чарльз буковски

death sat on my knee and cracked with laughter
I was writing three short stories a week
and sending them to the Atlantic Monthly
they would all come back.
my money went for stamps and envelopes
and paper and wine
and I got so thin I used to
suck my cheeks
together
and they’d meet over the top of my
tongue (that’s when I thought about
Hamsun’s Hunger—where he ate his own
flesh; I once took a bite of my wrist
but it was very salty).
anyhow, one night in Miami Beach (I
have no idea what I was doing in that
city) I had not eaten in 60 hours
and I took the last of my starving
pennies
went down to the corner grocery and
bought a loaf of bread.
I planned to chew each slice slowly—
as if each were a slice of turkey
or a luscious
steak
and I got back to my room and
opened the wrapper and the
slices of bread were green
and mouldy.
my party was not to be.
I just dumped the bread upon the
floor
and I sat on that bed wondering about
the green mould, the
decay.
my rent money was used up and
I listened to all the sounds
of all the people in that
roominghouse
and down on the floor were
the dozens of stories with the
dozens of Atlantic Monthly
rejection slips.
it was early evening and I
turned out the light and
went to bed and
it wasn’t long before I
heard the mice coming out,
I heard them creeping over my
immortal stories and
eating the
green mouldy bread.
and in the morning
when I awakened
I saw that
all that was left of the
bread
was the green
mould.
they had eaten right to the
edge of the mould
leaving chunks of
it
among the stories and
rejection slips
as I heard the sound of
my landlady’s vacuum
cleaner
bumping down the
hall
slowly approaching my
door.

******

oh yes
I’ve been so
down in the mouth
lately
that sometimes when I
bend over to
lace my shoes
there are
three
tongues.

******

O tempora! O mores!
I get these girly magazines in the mail because
I’m writing short stories for them again
and here in these pages are these ladies
exposing their jewel boxes—
it looks more like a gynecologist’s
journal—
everything boldly and clinically
exposed
beneath bland and bored physiognomies.
it’s a turn-off of gigantic
proportions:
the secret is in the
imagination—
take that away and you have dead
meat.
a century back
a man could be driven mad
by a well-turned
ankle, and
why not?
one could imagine
that the rest
would be
magical
indeed!
now they shove it at us like a
McDonald’s hamburger
on a platter.
there is hardly anything as beautiful as
a woman in a long dress
not even the sunrise
not even the geese flying south
in the long V formation
in the bright freshness
of early morning.

******

true
one of Lorca’s best lines
is,
“agony, always
agony…”
think of this when you
kill a
cockroach or
pick up a razor to
shave
or awaken in the morning
to
face the
sun.

******

it’s funny, isn’t it? #2
when we were kids
laying around the lawn
on our
bellies
we often talked
about
how
we’d like to
die
and
we all
agreed on the
same
thing:
we’d all
like to die
fucking
(although
none of us
had
done any
fucking)
and now
that
we are hardly
kids
any longer
we think more
about
how
not to
die
and
although
we’re
ready
most of
us
would
prefer to
do it
alone
under the
sheets
now
that
most of
us
have fucked
our lives
away.

******

about the PEN conference
take a writer away from his typewriter
and all you have left
is
the sickness
which started him
typing
in the
beginning.

******

everybody talks too much
when
the cop pulled me
over
I
handed him my
license.
he
went back
to radio in
the make
and model
of my car
and
get clearance on
my plates.
he wrote
the ticket
walked
up
handed it
to me
to
sign.
I did
he gave
me
back the
license.
“how come
you
don’t
say
anything?”
he asked.
I shrugged
my
shoulders.
“well, sir,”
he
said, “have
a
good day
and
drive
carefully.”
I
noticed
some sweat
on his
brow
and the
hand
that held
the
ticket
seemed to
be
trembling
or
perhaps
I
was only
imagining it?
anyhow
I
watched him
move
toward
his
bike
then I
pulled
away…
when confronted
with
dutiful
policemen
or
women
in rancor
I
have nothing
to
say
to them
for
if I
truly
began
it would
end
in
somebody’s
death:
theirs or
mine
so
I
let them
have
their
little
victories
which
they need
far
more
than
I
do.

