, "Hey, Neeli, 
you're Hank's friend. This lady wants to know if he's homo-
sexual." 

"I don't suck his cock, " Neeli answers. 

And I'm thinking...these guys..."Be quiet out there," a black 
woman yells from inside, "The reading's started." My sister 
and I duck behind the blanket into the dark poetry hole...The 
Bridge. Bukowski, Neeli and Peter enter with beer and wine. 
They get settled on a mattress. Bukowski eyes the legs of a 
woman in a mini-skirt. He listens to about three poems, picks 
up his beer and walks out. 

A couple of weeks later, at the same place. I'm listening to the 
flute, trying to be entertained, my nerves crawling for some 
action. I finally whisper to Peter. "God, doesn't anything ever 
happen here? Where's something exciting? Some action?" And 
the flute went on calmly, quietly. Peter made a phone call...
"O.K., we'll be right over." and he turned to me. "I'm taking 
you to Charles Bukowski's." I thought to myself...am I ready 
for this? Peter drove like a madman, screeching his tires into a 
liquor store for a six-pack. 

"Look, Peter, why don't I get my car and follow you?" 

"O.K.' and he squealed his tires back to The Bridge. "I'll be 
right out. Got to get the money." He ran inside. Through the 
window I could see him arguing with the black singer...his woman. 

The door and windows of Bukowski's court were overgrown 
with bushes. Bukowski was old...too old. Fat...too fat...and 
rather drunk. 

"I want to introduce you to..." 

"Morona." 

"...to Morona..." 

"Come on what's your name?" 

"That's it. I just want people to know right away I'm Morona
...kind of dumb...so they will know what to expect. They can 
never say I didn't warn them." 

"O.K., Morona sit down." 

Bukowski didn't say much. He looked at me like I didn't have 
eyes, ears or a soul. We said this and we said that and Bukowski 
talked like he'd seen it all, heard it all, done it all. Peter was 
laughing and lively and the conversation got around to poetry. 

"So you write poetry," Bukowski said. He and Peter gave 
each other a look. 

"Yes, I write. I was about to crawl up the walls in that place...
the flute going po. po. pooo. po., the poets read so quiet. 
Doesn't anyone scream in this city. I like to scream mine like 
this..." I started a poem. 

Peter jumped in front of me yelling, "No, no, not to Charles 
Bukowski...not to Charles Bukowski." 

"Why not to Charles Bukowski? I don't know him," and I 
jumped on the table acting out the madwoman in my poem. 
Bukowski reached over and turned up the radio full blast 
to drown me out and Peter grabbed me trying to put his 
hand over my mouth at the same time screaming obscenitites. 
I jumped off the table holding out above the roar. 

"Let's dance...let's fuck...," Peter yelled, pushing against me. 
"Let's do the thing..." The poem is finally over. 

"It's a goddamn rhymer...I knew it. Nobody rhymes anymore." 

"Just we morons. I still like nursery rhymes too." 

"That's right. Your name is Morona. I see." 

The phone rings. It's Peter's girl friend. "I've got to go," he 
says, "but you've got to kiss me first." 

"Peter, come on, leave me alone." I get up. 

"Bukowski, let's both fuck her." 

"I'm going." I said. 

"Oh no, you're staying here . . . with Hank." Peter hurls me 
down on the couch into Bukowski's arms and runs out slam-
ming the door behind him. 

Everything gets very quiet. I look at him. He looks at me. 
I know I'm not going to have anything to do with him. He 
knows he's not going to have anything to do with me. We 
kiss a couple of times. I don't let him really kiss...just a 
touch. Hummm, a touch or two more. 

"You're a tease." 

"Yes, I'm a tease." 

He tries again. A kiss, but not a kiss. 

"Little Bo-peep has to go now." 

"Wait..." 

Standing up our lips touch again...just a teaser. I slip out the 
door feeling like I might have just barely escaped a lion's cage. 

*** 

I went to four books stores before I found one with Bukowski. 
His books had a strange effect on me. I read them through my 
company, hiding in the bathroom, all night, later staring at the 
walls, wide awake. He made me laugh out loud, he made me 
furious, disgusted, indignant, sad. I thought, what is this man; 
Does he really think women are like that?..."Well, he's a good 
writer, but he doesn't know shit about women." 

