чарльз буковски

horseskull

******

fall out

they are closing the auto plants
out here in California
but a major company is promising
employment to laid-off workers
who will transfer to an Oklahoma
plant
travel expenses
paid.
so now
many of the families are
making the trek
in long caravans of cars
full of children and
possessions
just as in the 30’s
their elders had come here
from Oklahoma
in the same way
now they’re going back
to Oklahoma
with California accents
Grandchildren of the
Dust Bowl
because Japanese cars are
smaller, cheaper,
better
it’s like a little bit of
Hiroshima
in return
or a Japanese horror
movie
with an all-American
cast.

******

bad action

I got a seat down front and started
working on my figures
and a man in a red shirt and red
pants
sat down two seats away
opened a brown paper bag
and began chewing on a sandwich and
potato chips.
I got up, moved several seats
away,
then I heard a man’s voice behind
me:
“let’s see, there are seven of us,
aren’t there?”
and there were: women and men and
children.
I walked downstairs to the crapper,
found a booth, closed the door,
sat down and began working on my
figures again.
there was a rap from the stall to
my left:
“hey buddy…hey, buddy!”
“yeah?” I answered.
“get down on your knees, slip your
cock under the partition and I’ll
give you the best blow job you
ever had!”
I got out of there fast, went back
upstairs, found a seat, sat down
and then I felt something under my
right foot: a dead wren.
another reminder of death.
the public address system
came on:
“Ladies and Gentlemen, the Flag of
the United States of America!”
we all stood up.
the flag went up.
we all sat down.
sometimes being at the racetrack
is worse than being in the
county jail.

******

green

I’ve been drunk in front of cracked bathroom mirrors
in Southern towns of nowhere
holding a paring knife near the jugular vein and
grinning.
that’s when I first learned that stage play is
a great substitute for
reality:
the only separation between doing and
pretending to do
being that infinite hairline of
choice: a
choice between nothing and
nothing.
to awaken in the morning, to
find a place of
employment
where the workers accepted everything
but the dream of
escape.
there were so many places like
that.
there was a job in this town
in Louisiana
which I left each evening
tired and dulled
to that night again
pouring glassfuls and
looking out the
window and
thinking about a girl at
work
in an ill-fitting green dress
who cursed continually about
almost everything.
I only wanted to fuck her
once and
get out of
town.
I only got out of town,
which means I made a choice between
staying nowhere and going
nowhere,
and I imagine if she’s alive she’s
still cursing about
something
but I no longer hold the paring knife
near the jugular vein—
the end is getting
close enough
all by
itself.

******

the skaters

I am sitting at a table in the mall drinking coffee while
Linda shops.
I sit above the ice rink where the children skate
in the afternoon,
mostly young girls dressed in blues, reds, whites, greens,
purples, yellows, orange
they are all very good, swift, they spin and glide,
there are no collisions. even the tiniest child
very good, all—
tiny, larger and largest—
whirl through the open spaces as if they were one.
I like it, very much, but then I think
as they get older they will stop skating, they will
stop singing, painting, dancing,
their interests will shift to
survival,
the grace and the gamble will disappear.
but let’s not feel too bad:
this happens to animals too:
they play so long
then
stop…
then I see Linda, it appears that she has
found something that
pleases her, she rushes toward my table, she
waves,
laughing.
I stand up, wave, smile,
things seem very happy
as down below us they whirl and
glide.
some moments are nice, some are
nicer, some are even worth
writing
about.