******

love poem to a stripper
50 years ago I watched the girls
shake it and strip
at The Burbank and The Follies
and it was very sad
and very dramatic
as the light turned from green to
purple to pink
and the music was loud and
vibrant,
now I sit here tonight
smoking and
listening to classical
music
but I still remember some of
their names: Darlene, Candy, Jeanette
and Rosalie.
Rosalie was the
best, she knew how,
and we twisted in our seats and
made sounds
as Rosalie brought magic
to the lonely
so long ago.
now Rosalie
either so very old or
so quiet under the
earth,
this is the pimple-faced
kid
who lied about his
age
just to watch
you.
you were good, Rosalie
in 1935,
good enough to remember
now
when the light is
yellow
and the nights are
slow.

******

my buddy
for a 21-year-old boy in New Orleans I wasn’t worth
much: I had a dark small room that smelled of
piss and death
yet I just wanted to stay in there, and there were
two lively girls down at the end of the hall who
kept knocking on my door and yelling, “Get up!
There are good things out here!”
“Go away,” I told them, but that only
goaded
them on, they left notes under my door and
scotch-taped flowers to the
doorknob.
I was on cheap wine and green beer and
dementia…
I got to know the old guy in the next
room, somehow I felt old like
him; his feet and ankles were swollen and he couldn’t
lace his shoes.
each day about one p.m. we went for a walk
together and it was a very slow
walk: each step was painful for
him.
as we came to the curbing I helped him
up and down
gripping him by an elbow
and the back of his
belt, we made it.
I liked him: he never questioned me about
what I was or wasn’t
doing.
he should have been my father, and I liked
best what he said over and
over: “Nothing is worth
it.”
he was a
sage.
those young girls should have
left him the
notes and the
flowers

******

no nonsense
Faulkner loved his whiskey
and along with the
writing
he didn’t have
time
for much
else.
he didn’t open
most of his
mail
just held it up
to the light
and if it didn’t
contain a
check
he trashed
it

******

marching through Georgia
we are burning like a chicken wing left on the grill of an
outdoor barbecue
we are unwanted and burning we are burning and unwanted we are
an unwanted
burning
as we sizzle and fry
to the bone
the coals of Dante’s Inferno spit and sputter beneath
us
and
above the sky is an open hand and
the words of wise men are useless
it’s not a nice world, a nice world it’s
not…
come on, try this nice burnt chicken-wing poem
it’s hot it’s tough not much
meat
but ’tis sadly sensible
and one or two bites ends it
thus

******

those girls we followed home
in Jr. High the two prettiest girls were
Irene and Louise,
they were sisters;
Irene was a year older, a little taller
but it was difficult to choose between
them;
they were not only pretty but they were
astonishingly beautiful
so beautiful
that the boys stayed away from them;
they were terrified of Irene and
Louise
who weren’t aloof at all,
even friendlier than most
but
who seemed to dress a bit
differently than the other
girls:
they always wore high heels,
silk stockings,
blouses,
skirts,
new outfits
each day;
and,
one afternoon
my buddy, Baldy, and I followed them
home from school;
you see, we were kind of
the bad guys on the grounds
so it was
more or less
expected,
and
it was something:
walking along ten or twelve feet behind them;
we didn’t say anything
we just followed
watching
their voluptuous swaying,
the balancing of the
haunches.
we liked it so much that we
followed them home from school
every
day.
when they’d go into their house
we’d stand outside on the sidewalk
smoking cigarettes and talking.
“someday,” I told Baldy,
“they are going to invite us inside their
house and they are going to
fuck us.”
“you really think so?”
“sure.”
now
50 years later
I can tell you
they never did
—never mind all the stories we
told the guys;
yes, it’s the dream that
keeps you going
then and
now.

