чарльз буковски

lost

no
we can’t we can’t win it
I’ve decided we can’t win it
just for a while we thought we could
but that was just for a while
now we know we can’t win it
we can’t stand still and win it
or run and win it
or do right and win it
or do wrong and win it
somebody else is going to win it
that’s why somebody else is there and
we are here
it is terrible to be defeated
in what seems to count
it will happen
to accept it is impossible
to know it is more important
than doves or switchbrakes or
love.

******

hot

she was hot, she was so hot
I didn’t want anybody else to have her,
and if I didn’t get home on time
she’d be gone, and I couldn’t bear that—
I’d go mad…
it was foolish I know, childish,
but I was caught in it, I was caught.
I delivered all the mail
and then Henderson put me on the night pickup run
in an old army truck,
the damn thing began to heat halfway through the run
and the night went on
me thinking about my hot Miriam
and jumping in and out of the truck
filling mailsacks
the engine continuing to heat up
the temperature needle was at the top
HOT HOT
like Miriam.
I leaped in and out
3 more pickups and into the station
I’d be, my car
waiting to get me to Miriam who sat on my blue couch
with scotch on the rocks
crossing her legs and swinging her ankles
like she did,
2 more stops…
the truck stalled at a traffic light, it was hell
kicking it over
again…
I had to be home by 8, 8 was the deadline for Miriam.
I made the last pickup and the truck stalled at a signal
1/2 block from the station…
it wouldn’t start, it couldn’t start…
I locked the doors, pulled the key and ran down to the
station…
I threw the keys down…. signed out…
your god damned truck is stalled at the signal,
I shouted,
Pico and Western…
…I ran down the hall, put the key into the door,
opened it…. her drinking glass was
there, and a note:
sun of a bitch:
I wated until 5 after ate
you don’t love me
you sun of a bitch
somebody will love me
I been wateing all day

Miriam
I poured a drink and let the water run into the tub
there were 5,000 bars in town
and I’d make 25 of them
looking for Miriam
her purple teddy bear held the note
as he leaned against a pillow
I gave the bear a drink, myself a drink
and got into the hot
water.

******

love

love, he said, gas
kiss me off
kiss my lips
kiss my hair
my fingers
my eyes my brain
make me forget
love, he said, gas
he had a room on the 3rd floor,
rejected by a dozen women
35 editors
and half a dozen hiring agencies,
now I’m not saying he was any
good
he turned on all the jets
without lighting them
and went to bed
some hours later a guy on his
way to room 309
lit a cigar in the
hall
and a sofa flew out the window
one wall shivered down like wet sand
a purple flame waved 40 feet high in the air
the guy in bed
didn’t know or care
but I’d have to say
he was pretty good
that day.

******

the way

murdered in the alleys of the land
frost-bitten against flagpoles
pawned by females
educated in the dark for the dark
vomiting into plugged toilets
in rented rooms full of roaches and mice
no wonder we seldom sing
day or noon or night
the useless wars
the useless years
the useless loves
and they ask us,
why do you drink so much?
well, I suppose the days were made
to be wasted
the years and the loves were made
to be wasted.
we can’t cry, and it helps to laugh—
it’s like letting out
dreams, ideals,
poisons
don’t ask us to sing,
laughing is singing to us,
you see, it was a terrible joke
Christ should have laughed on the cross,
it would have petrified his killers
now there are more killers than ever
and I write poems for them.

******

out of the arms…

out of the arms of one love
and into the arms of another
I have been saved from dying on the cross
by a lady who smokes pot
writes songs and stories,
and is much kinder than the last,
much much kinder,
and the sex is just as good or better.
it isn’t pleasant to be put on the cross
and left there,
it is much more pleasant to forget a love which didn’t
work
as all love
finally
doesn’t work…
it is much more pleasant to make love
along the shore in Del Mar
in room 42, and afterwards
sitting up in bed
drinking good wine, talking and touching
smoking
listening to the waves…
I have died too many times
believing and waiting, waiting
in a room
staring at a cracked ceiling
waiting for the phone, a letter, a knock, a sound…
going wild inside
while she danced with strangers in nightclubs…
out of the arms of one love
and into the arms of another
it’s not pleasant to die on the cross,
it’s much more pleasant to hear your name whispered in
the dark.