******

sweater

I had to drive to Palos Verdes to do some business at the
savings and loan,
there wasn’t much of a line
which was good because there were only two tellers
young ladies
and I got one of them
but she couldn’t seem to work
the computer.
sometimes the computer was down.
I waited and watched her struggle.
8 minutes went by.
my lady came back to the window and told me
that the computer wouldn’t do something for
her.
“I’m new here,” she told
me,
then turning to the other girl
she asked,
“could you help me with this transaction?”
the other girl didn’t answer.
my lady tried again: “Louise, would you
please help me with this
transaction?”
“I’ll be right back,” Louise answered and
closed her window.
she then walked to one of the
tables
where an older woman was talking to a young man
wearing glasses.
Louise stopped about four feet from the
young man
folded her arms and began
listening.
then the young man spoke.
he had on a yellow sweater
only he didn’t have it on,
he had it thrown about his shoulders
and the two empty arms hung down over his
chest.
they continued to converse as I
watched.
the young man did most of the
talking
and as he did so he swayed
back and forth
ever so slightly
and the arms of his sweater swung
back and forth
back and forth
and he continued to talk and
sway
as I watched the empty arms
of his sweater swing
back and forth.
back and forth.
I don’t like people who wear
loose sweaters over their backs
with arms dangling
and these types usually wear
sunglasses pushed back
into their hair
and I could sense
that what he was talking about was
utterly drab
useless
and probably
untrue
and
he had the bland unworried face
of somebody
to whom nothing had happened
yet
and as I watched him sway and
talk
his sweater arms continuing to
swing
Louise stood there
four feet away
arms folded
listening,
and I thought,
this fellow has less
sense
than the common housefly,
and this Louise…
likewise.
she knew I was waiting.
I began walking toward
them,
I had to make the first post
at the racetrack
and these three were
being rude, dumb, as if it was a
natural order of business.
I had no idea what I was going to
say
but it was going to be
good.
they stopped talking as I
approached.
then I heard the voice
behind me:
“Mr. Chinaski!”
I stopped,
turned.
“I got the computer to
function!”
I wasn’t too happy to
hear that.
I went back to the counter
and we completed the
bookwork.
the girl apologized but
I told her it was
all right.
as I walked toward the
door
I needed to pass the
other three.
they were in the
same positions
and the young man was
still talking
but he no longer
swayed
and the arms of his
yellow sweater
no longer
swung
about.
we’d spoiled each others’
fucking
day.

******

out of the blue

she phoned me from a far away
state
“I could never argue with you,”
she told me,
“you’d just run out the door.
my husband’s not like that,
he sticks like glue.
he beats me.”
“I never believed in discussions,”
I said, “there’s nothing to
discuss.”
“you’re wrong,” she said, “you should
try to communicate.”
“‘communicate’ is an overused word like
‘love’,” I told her.
“but don’t you think two people can
‘love’?” she asked.
“not if they try to ‘communicate’,”
I answered.
“you’re talking like an asshole,”
she said.
“we’re having an argument,”
I said.
“no,” she said, “we’re trying to
communicate.”
“I’ve got to leave,” I said and hung
up, then took the phone off the
hook.
I looked at the phone.
what they didn’t understand was that
sometimes there was nothing to
save
except personal vindication of a
personal viewpoint
and that that was what was going to cause
that blinding white flash
one of these days.

******

funny

sometimes you are liked for all the wrong
reasons
or hated for all the wrong reasons
or given credit where there is
none.
I once lived with a woman who
said that I was the funniest man
she had ever met
and she often laughed
when I said something serious.
“oh,” she’d laugh, “you ought to be
in the entertainment
business!”
but when I tried to be funny
she’d say,
“what the hell do you mean by
that? you’re not
funny.”
I finally figured it out:
the truth is the funniest thing
around
because you seldom ever hear
it
and when you do
it astonishes you into
laughter.
and when you try to be funny
you often exaggerate the truth
and that’s not funny
at all…
well, this woman and I
finally separated
and the next one never said whether
I was funny or
not,
she just switched on the
tv
and laughed right along with
the laugh track
while I sat
demeaned and
depressed.