******

a tragic meeting
I was more visible and available then
and I had this great weakness:
I thought that going to bed with many women
meant that a man was clever and good and
superior
especially if he did it at the age of
55
to any number of bunnies
and I lifted weights
drank like mad
and did
that.
most of the women were nice
and most of them looked good
and only one or two were really dumb and
dull
but JoJo
I can’t even categorize.
her letters were slight, repeated
the same things:
“I like your books, would like to meet
you…”
I wrote back and told her
it would be
all right.
then along came the instructions
where I was to meet
her: at this college
on this date
at this time
just after her
classes.
the college was up in the
hills and
the day and time
arrived
and with her drawings
of twisting streets
plus a road map
I set out.
it was somewhere between the Rose Bowl
and one of the largest graveyards in
Southern California
and I got there early and sat in my
car
nipping at the Cutty Sark
and looking at the
co-eds—there were so many of
them, one simply couldn’t have
them all
then the bell rang and I got out of my
car and walked to the front of the
building, there was a long row of
steps and the students walked out of the
building and down the steps
and I stood and
waited, and like with airport
arrivals
I had no idea
which one
it would be.
“Chinaski,” somebody said
and there she was: 18, 19,
neither ugly nor beautiful, of
average body and features,
seeming to be neither vicious,
intelligent, dumb or
insane.
we kissed lightly and then
I asked her if she
had a car
and she said
she had a car
and I said, “fine, I’ll drive you
to it, then you follow
me…”
JoJo was a good follower, she followed me all
the way to my beat-up court in east
Hollywood.
I poured her a drink and we talked very
drab talk and kissed a
bit.
the kisses were neither good nor bad
nor interesting or un-
interesting.
much time went by and she drank very
little
and we kissed some more and she said,
“I like your books, they really do things
to me.”
“Fuck my books!” I told her.
I was down to my shorts and I had her
skirt up to her ass
and I was working hard
but she just kissed and
talked.
she responded and she didn’t
respond.
then
I gave up and started drinking
heavily.
she mentioned a few of the other
writers
she liked
but she didn’t like any of them
the way she liked
me.
“yeah,” I poured a new one, “is that
so?”
“I’ve got to get going,” JoJo said,
“I’ve got a class in the
morning.”
“you can sleep here,” I suggested, “and
get an early start, I scramble great
eggs.”
“no, thank you, I’ve got to
go…”
and she left with
several copies of my books
she had never seen
before,
copies I had given her
much earlier in the
evening.
I had another drink and decided to
sleep it off
as an unexplainable
loss.
I switched off the lights
and threw myself upon the
bed without
washing-up or
brushing my
teeth.
I looked up into the dark
and thought, now, here is one
I will never be able to
write about:
she was neither good nor bad,
real or unreal, kind or
unkind, she was just a girl
from a college
somewhere between the Rose Bowl and
the dumping grounds.
then I began to itch, I scratched
myself, I seemed to feel things
on my face, on my belly, I inhaled,
exhaled, tried to sleep but
the itching got worse, then
I felt a bite, then several bites,
things appeared to be
crawling on me…
I rushed to the bathroom
and switched on the light
my god, JoJo had fleas
I stepped into the shower
stood there
adjusting the water,
thinking,
that poor
dear
girl.

******

a good gang, after all
I keep hearing from the old dogs,
men who have been writing for
decades,
poets all,
they’re still at their
typers
writing better than
ever
past wives and wars and
jobs
and all the things that
happen.
many I disliked for personal
and artistic
reasons…
but what I overlooked was
their endurance and
their ability to
improve.
these old dogs
living in smoky rooms
pouring the
bottle…
they lash against the
typer ribbons: they came
to
fight.