******

he spoke to mice and sparrows
and his hair was white at the age of 16.
his father beat him every day and his mother
lit candles in the church.
his grandmother came while the boy slept
and prayed for the devil to let loose his hold upon
him
while his mother listened and cried over the
bible.
he didn’t seem to notice young girls
he didn’t seem to notice the games boys played
there wasn’t much he seemed to notice
he just didn’t seem interested.
he had a very lárge, ugly mouth and the teeth
stuck out
and his eyes were small and lusterless.
his shoulders were slumped and his back was bent
like an old man’s.
he lived in our neighborhood.
we talked about him when we got bored and then
went on to more interesting things.
he seldom left his house. we would have liked to
torture him
but his father
who was a huge and terrible man
tortured him for
us.
one day the boy died. at 17 he was still a
boy. a death in a small neighborhood is noted with
alacrity, and then forgotten 3 or 4 days
later.
but the death of this boy seemed to stay with us
all. we kept talking about it
in our boy-men’s voices
at 6 p.m. just before dark
just before dinner.
and whenever I drive through that neighborhood now
decades later
I still think of his death
while having forgotten all the other deaths
and everything else that happened
then.

******

hey, dolly

she left me 5 weeks ago and went to Utah.
that is, I think she left.
the other day I went out to mail her a letter
and I saw her sitting on the bus stop bench,
it was her hair there
from behind
and all the pounding started in me again
I walked up quickly and looked at the face—
it was somebody else. freckles, pugnose, greeneyes,
nothing, nothing.
then I was on Western Avenue going from bar to bar
and I saw her in front of me again.
I saw those tight pants, I knew that ass,
and there was the hair again,
and the way she walked,
I walked faster to catch her,
I got even with her and saw her face—
an Indian’s nose, blue eyes, a mouth like a frog—
nothing, nothing, nothing.
then there was a girl in a bar playing piano.
it wasn’t her but when the hair fell in a certain way,
for a moment, it was. and the hair was the same length
and the lips were similar but not the same, and
she saw me looking while she was singing, I was drunk,
of course, it helped the delusion, and she
said, is there anything special you want to hear?
Dolly, I said, and she sang—
Hey, Dolly…
just now I looked up and she was
across the street.
she walked out of the apartment across the street
with a young blond man and she stood there in sun glasses,
and I thought, what’s she doing across the street in
sun glasses, and she smiled at me through the window
but she didn’t wave and then she got in the car with the
young man, it was a new car, small and red, expensive,
and they drove away toward the west. I’m sure it was
her, this time.

******

a poorly night

you came out, she said,
and then you kicked this guy’s car
and then you threw yourself into a bush
you crushed the whole
bush,
I don’t know what your agony is all
about
but don’t you think you should see a shrink?
I’ve got an awful good shrink, you’d
like him.
answer me, she said,
I get worried about the police when you
act like that, I’m very paranoid about the
police.
answer me, she said, why do you
act like that?
listen, she said, do you want me to
leave?
after she left I picked up a chair and
threw it out the window, there was much
glass and the screen was broken
too.
how many dead beasts float and walk from Wales to
Los Angeles?

******

looking for a job

it was Philly and the bartender said
what and I said, gimme a draft, Jim,
got to get the nerves straight, I’m
going to look for a job. you, he said,
a job?
yeah, Jim, I saw something in the paper,
no experience necessary.
and he said, hell, you don’t want a job,
and I said, hell no, but I need money,
and I finished the beer
and got on the bus and I watched the numbers
and soon the numbers got closer
and then I was right there
and I pulled the cord and the bus stopped and
I got off.
it was a large building made of tin
the sliding door was stuck in the dirt
I pulled it back and went in
and there wasn’t any floor, just more ground,
lumpy, wet, and it stank
and there were sounds like things being sawed in half
and things drilled and it was dark
and men walked on girders overhead
and men pushed trucks across the ground
and men sat at machines doing things
and there were shots of lightning and thunder
and suddenly a bucket full of flame came swinging at
my head, it roared and boiled with flame
it hung from a loose chain and it came right at me
and somebody hollered, HEY, LOOK OUT!
and I just ducked under the bucket
feeling the heat go over me,
and somebody asked,
WHAT DO YOU WANT?
and I said, WHERE IS YOUR NEAREST CRAPPER?
and I was told
and I went inside
then came out and saw silhouettes of men
moving through flame and sound and
I walked to the door, got outside, and
took the bus back to the bar and sat down
and ordered another draft, and Jim asked,
what happened? I said, they didn’t want me, Jim.
then this whore came in and sat down and everybody
looked at her, she looked fine, and I remember it
was the first time in my life I almost wished I had a
vagina and clit instead of what I had, but in 2 or 3 days
I got over that and I was reading the
want ads again.