******

the hustle

the readings in those college towns were hell,
of course, but I liked the flying in and out,
drinking on the planes, and I liked the hotels,
the impersonal rooms.
the nights before the readings were best,
stretched out on the bed in a strange town,
the fifth of whiskey on the night stand,
and, you know, those hotels were quiet…
those southern hotels
and especially those midwestern hotels.
it was a stupid hustle but it beat the factories,
I knew that, but it was humorous to me
and ridiculous that
I was accepted as a POET
but after I examined the work of my compatriots
I no longer minded taking the money
and after hearing some of them read
I hardly felt the impostor at all
although I knew I was a bit crazy
especially after drinking
and that
I just might
some night
take out my hose and start pissing from the
podium…
some of the profs must have guessed
for after I accepted an invitation to read
most wrote back to me:
“I hope you won’t cost me my job…”
second best, I remember
the adoring eyes of the coeds
but first of all, like I said, I liked
all those hotel rooms the nights before the
readings
me sitting up in bed, smoking, sucking
on the fifth, sick of looking at the poems,
thinking, if I can fool them it’s all right,
worse have, many more will…
no wonder this world isn’t very
much
then I’d go for a big gulp from the fifth,
say, at 2:30 a.m.—
it was just like being back
home.

******

love

answering a letter to somebody in Alaska
the radio has been tuned in to a new wave
group and I have listened to their work
and found that the favorite word in
all their songs is
“love.”
the person in Alaska is young but dying,
considering suicide, and he wants to know
what I think
about it all, he wants an answer, he needs
one
and it’s a difficult letter to write
as the young boy on the radio sings
“walk out on me now, baby, and I’m
done…”
I change the station, get some classical
music, then my phone rings, it rings and
it rings
on a hot July night
nothing ever goes as it should, it
goes as it must, and I move toward the
telephone
even as warheads are
constantly shuttled
underground
on hidden railroad tracks
so that
enemy missiles cannot
locate them
I pick up the phone, say “hello,”
and
wait.

******

Big John of Echo Park

his wife worked and bought his
pills
and he sat in the big chair
six-feet-two and two-hundred-and
forty-five pounds
with
two thousand pounds of useless
junk spread
about the house.
he gathered and added to
this crap
almost every night
when he was
high.
scavenging the backyards and
garbage cans of the
neighborhood
and I
sat with him often
and we took pills
in mid-afternoon as
the world cranked
away.
he
was really a brilliant
fellow:
one day I
helped him carry out
2 weeks of dirty
dishes
and we spread them
about
in the yard
and he washed them down with
the garden
hose.
we took the
pills and
we talked for
hours
days
and he recorded it
all on tape, most of
it useless
gibberish, most of
it
mine.
I saw him
the other day
and he looked as fine
as ever,
hadn’t worked in
30 years
not even
at his writing:
the same
22 pages of very
strong
maybe great
writing
re-appearing
in the magazines
and given
from memory
at his
readings.
he knows that
ambition is
bullshit
shuck
and he can
point to
the fact
that
over the
decades
it has
destroyed
all those
we once
knew.
“you still with
Sally?” I asked, about
his wife.
“shit,” he
answered, “do you
think I’d ever let
a good thing like
that
get away?”
he always had this
way of
easily mastering
any
conversation.
it’s a
good thing
for many of us
in this stinking
racket
that he just
doesn’t like to
type
too much.

******

the puzzle

my neighbor is a nice guy but he utterly
confounds me:
he gets up very early in the morning, goes
to work;
his wife works, they have two lovely
children;
he is home in the evening, I sometimes see
the children, briefly see the
wife;
by 9 p.m. all the lights in their house are
out;
and his days repeat themselves like this;
he seems a fairly intelligent man
in his early 30’s;
the only explanation for his
routine is that he must
enjoy his
work
believe in
God,
sex,
family.
I don’t know why
but over there
I always expect some windows to break suddenly
I expect to hear some screams
hear obscene language
see lights at 3 a.m.
see
flying bottles
but for 5 years now
his routine has remained the
same
so
I take care of these other
things for
him
which
I don’t think his wife
appreciates:
“Hank, I could have
called the cops
many times but
I haven’t.”
sometimes
I’d like to call the
cops on them
but I don’t think the cops
would understand my
complaint
their red lights flashing,
white-faced in
dark blue:
“Sir, there’s no
law
against what they
are
doing…”