The next poem I wrote also rhymed (he wasn't going to tell 
me if I could rhyme or not). It was a long, bad poem with 
some lines reading . . 

come out of that hole, you old Troll
come and frolic
with the little liberated Billies
we'll put some daisies in your hair 

I sent him the poem and asked if I could sculpture his head. 

*** 

It was nine at night when I knocked on his door to take pictures 
for the sculpture. I thought we'd talked two or three hours, 
before I decided I'd better go home. I walked outside. The sun 
was coming up. It was morning. I couldn't believe so many hours 
had passed so fast. I was still sure I'd never get involved with 
Charles Bukowski. He was twenty years older. I didn't like his
negative attitude toward people. And, the drinking, no sane 
woman would get involved with him. I went home and dreamed 
he was lying on the side of a road dying. The supermarket was 
over the hill. If he didn't get over the embankment to the store 
he'd die. Alone he'd die. I saw in the dream a big bridge and 
construction just started that he and I were to build, but he
had to have food first. 

When I told him the dream he said, "Maybe it's because I 
haven't eaten for four or five days. I've been drinking." 

"You'd better get to the store." I said. 

*** 

Over the clay I fell in-love with his head...or my head. I teased 
him, looking into his eyes, long looks, pretending I was only 
looking with a sculptress' eye. I knew I was getting him hot 
and I'd say, professionally... 

"Now, turn your head a little more to the left." 

Every new day he came for a sitting it was hotter and hotter 
until finally he was reaching over the space between us, 
backing me up against the stove, the refigerator for long 
kisses, great Kisses. He was losing weight, on the breath 
chasers, in new shirts. I kept having to take clay off the face 
as the pounds disappeared. Every-day he'd go home and 
write back a love letter, great long hot letters making me 
forget he was too old for me, that my mother wouldn't ap-
prove, that he drank. 

And I found myself stating my terms, "I'll never get mixed up 
with a man again who doesn't like to eat pussy..uh..huh...never 
again. If a man doesn't like it...he doesn't like it. There's no 
way." And one day when the kids were outside, the sculpture 
still unfinished (it took months), he locked the doors and
carried me into the bedroom, kicking and screaming..."No 
we can't..." and proved to me he did like it. He sent me the 
poem, "I have eaten your cunt like a peach," which I read in 
the middle of the night and turned on fire. I called him up 
and masturbated listening to his voice on the phone and still 
I said..."No, he's too old for me. I can't. It's crazy." 
Godomighty, I loved his humor, the look in his eyes, his 
sardonic comments and he kissed like...well, like great. 

"Do you want to come to a party tonight?" he asked me. 
"It's a collating party." 

"A copulating party? I'd love to. No really, what did you 
say? Co...what?" 

"Putting the magazine together, that's collating." 

"Oh, sure. Who's going to be there?" 

"A bunch of half-assed poets,...myself." 

"Poets, look, I'm scared. I'm from the country. I don't know 
how to talk." 

"You don't have to talk. Just be there." 

"Now if it was a copulating..." 

"It will be you and me...after.....," 

my little girl ran in breaking up another long kiss. The steam 
was blowing out of both of us like a pressure cooker and I 
didn't know if I wanted to be alone with him. All this time, 
all these days and weeks of sculpturing I'd been protected by 
my sister dropping in, my little girl, my son coming home from
school. This time we'd be alone...really alone. 

That night I dreamed Bukowski showed me something he 
didn't show many people - his closet full of stuffed animals. 
Toy bears, elephants, wolves that had never been touched. 
I thought how sad no one had ever played with them. The 
same night I dreamed that my handsome actor friend, whom 
I'd also been thinking about, had cancer of his poetry, two 
thirds of the paper was eaten away. 

*** 

His bedroom was stacks of books, poems, newspapers, 
old letters. The mattress was like a rocky road. I jumped 
up from the bed screaming..."You came inside! Jesus 
Christ, man, I told you I don't take birth control..." 

"Look, I haven't been with a woman in four years. I was 
too hot. It just happened. What do I do?" 

"Do? You're fifty years old...you're supposed to know 
things. Any eighteen year old would know what to do...by 
jesus christ...you'd better decide on a name. I'm pregnant 
for sure with that shot." 

"...the first time." 

"How about Clyde K. Bukowski?" 


Later. "I guess the only thing that saved me was probably all 
your sperm were pickled with alcohol." 