******

the 8 count

this one
always arrives at the wrong time
a basically good sort
I suppose
an honest man
but he doesn’t take the 8 count
well
we’re all beaten
but somehow
it’s the manner in which he takes the count
after a visit from him
I am sickened for 3 or 4 days
I give him board and shelter and sometimes
money
but how he snarls and bitches
sucking at my cans of beer
if he expects deliverance in return for what he gives
he isn’t going to get deliverance
because he doesn’t give anything
no light
no love
no laughter no learning
nothing to
remember
the way of this one sickens me
he brings me sorrow when I have sorrow
he brings me madness when I have madness
I am a selfish man
over his last sweaty handshake
I told him I could carry him no longer
now when my soul has to puke
it will puke of its own
volition
and not from a
knock upon the
door.

******

the fisherman

he comes out at 7:30 a.m. every day
with 3 peanut butter sandwiches, and
there’s one can of beer
which he floats in the baitbucket.
he fishes for hours with a small trout pole
three-quarters of the way down the pier.
he’s 75 years old and the sun doesn’t tan him,
and no matter how hot it gets
the brown and green lumberjack stays on.
he catches starfish, baby sharks, and mackerel;
he catches them by the dozen,
speaks to nobody.
sometime during the day
he drinks his can of beer.
at 6 p.m. he gathers his gear and his catch
walks down the pier
across several streets
where he enters a small Santa Monica
apartment
goes to the bedroom and opens the evening paper
as his wife throws the starfish, the sharks, the mackerel
into the garbage
he lights his pipe
and waits for dinner.

******

warm asses

this Friday night
the Mexican girls at the Catholic carnival
look especially good
their husbands are in the bars
and the Mexican girls look young
hawk-nosed with cruel strong eyes,
asses warm in tight bluejeans
they have been taken somehow,
their husbands are tired of those warm asses
and the young Mexican girls walk with their children,
there is real sorrow in their cruel strong eyes,
as they remember nights when their handsome men—
not now any longer handsome—
said such beautiful things to them
beautiful things they will never hear again,
and under the moon and in the flashing of the
carnival lights
I see it all and I stand quietly and mourn for them.
they see me looking—
the old goat is looking at us
he’s looking at our eyes;
they smile at each other, talk, walk off together,
laugh, look at me over their shoulders.
I walk over to a booth
put a dime on number eleven and win a chocolate cake
with 13 colored suckers stuck in the
top.
that’s fair enough for an ex-Catholic
and an admirer of warm and young and
no-longer used
mournful Mexican asses.