******

now

well,
now some eat to forget and some drink to forget and some
make love to forget
and some take drugs to forget and some go to movies to
forget
and some sleep to forget and some travel to forget and
some work crossword puzzles to forget and some
chop wood to forget and some
stand on their heads to forget
but what do they do to remember?
you can’t tell me many things they do to remember
like I write this poem to remember to forget
some go to the circus to forget
and some fly gliders to forget
some mix salads
some pole vault
some shave their skulls
some walk through fire
as the water boils over
as the president laces his shoes
as the can can girls can can
there are whole oceans full of the tears of agony
and my father sits across the room from me now with
his big fat jowls of shimmering slime
knowing I’m typing about him now
knowing that I’ve failed to remember to forget
I switch on the radio
get Stravinsky
note the dirt under my
fingernails
he’s
the best.

******

making it

I was a frenetic wretch of a man
I was with R. and C. and M. and L. and
we were always fucking and there were arguments
there was unhappiness and my penis hurt
from constant ejaculation
I was sucking breasts
I was down between thighs
I was on top
I was on the bottom
I couldn’t remember the last 7 times.
I’d get spasms just sitting in a chair
drinking a beer.
I sat on my reading glasses.
my veins were knotted in large bunches at my temples.
I got toothaches
backaches
headaches
I got flat tires everywhere
I got constipated
I didn’t comb my hair
but I was fucking—
sometimes I’d be down there
and she’d be down there
“now when I do it,” she’d say,
“you do it…”
I was standing in bathrooms with wet
washrags
continually.
I couldn’t clean the ring out of my toilet
but I was fucking and fighting
with R. and C. and M. and L.
they were always threatening to leave me
and I just couldn’t understand them.
I wasn’t good at war with women
I was too serious and they were
too good at it.
they were smarter than I was
and I felt worse and worse.
the more I fucked them and fought
with them
the worse I felt.
I became totally inept:
I couldn’t answer the doorbell or the
telephone,
I failed to make the bed
I couldn’t shave
I couldn’t brush my teeth
I got WARNING notices from the
phone company
from the water and power people
from the IRS
from Franchise Tax Board
I did send off for my license plate tab
but when it arrived
I promptly lost it…
but I was fucking
I got some groans from
R. and C. and M. and L. that sounded
real
but I never did ask any of them if
they climaxed.
I sure as hell did.
continually.
the skin of my penis
was raw to the touch—like fire—
the m.d. said no v.d.
he said, “Christ, give that thing a
rest. take a year off. find some
other hobby.”
but I continued.
I laughed but without happiness.
I had ulcer attacks.
I aged five years in six months.
yet my jealousies
consumed me, my imagination whirled
counter-clockwise in my brain.
I drove my auto recklessly
I lost jobs, found jobs, lost jobs,
drank and smoked continually.
I had insomnia
the skin peeled off the
backs of my hands.
I had no appetite but I kept fucking and
I didn’t know how to get out
of it.
I was caught there,
between legs lifted ceiling-
ward,
a man
doing it
again and again and again—
bedsheets, bedsteads, shades, curtains,
pillows, tits, breasts, buttocks.
the smell of love sometimes and the smell of sex
always
with R. and C. and M. and L….
but oftentimes
at the most intense and passionate
moments
I wished that I could be that
lonely fellow again
sitting in a movie house with
my bag of popcorn
as all about me
couples sat
side by side
together.