******

there’s fire in the fingers and there’s fire in the shoes and there’s
fire in walking across a room
there’s fire in the cat’s eyes and there’s fire in the cat’s
balls
and the wrist watch crawls like a snake across the back of the
dresser
and the refrigerator contains 9,000 frozen red hot dreams
and as I listen to the symphonies of dead composers
I am consumed with a glad sadness
there’s fire in the walls
and the snails in the garden only want love
and there’s fire in the crabgrass
we are burning burning burning
there’s fire in a glass of water
the tombs of India smile like smitten motherfuckers
the meter maids cry alone at one a.m. on rainy nights
there’s fire in the cracks of the sidewalks
and
all during the night as I have been drinking and typing these
eleven or twelve poems
the lights have gone off and on
there is a wild wind outside
and in between times
I have sat in the dark here
electric (haha) typer off lights out radio off
drinking in the dark
lighting cigarettes in the dark
there was fire off the match
we are all burning together
burning brothers and sisters
I like it I like it I like
it.

******

late late late poem
you think about the time in
Malibu
after taking the tall girl
to dinner and drinks
you came out to the Volks
and the clutch was
gone
(no Auto Club card)
nothing out there but the
ocean and
25 miles to your
room
(her suitcase there
after an air trip from somewhere
in Texas)
and you say to her, “well,
maybe we’ll swim back in,” and
she forgets to
smile.
and the problem with
writing these poems
as you get into number 7 or
8 or 9
into the second bottle near
3 a.m.
trying to light your
cigarette with a book of
stamps
after already setting the
wastebasket on fire
once
is
that there is still some
adventure and joy
in typing
as the radio roars its
classical music
but the content
begins to get
thin.

******

working out
Van Gogh cut off his ear
gave it to a
prostitute
who flung it away in
extreme
disgust.
Van, whores don’t want
ears
they want
money.
I guess that’s why you were
such a great
painter: you
didn’t understand
much
else.

******

during my worst times
on the park benches
in the jails
or living with
whores
I always had this certain
contentment—
I wouldn’t call it
happiness—
it was more of an inner
balance
that settled for
whatever was occurring
and it helped in the
factories
and when relationships
went wrong
with the
girls.
it helped
through the
wars and the
hangovers
the backalley fights
the
hospitals.
to awaken in a cheap room
in a strange city and
pull up the shade—
this was the craziest kind of
contentment
and to walk across the floor
to an old dresser with a
cracked mirror—
see myself, ugly,
grinning at it all.
what matters most is
how well you
walk through the
fire.

******

it’s ours
there is always that space there
just before they get to us
that space
that fine relaxer
the breather
while say
flopping on a bed
thinking of nothing
or say
pouring a glass of water from the
spigot
while entranced by
nothing
that
gentle pure
space
it’s worth
centuries of
existence
say
just to scratch your neck
while looking out the window at
a bare branch
that space
there
before they get to us
ensures
that
when they do
they won’t
get it all
ever.

******

Рождён доходить

я сидел в общей камере,
и у всех сокамерников были наколки:
РОЖДЁН ДОХОДИТЬ
РОЖДЁН ПОДОХНУТЬ

каждый из них мог свернуть цыгарку
одной рукой.

если бы я упомянул Уоллеса Стивенса
или даже Пабло Неруду,
они сочли бы меня сумасшедшим.

я мысленно присвоил моим сокамерникам имена:
этот был Кафка
тот был Достоевский
этот был Блейк
тот был Селин
и вон тот был
Микки Спиллейн.

я не любил Микки Спиллейна.

и, конечно, вечером, когда погас свет,
мы сцепились – кому спать на
верхних нарах.

кончилось тем, что никому из нас не достались
верхние нары —
каждому достался карцер.

выйдя из одиночки,
я обратился к тюремщику:
я сказал ему, что я писатель,
чувствительная и одарённая душа
и что я желаю работать в библиотеке.

он добавил мне ещё двое суток карцера.

когда я вышел, меня отправили в обувной цех.

я работал с Ван Гогом, Шопенгауэром, Данте,
Робертом Фростом
и Карлом Марксом.

Спиллейна они отправили штамповать номерные знаки.