******

wax job

man, he said, sitting on the steps
your car sure needs a wash and wax job
I can do it for you for 5 bucks,
I got the wax, I got the rags, I got everything
I need.
I gave him the 5 and went upstairs.
when I came down 4 hours later
he was sitting on the steps drunk
and offered me a can of beer.
he said he’d get the car the next
day.
the next day he got drunk again and
I loaned him a dollar for a bottle of
wine, his name was Mike
a world war II veteran.
his wife worked as a nurse.
the next day I came down and he was sitting
on the steps and he said,
you know, I been sitting here looking at
ur car,
wondering just how I was gonna do it,
I wanna do it real good.
the next day Mike said it looked like rain
and it sure as hell wouldn’t make any sense
to wash and wax a car when it was gonna rain.
the next day it looked like rain again.
and the next.
then I didn’t see him anymore.
a week later I saw his wife and she said,
they took Mike to the hospital,
he’s all swelled-up, they say it’s from the
drinking.
listen, I told her, he said he was going to wax my
car, I gave him 5 dollars to wax my
car.
he’s in the critical ward, she said,
he might die…
I was sitting in their kitchen
drinking with his wife
when the phone rang.
she handed the phone to me.
it was Mike. listen, he said, come on down and
get me, I can’t stand this
place.
I drove on down there, walked into the
hospital, walked up to his bed and
said, let’s go Mike.
they wouldn’t give him his clothes
so Mike walked to the elevator in his
gown.
we got on and there was a kid driving the
elevator and eating a popsicle.
nobody’s allowed to leave here in a gown,
he said.
you just drive this thing, kid, I said,
we’ll worry about the gown.
Mike was all puffed-up, triple size
but I got him into the car somehow
and gave him a cigarette.
I stopped at the liquor store for 2 six packs
then went on in. I drank with Mike and his wife until
11 p.m.
then went upstairs…
where’s Mike? I asked his wife 3 days later,
you know he said he was going to wax my car.
Mike died, she said, he’s gone.
you mean he died? I asked.
yes, he died, she said.
I’m sorry, I said, I’m very sorry
it rained for a week after that and I figured the only
way I’d get the 5 back was to go to bed with his wife
but you know
she moved out 2 weeks later
an old guy with white hair moved in there
and he had one blind eye and played the French Horn.
there was no way I could make it with
him.

******

some people

some people never go crazy.
me, sometimes I’ll lie down behind the couch
for 3 or 4 days.
they’ll find me there.
it’s Cherub, they’ll say, and
they pour wine down my throat
rub my chest
sprinkle me with oils.
then, I’ll rise with a roar,
rant, rage—
curse them and the universe
as I send them scattering over the
lawn.
I’ll feel much better,
sit down to toast and eggs,
hum a little tune,
suddenly become as lovable as a
pink
overfed whale.
some people never go crazy.
what truly horrible lives
they must lead.

******

laugh literary

listen, man, don’t tell me about the poems you
sent, we didn’t receive them,
we are very careful with manuscripts
we bake them
burn them
laugh at them
vomit on them
pour beer over them
but generally we return
them
they are
so
inane.
ah, we believe in Art,
we need it
surely,
but, you know, there are many people
(most people)
playing and fornicating with the
Arts
who only crowd the stage
with their generous unforgiving
vigorous
mediocrity.
our subscription rates are $4 a year.
please read our magazine before
submitting.

******

deathbed blues

if you can’t stand the heat, he says, get out of the
kitchen. you know who said that?
Harry Truman.
I’m not in the kitchen, I say, I’m in the
oven.
my editor is a difficult man.
I sometimes phone him in moments of doubt.
look, he answers, you’ll be lighting cigars with ten dollar
bills, you’ll have a redhead on one arm and a blonde
on the other.
other times he’ll say, look, I think I’m going to hire
V.K. as my associate editor. we’ve got to prune off
5 poets here somewhere. I’m going to leave it up
to him. (V.K. is a very imaginative poet who believes I’ve
knifed him from N.Y.C. to the shores of Hawaii.)
look, kid, I phone my editor, can you speak German?
no, he says.
well, anyhow, I say, I need some good new tires, cheap.
so you know where I can get some good new tires, cheap?
I’ll phone you in 30 minutes, he says, will you be in
in 30 minutes?
I can’t afford to go anywhere, I say.
he says, they say you were drunk at that reading
in Oregon.
ugly gossips, I answer.
were you?
I don’t
remember.
one day he phones me:
you’re not hitting the ball anymore. you are hitting the
bottle and fighting with all these
women. you know we got a good kid on the bench,
he’s aching to get in there
he hits from both sides of the plate
he can catch anything that ain’t hit over the wall
he’s coached by Duncan, Creeley, Wakoski
and he can rhyme, he knows
images, similes, metaphors, figures, conceits,
assonance, alliteration, metrics, yes
metrics like, you know—
iambic, trochaic, anapestic, spondaic,
he knows caesura, denotation, connotation, personification,
diction, voice, paradox, rhetoric, tone and
coalescence…
holy shit, I say, hang up and take a good hit of
Old Grandad. Harry’s still alive
according to the papers. but I decide rather than
getting new tires to get
a set of retreads instead.