******

overhead mirrors

I wouldn’t say it was a particularly low time, it was
a time and I tried to adjust spiritually
to most matters.
which meant: not expecting much and not getting much.
but sickness is another matter.
I was living in a cheap court in Hollywood
in between women
and I was buying coke, really
low-grade crap, sniffing that with
beer and scotch.
I got mentally very depressed and physically
sick.
I couldn’t eat.
it got so I just ingested
coke, scotch and beer.
one morning it really got to me, I was trembling,
having visions…
I couldn’t even drink water…
I was
dying.
the only friends I had were a nudey dancer and
a guy who operated a porno bookstore. they
came by.
“listen, this is it,” I told them, “I’m
dying…”
“we’ll fix you up,” said the porno bookstore
guy (who was also selling me
the watered-down coke).
the nudey dancer shacked with him.
he came back with something pink in a
bottle.
“take this,” he said.
that was about noon.
about 6 p.m. the phone rang.
I picked it up.
“yes?”
it was the porno guy.
“Hank?”
“yes…”
“listen, Babs and I aren’t working tonight,
we’re going to a motel with over-
head mirrors and X-rated tv, we’re going to
relax and fuck.”
“good luck…”
“I know you’re sick, so we’re going to
give you the phone number at the
motel so you can call us in case of
trouble…”
“sure…”
“got a pencil?”
“yeh…”
“it’s…”
he gave me the number.
I didn’t have a pencil, I couldn’t
move.
“thanks,” I said.

it was one of those nights you remember.
(if you don’t fight death it will
just move in.)
at times I
got up
and walked around
turned the radio off and on, flushed the toilet
now and then, ran all the faucets in the place,
then shut them off, turned the lights off and
on, got back on the bed, rested but not too long,
got up, sipped water out of the tap,
sat in a chair and took some coins
out of my pocket and counted them: 25, 26, 27
cents…
I kept turning the water off and on, the lights
off and on, counting the coins and also very
sensibly putting one shoe parallel to the
other shoe and so forth…
as I went about my business I noticed that the
clock hardly moved:
the time always the same: 3:21 a.m.
then all at once, within a
minute
I noticed light coming in under the blinds—
daylight arriving
and when I saw that
I felt a bit better
went to bed
and slept flat on my belly as
usual…
the next night I was sitting on my couch
drinking a beer and eating a fried egg
sandwich between 2 slices of very dry
bread
when
my friends
the nudey dancer and the porno guy
came in.
“how you feeling?” he asked.
“o.k., except it’s my last beer and
I’m broke.”
“shit, man, come on down to our place,
we got plenty of everything…”
they did.
lovely place. I stayed with the beer
except for two vodka sevens and one little
yellow pill
and they had the stereo on
but not too loud
and I stayed
smoked two bombers
drank 18 or 19 beers
thanked them and walked back
home…
the next morning I didn’t puke.
I got up, took a good crap, took a
lukewarm bath, dressed and walked to the
corner of
Hollywood and Western
put a dime in the box
got a Herald-Examiner,
remembering decades back when there
was a newspaper in L.A.
called the Herald-Express and another
called the Examiner
and they merged rather than
kill each other off,
and carrying that paper back
I felt that I had lived a long
time
though not a very wonderful one,
I took the paper back to my place,
sat on the couch
and began to read it
fascinated, finally, with what the
other people
were doing.