*** 

Bukowski was a mass of sensitivies, egotism, uncertainties, 
confidence...humor, talent. The first month I was with him 
the unknown enemy was coming out of the walls. He had a 
knife taped behind the door. He jumped up five times a night 
facing murderers. He couldn't sleep. He couldn't sleep...and 
shadows spoke. Spirits stood around the bed watching us. 
Death walked down the sidewalk every night. 

One night we lay in bed having a conversation with the light. 
It went on for yes, off for no. Each off and on was carefully 
answered after the question. We both got spooked. We'd 
lay in the mornings when the kids were gone and he'd say, 
"Let's just lay here until they come and get us." 

*** 

"O.K." Days would pass fast...always too fast. When the 
fights started we fought like tigers. God, did we ever fight. 
Bukowski jumped up and ended everything, walked out and 
we'd call each other all night, hanging up after having our say. 
I accused him of picking fights to get drunk. And he'd call at 
two, three, four, five with raving madman, drunk, poetic 
speeches about women, souls, love and hate. Crazy beautiful 
lines. What word power. I was impressed in the middle of 
my worst rage. 

In the middle of the night he'd return the sculptured head and 
I'd find it on my doorstep in the morning. He'd come again 
and leave a letter..."I hate you with all the hate there is in the 
world." We split forty...fifty times in a year. Each one final 
for both of us. Each one the last. I was a tease and a flirt and 
when he was drinking, I was the whore, looking for other 
men, turning on for everyone, at the races, at the restaurant, 
at the park. 

"You and Jane are the whores of the century!"...better than 
that...only Bukowski can say it like he says it with all the em-
phasis and words and lines. He'd slam down the reciever. 
I'd lay on the bed boiling until I thought of an answer. Dial 
his number...normandie 1... 

"Bukowski, don't hang up until you hear this...I just want 
you to know there is one thing worse than a whore. It is a 
bore...and you're boring me." Slam. I took my phone off 
the hook so he couldn't call back. 

Hard on the nerves? Yes, but knowing I was never going 
back to him. It was all over this time...made it not so bad. 
It was drama. It was life. We'd make up with mad crazy 
passionate lovemaking both of us knowing we couldn't make 
it together. Both saying, "Let's enjoy this one last time..." 

Laying by Bukowski on the bed I'd feel a heat or rays of 
some kind coming from the center of him. It would move 
into me and warm me in a way I'd never been warmed. 
Sometimes it was so strong I'd put my hand over that area 
and test it to make sure it was real. The same vibes would 
enter my hand. 

*** 

Bukowski is a person who changes. He listens to what you 
say. He reacts to how you feel, immediately. From day to 
day he comes back with a new approach, a different way 
to get to me. He read my moods like an open book and 
usually knew immediately what was passing through my 
mind, even if he was at his place, I at mine. Countless times 
he'd call and say, "What's wrong?"...just as something was 
wrong. He'd say, "What happened at three o'clock...some-
thing happened at three o'clock." Usually he was right, an 
old boyfriend had called or I'd gotten angry at something 
he'd said yesterday. 

*** 

His sensitivities were too raw and he'd dull them with alcohol.
His body didn't like the drunks anymore than I did. I'd think 
he was being unfair. Our two tempers would explode like 
shooting geysers and we'd roar down our emotional roller 
coaster with one more fight...one more split up. I to my 
freedom, he to a woman who really cared or back to where 
he had it all solved. I refused to be his nurse through his 
hangovers. I'd jump in my car, go up the coast, go to Utah...
go anywhere, until the day I go mad enough to rent a U-haul 
and move three states away....to really end it for the last 
time..."the mad...ass, son of a bitch." 

After four months, three or four hundred dollars in phone calls,
a new woman for him, a one night stand for me, I'm back in 
town to make a new start. How did he get back in my bed? 
Marvelous, two weeks straight of love...two, three times a day. 
We couldn't get enough of each other. I felt like rolling all over 
him...in every direction. Soak up those feelings. 

It's not because he's a great poet. He is, I know that. It is all 
that magic on the sheets, in the afternoon, in the morning...at 
midnight, the real poetry. We've only split once this month. 