******

on the circuit

it was up in San Francisco
after my poetry reading.
it had been a nice crowd
I had gotten my money
I had this place upstairs
there was some drinking
and this guy started beating up on a fag
I tried to stop him
and the guy broke a window
deliberately.
I told them all to
get out
and she started hollering down to the guy
who had beat on the fag
and he kept calling her name back up
and then I remembered she had vanished for an hour
before the reading.
she did those things.
maybe not bad things
but consistently careless things
and I told her we were through
and to get out
and I went to bed
then hours later she walked in
and I said, what the hell are you doing here?
she was all wild, hair down in her face,
you’re too callous, I said, I don’t want you.
it was dark and she leaped at me:
I’ll kill you, I’ll kill you!
I was still too drunk to defend myself
and she had me down on the kitchen floor
and she clawed my face and
bit a hole in my arm.
then I went back to bed and listened to her heels
going down the hill.

******

my friend, andre

this kid used to teach at Kansas U.
then they moved him out
he went to a bean factory
then he and his wife moved to the coast
she got a job and worked while
he looked for a job as an actor.
I really want to be an actor, he told me,
that’s all I want to be.
he came by with his wife.
he came by alone.
the streets around here are full of guys who
want to be actors.
I saw him yesterday.
he was rolling cigarettes.
I poured him some white wine.
my wife is getting tired of waiting, he said,
I’m going to teach karate.
his hands were swollen from hitting
bricks and walls and doors.
he told me about some of the great oriental
fighters. there was one guy so good
he could turn his head 180 degrees
to see who was behind him. that’s very hard to do,
he said.
further: it’s more difficult to fight 4 men properly placed
than to fight many more. when you have many more
they get in each other’s way, and a good fighter who has
strength and agility can do well.
some of the great fighters, he said,
even suck their balls up into their bodies.
this can be done—to some extent—because there are
natural cavities in the body…. if you stand upsidedown
you will notice this.
I gave him a little more white wine,
then he left.
you know, sometimes making it with a typewriter
isn’t so painful
after all.

******

wet night

the rag.
she sat there, glooming.
I couldn’t do anything with her.
it was raining.
she got up and left.
well, hell, here it is again, I thought
I picked up my drink and turned the radio up,
took the lampshade off the lamp
and smoked a cheap black bitter cigar
imported from Germany.
there was a knock on the door
and I opened the door
a little man stood in the rain
and he said,
have you seen a pigeon on your porch?
I told him I hadn’t seen a pigeon on my porch
and he said if I saw a pigeon on my porch
to let him know.
I closed the door
sat down
and then a black cat leaped through the
window and jumped on my
lap and purred, it was a beautiful animal
and I took it into the kitchen and we both ate a
slice of ham.
then I turned off all the lights
and went to bed
and that black cat went to bed with me
and it purred
and I thought, well, somebody likes me,
then the cat started pissing,
it pissed all over me and all over the sheets,
the piss rolled across my belly and slid down my sides
and I said: hey, what’s wrong with you?
I picked up the cat and walked him to the door
and threw him out into the rain
and I thought, that’s very strange, that cat
pissing on me
his piss was cold as the rain.
then I phoned her
and I said, look, what’s wrong with you? have you lost
your god damned mind?
I hung up and pulled the sheets off the bed
and got in and lay there listening to the rain.
sometimes a man doesn’t know what to do about things
and sometimes it’s best to lie very still
and try not to think at all
about anything.
that cat belonged to somebody
it had a flea collar.
I don’t know about the
woman.

******

the sound of human lives

strange warmth, hot and cold females,
I make good love, but love isn’t just
sex. most females I’ve known are
ambitious, and I like to lie around
on large comfortable pillows at 3 o’clock
in the afternoon, I like to watch the sun
through the leaves of a bush outside
while the world out there
holds away from me, I know it so well, all
those dirty pages, and I like to lie around
my belly up to the ceiling after making love
everything flowing in:
it’s so easy to be easy—if you let it, that’s all
that’s necessary.
but the female is strange, she is very
ambitious—shit! I can’t sleep away the day!
all we do is eat! make love! sleep! eat! make love!
my dear, I say, there are men out there
now
picking tomatoes, lettuce, even cotton,
there are men and women dying under the sun,
there are men and women dying in factories
for nothing, a pittance…
I can hear the sound of human lives being ripped to
pieces…
you don’t know how lucky we
are…
but you’ve got it made, she says,
your poems…
my love gets out of bed.
I hear her in the other room.
the typewriter is working.
I don’t know why people think effort and energy
have anything to do with
creation.
I suppose that in matters like politics, medicine,
history and religion
they are mistaken
also.
I turn on my belly and fall asleep with my
ass to the ceiling for a change.