******

ass but no class

one time
there was Rene who
had me drive her to a
department store
just before Xmas
and we walked around
as she stocked her
shopping cart with
little goodies, then
she said, “listen, I
can’t pay for these
things, can you buy
them for me?”
“nothin’ doin’,”
I told her.
“listen,” she said,
“you buy this stuff
and I’ll fuck you
like you never been
fucked before.”
so, I paid.
it came to
$145.63
at the counter she
happened to meet
her friends,
Jeff and Clara
and they
talked.
“listen,” she finally
told them, “why don’t
we all go to Hank’s and
have a drink?”
we went.
we sat around with the
drinks.
we drank those and had
some more.
Jeff and Clara
didn’t leave.
I saw Rene lean over
to Clara one time and
whisper something to
her.
I got it.
she was saying, don’t
leave me here alone with
him.
they all sat about
and then Clara and Jeff
said they had to leave
and Rene said she had to
leave too.
I left it
like that.
I let Rene leave.
she took her purchases
with her.
she was a young girl
and I was an old
man.
I watched them
walking away together
up the walk,
Rene with her
victorious
swish.
we’d been to bed
2 or 3
times
she thought, now,
it was enough for me
if she came around
once in a while
wired on speed
while we played
Scrabble all
night.
as they walked away,
I thought,
what an unimaginative
whore,
she has just walked away
from a potential
$200,000.00
I walked into the kitchen
pulled out a beer,
had a hit
and relegated her to a
lifetime of poverty
worse than the one
that I was living
at the
moment.

******

girls

I used to spend 3 days a week
driving one or the other of the
girls to various pharmacies
on Hollywood Boulevard.
how they got their prescriptions
I don’t know
whether they fucked their
doctors or murdered somebody
I don’t know
but they got them.
it was some circus.
one of the girls
phoned me: “Eddie is trying
to get my prescription! tell
Eddie to leave me alone!”
I got Eddie on the phone and
told him that I was going to
kick his ass, that I was on my
way over to do just that.
Eddie was her brother.
he lived there.
when I got there
he was gone.
“he couldn’t find the prescription,”
she told me, “I
had it in my mouth. I almost
swallowed it…”
she showed me the wadded wet piece of
paper, unfolded it and said,
“let’s go…”
I don’t know what it meant to
me.
usually it meant that when we got
back to my place and I took
some pills with the booze
I’d do something stupid
like busting out the
bathroom mirror or
slicing up my coffee table
with my buck knife.
although the girls looked
fairly good
there was not much sex
involved
it meant
letting one or the other of them
out of my car
at the prescription department
of some cheap pharmacy on
Hollywood Boulevard
at 10:35 a.m.
then looking for parking
finding one of them later
wobbling on high heels
looking helpless
but really totally vicious
snarling off any stupid dreamers
in the sidewalk mob
then seeing me,
moving forward
to another day and night
of pills and
alcohol
uppers downers
vodka wine beer brandy
it didn’t matter
until we were petrified
out of existence
until the next
time.

******

my friend

I loved bar room fights.
I fought the biggest meanest men
I could find.
the patrons thought I was
brave.
but it was something else, something
that walked and slept and sat with
me. it ate with me when I ate,
it drank with me when I drank.
I saw it everywhere: in loaves
of bread, on the back of a mouse
running up the wall, I saw it through
torn window shades, I saw it
in the bodies of beautiful women;
I never saw it in the sun but I saw it
in the rain and I noted it in insects;
and I saw it riding in buses
and trolley cars;
I saw it in the dresser drawer when I
pulled it open,
I saw it in the faces of
bosses with their dumb wet lips and
little rivet eyes: blue, brown,
green;
I heard it in the click of timeclocks,
saw it spread like powder across the
faces of my landladies;
I saw it on bar
stairways
leading to the 2nd
floor of some rooming house in
Houston, in New Orleans, in St. Louis,
in L.A., in Frisco;
and I saw it in the doorknobs and I saw
it in the rooms, sitting on the
beds
waiting nicely…
and in some bar
after hours of drinking
somebody says, “hey, Hank, you
ever tried Big Eddie?”
Big Eddie grins, I see it in his
teeth, I finish my beer,
nod at him, get up, walk to
the rear entrance, Big Eddie and
the crowd following, and outside
I see it in the moon and the
bricks
as the patrons lay their bets
I am the underdog, and as Big
Eddie charges I see it in his
feet and on the buttons of
his shirt and I hear a horn
sound somewhere far off, and
it’s as decent a thing as a man
can know.

******

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чарльз буковски

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