******

I could tell by the crouch of the cat,
the way it was flattened,
that it was insane with prey;
and when my car came upon it,
it rose in the twilight
and made off
with bird in mouth,
a very large bird, gray,
the wings down like broken love,
the fangs in,
life still there
but not much,
not very much.
the broken love-bird
the cat walks in my mind
and I cannot make him out:
the phone rings,
I answer a voice,
but I see him
again and again,
and the loose wings
the loose gray wings,
and this thing held
in a head that knows no mercy;
it is the world, it is ours;
I put the phone down
and the cat-sides of the room
come in upon me
and I would scream,
but they have places for people
who scream;
and the cat walks
the cat walks forever
in my brain.

******

a poem is a city

a poem is a city filled with streets and sewers
filled with saints, heroes, beggars, madmen,
filled with banality and booze,
filled with rain and thunder and periods of
drought, a poem is a city at war,
a poem is a city asking a clock why,
a poem is a city burning,
a poem is a city under guns
its barbershops filled with cynical drunks,
a poem is a city
where God rides naked
through the streets like Lady Godiva,
where dogs bark at night, and chase away
the flag; a poem is a city of poets,
most of them quite similar
and envious and bitter…
a poem is this city now,
50 miles from nowhere,
9:09 in the morning,
the taste of liquor and cigarettes,
no police, no lovers, walking the streets,
this poem, this city, closing its doors,
barricaded, almost empty,
mournful without tears, aging without pity,
the hardrock mountains,
the ocean like a lavender flame,
a moon destitute of greatness,
a small music from broken windows…
a poem is a city, a poem is a nation,
a poem is the world…
and now I stick this under glass
for the mad editor’s scrutiny,
and night is elsewhere
and faint gray ladies stand in line,
dog follows dog to estuary,
the trumpets bring on gallows
as small men rant at things
they cannot do.

******

I thought of ships, of armies, hanging on…

I have practiced
death for so long
and still I have not learned it,
and tonight I came in
and my goldfish was not in his bowl,
he had leaped
for reasons of his own
(I had changed the water; it might have been
a fly…)
and he was now on the rug
with black spots upon his golden body,
and he was still and he was stiff
but I put him back in the water
(some sound told me to do this)
and I seemed to see the gills move,
a large air bubble formed
but the body was
still stiff
but miraculously
it did not float flat—
the tail part was down in the water,
and I thought of ships, of armies,
hanging on,
and then I saw the small fins
near the underside of the head
move
and I sat down on the couch
and tried to read,
tried not to think
that the woman who had given me these fish
was now dead 6 months,
the world going on past living things
now no longer living,
and the other fish had died.
he had overeat
en, he had eaten his meal
and most of the meal of the small one,
and now the woman was gone
and the small one was stiff,
and an hour later
when I got up
he floated flat and finished;
his eyes looking up at me did not look at me
but into places I could not see,
and the slave carried the master,
this goldfish with black spots
and dumped him into the toilet
and flushed him away.
I put the bowl in the corner
and thought, I really cannot stand
much more of this.
dead fish, dead ladies, dead wars.
it does seem a miracle to see anybody alive
and now somebody on the radio is playing
a guitar very slowly and I think, yes,
he too: his fingers, his hands, his mind,
and his music goes on but it is very still
it is very quiet, and I am tired.

******

the screw-game

one of the terrible things is
really
being in bed
night after night
with a woman you no longer
want to screw.
they get old, they don’t look very good
anymore—they even tend to
snore, lose
spirit.
so, in bed, you turn sometimes,
your foot touches hers—
god, awful!—
and the night is out there
beyond the curtains
sealing you together
in the
tomb.
and in the morning you go to the
bathroom, pass in the hall, talk,
say odd things; eggs fry, motors
start.
but sitting across
you have 2 strangers
jamming toast into mouths
burning the sullen head and gut with
coffee.
in 10 million
places in America
it is the same—
stale lives propped against each
other
and no place to
go.
you get in the car
and you drive to work
and there are more strangers there, most of them
wives and husbands of somebody
else, and besides the guillotine of work, they
flirt and joke and pinch, sometimes tend to
work off a quick screw somewhere—
they can’t do it at home—
and then
the drive back
home
waiting for Christmas or Labor Day or
Sunday or
something

******

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