******

burned

the kid went back to New York City to live with a woman
he met in a kibbutz.
he left his mother at the age of
32, a well-kept fellow, sense of humor and never
wore the same pair of shorts
more than one day. there he was
in the Puerto Rican section, she had a
job. he wanted iron bars on the windows and
ate too much fried chicken at 10 a.m.
in the morning after she went to
work. he had some money saved out of the
years and he fucked but he was really
afraid of
pussy.
I was sitting with Eileen in Hollywood
and I said:
I ought to warn the kid
so that when she turns on him
he’ll be
ready.
no, she said, let him be happy.
I let him be
happy.
now he’s back living with his
mother, he weighs three hundred and ten pounds
and eats all the time
and laughs all the time
but you ought to see his
eyes…
the eyes are sitting in the center of all that
flesh…
he bites into a chicken leg:
I loved her, he says to me,
I loved her.

******

hell hath no fury…

she was in her orange Volks waiting
as I walked up the street
with 2 six packs and a pint of scotch
and she jumped out
and began grabbing the beerbottles and
smashing them on the pavement
and she got the pint of scotch and
smashed that too,
saying: ho! so you were going to get her
drunk on this and fuck her!
I walked in the doorway where the other woman
stood halfway up the stairs,
then she ran in from the street
and up the stairs and hit the other woman
with her purse, saying:
he’s my man! he’s my man!
and then she ran out and
jumped into her orange Volks
and drove away.
I came out with a broom
and began sweeping up the glass
when I heard a sound
and there was the orange Volks
running on the sidewalk
and on me—
I managed to leap up against a wall
as it went by.
then I took the broom and began sweeping up
the glass again,
and suddenly she was standing there;
she took the broom and broke it into three
pieces,
then she found an unbroken beerbottle
and threw it at the glass window of the door.
it made a clean round hole
and the other woman shouted down from the
stairway: for God’s sake, Bukowski, go with
her!
I got into the orange Volks and we
drove off together.

******

pull a string, a puppet moves…

each man must realize
that it can all disappear very
quickly:
the cat, the woman, the job,
the front tire,
the bed, the walls, the
room; all our necessities
including love,
rest on foundations of sand—
and any given cause,
no matter how unrelated:
the death of a boy in Hong Kong
or a blizzard in Omaha…
can serve as your undoing.
all your chinaware crashing to the
kitchen floor, your girl will enter
and you’ll be standing, drunk,
in the center of it and she’ll ask:
my god, what’s the matter?
and you’ll answer: I don’t know,
I don’t know…

******

tougher than corned beef hash—

the motion of the human heart:
strangled over Missouri;
sheathed in hot wax in Boston;
burned like a potato in Norfolk;
lost in the Allegheny Mountains;
found again in a 4-poster mahogany bed
in New Orleans;
drowned and stirred with pinto beans
in El Paso;
hung on a cross like a drunken dog
in Denver;
cut in half and toasted in
Kalamazoo;
found cancerous on a fishing boat
off the coast of Mexico;
tricked and caged at Daytona Beach;
kicked by a nursery maid
in a green and white ghingham dress,
waiting table at a North Carolina
bus stop;
rubbed in olive oil and goat-piss
by a chess-playing hooker in the East
Village;
painted red, white, and blue
by an act of Congress;
torpedoed by a dyed blonde
with the biggest ass in Kansas;
gutted and gored by a woman
with the soul of a bull
in East Lansing;
petrified by a girl with tiny fingers,
she had one tooth missing,
upper front, and pumped gas
in Mesa;
the motion of the human heart goes on
and on
and on and on
for a while.

******

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