Small Press Review - May, 1973

big night on the town

---------------------

drunk on the dark streets of some city,
it's night, you're lost, where's your 
room?
you enter a bar to find yourself,
order scotch and water.
damned bar's sloppy wet, it soaks
part of one of your shirt
sleeves.
It's a clip joint-the scotch is weak.
you order a bottle of beer.
Madame Death walks up to you
wearing a dress.
she sits down, you buy her a
beer, she stinks of swamps, presses
a leg against you.
the bar tender sneers.
you've got him worried, he doesn't
know if you're a cop, a killer, a
madman or an
Idiot.
you ask for a vodka.
you pour the vodka into the top of
the beer bottle.
It's one a.m. In a dead cow world.
you ask her how much for head,
drink everything down, it tastes
like machine oil.

you leave Madame Death there,
you leave the sneering bartender
there.

you have remembered where
your room is.
the room with the full bottle of
wine on the dresser.
the room with the dance of the
roaches.
Perfection in the Star Turd
where love died
laughing.

a challenge to the dark
-----------------------

shot in the eye
shot in the brain
shot in the ass
shot like a flower in the dance

amazing how death wins hands down
amazing how much credence is given to idiot forms of life

amazing how laughter has been drowned out
amazing how viciousness is such a constant

I must soon declare my own war on their war
I must hold to my last piece of ground
I must protect the small space I have made that has allowed me life

my life not their death
my death not their death...


finish
------

We are like roses that have never bothered to
bloom when we should have bloomed and
it is as if
the sun has become disgusted with
waiting


and the moon and the stars and the world

----------------------------------------

Long walks at night--
that's what good for the soul:
peeking into windows
watching tired housewives
trying to fight off
their beer-maddened husbands.

short order
-----------

I took my girlfriend to your last poetry reading,
she said.
yes, yes? I asked.
she's young and pretty, she said.
and? I asked.
she hated your
guts.

then she stretched out on the couch
and pulled off her
boots.
I don't have very good legs,
she said.

all right, I thought, I don't have very good
poetry; she doesn't have very good
legs.

scramble two.


the way the dead love
---------------------

There we are like rats--
rats with no place to hide,
rats with rent to pay.


A COUPLE OF WINOS 



I was in my 20's and although I was drinking heavily and not eating, I was still strong. I mean, physically, and that's some
luck for you when not much else is going right. My mind was in riot against my lot and life, and the only way I could calm it was
to drink and drink and drink. I was walking up the road, it was dusty and dirty and hot, and I believe the state was California,
but I'm no longer sure. It was desert land. I was walking along the road, my stockings hard and rotted and stinking, the nails
were coming up through the soles of my shoes and into my feet and I had to keep cardboard in my shoes--cardboard,
newspaper, anything that I could find. The nails worked through that, and you either got some more or you turned the stuff
around, or upsidedown, or reshaped it. 
The truck stopped alongside of me. I ignored it and kept walking. The truck started up again and the guy rode along
beside me. 
"Kid," the guy said, " you want a job?" 
"Who've I got to kill?' I asked. 
"Nobody," said the guy, "come on, get in." 
I went around to the other side and when I got there the door was open. I stepped up on the running board, slid in,
pulled the door shut and leaned back in the leather seat. I was out of the sun. 
"You wanna suck me," said the guy, "you get five bucks." 
I put the right hand hard into his gut, got the left somewhere in between the ear and the neck, came back with the right to
the mouth and the truck ran off the road. I grabbed the wheel and steered it back. Then I cut the motor and braked. I climbed
out and continued to walk along the road. About five minutes later the truck was running along next to me again. 
"Kid," said the guy, "I'm sorry. I didn't mean that. I didn't mean you were a homo. I mean, though, you kind of half-look
like a homo. Is there anything wrong with being a homo?" 
"I guess if you're a homo there's not." 
"Come on," said the guy, "get in. I got a real honest job for you. You can make some money, get on your feet." 
I climbed in again. We drove off. 
"I'm sorry," he said, "you got a real tough face, but look at your hands. You got ladies' hands." 
"Don't worry about my hands," I said. 
"Well, it's a tough job. Loadin' ties. You ever loaded ties? 
"No." 
"It's hard work." 
"I've done hard work all my life." 
"O.k.," said the guy, "o.k." 
We drove along not talking, the truck rocking back and forth. There was nothing but dust, dust and desert. The guy
didn't have much of a face, he didn't have much of anything. But sometimes small people who stay in the same place for a long
time achieve minor prestige and power. He had the truck and he was hiring. Sometimes you have to go along with that. 
We drove along and there was an old guy walking along the road. He must have been in his mid-forites. That's old for
the road.

 

VOLVER AL INDICE