чарльз буковски

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.

******

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.

******

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…”

******

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.

******

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.

******

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.

******

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.

******

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.

******

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.

******

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.

******

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 souls of dead animals

after the slaughterhouse
there was a bar around the corner
and I sat in there
and watched the sun go down
through the window,
a window that overlooked a lot
full of tall dry weeds.
I never showered with the boys at the
plant
after work
so I smelled of sweat and
blood.
the smell of sweat lessens after a
while
but the blood-smell begins to fulminate
and gain power.
I smoked cigarettes and drank beer
until I felt good enough to
board the bus
with the souls of all those dead
animals riding with
me;
heads would turn slightly
women would rise and move away from
me.
when I got off the bus
I only had a block to walk
and one stairway up to my
room
where I’d turn on my radio and
light a cigarette
and nobody minded me
at all.

******

the knifer

you knifed me, he said, you told Pink Eagle
not to publish me.
oh hell, Manny, I said, get off it.
these poets are very sensitive
they have more sensitivity than talent,
I don’t know what to do with them.
just tonight the phone rang and
it was Bagatelli and Bagatelli said
Clarsten phoned and Clarsten was pissed
because we hadn’t mailed him the
anthology, and Clarsten blamed me
for not mailing the anthology
and furthermore Clarsten
claimed I was trying to do him
in, and he was very
angry. so said
Bagatelli.
you know, I’m really beginning to feel like
a literary power
I just lean back in my chair and roll cigarettes
and stare at the walls
and I am given credit for the life and death of
poetic careers.
at least I’m given credit for the
death part.
actually these boys are dying off without my
help. The sun has gone behind the cloud.
I have nothing to do with the workings.
I smoke Prince Albert, drink Schlitz
and copulate whenever possible. believe in my
innocence and I might consider
yours.

******

the night I was going to die

the night I was going to die
I was sweating on the bed
and I could hear the crickets
and there was a cat fight outside
and I could feel my soul dropping down through the
mattress
and just before it hit the floor I jumped up
I was almost too weak to walk
but I walked around and turned on all the lights
then made it back to the bed
and again my soul dropped down through the mattress
and I leaped up
just before it hit the floor
I walked around and I turned on all the lights
and then I went back to bed
and down it dropped again and
I was up
turning on all the lights
I had a 7 year old daughter
and I felt sure she didn’t want me dead
otherwise it wouldn’t have
mattered
but all that night
nobody phoned
nobody came by with a beer
my girlfriend didn’t phone
all I could hear were the crickets and it was
hot
and I kept working at it
getting up and down
until the first of the sun came through the window
through the bushes
and then I got on the bed
and the soul stayed
inside at last and
I slept.
now people come by
beating on the doors and windows
the phone rings
the phone rings again and again
I get great letters in the mail
hate letters and love letters.
everything is the same again.

******

face of a political candidate on a street billboard

there he is:
not too many hangovers
not too many fights with women
not too many flat tires
never a thought of suicide
not more than three toothaches
never missed a meal
never in jail
never in love
7 pairs of shoes
a son in college
a car one year old
insurance policies
a very green lawn
garbage cans with tight lids
he’ll be elected

******

the proud thin dying

I see old people on pensions in the
supermarkets and they are thin and they are
proud and they are dying
they are starving on their feet and saying
nothing. long ago, among other lies,
they were taught that silence was
bravery. now, having worked a lifetime,
inflation has trapped them. they look around
steal a grape
chew on it. finally they make a tiny
purchase, a day’s worth.
another lie they were taught:
thou shalt not steal.
they’d rather starve than steal
(one grape won’t save them)
and in tiny rooms
while reading the market ads
they’ll starve
they’ll die without a sound
pulled out of roominghouses
by young blond boys with long hair
who’ll slide them in
and pull away from the curb, these
boys
handsome of eye
thinking of Vegas and pussy and
victory.
it’s the order of things: each one
gets a taste of honey
then the knife.

******

metamorphosis

a girlfriend came in
built me a bed
scrubbed and waxed the kitchen floor
scrubbed the walls
vacuumed
cleaned the toilet
the bathtub
scrubbed the bathroom floor
and cut my toenails and
my hair.
then
all on the same day
the plumber came and fixed the kitchen faucet
and the toilet
and the gas man fixed the heater
and the phone man fixed the phone.
now I sit here in all this perfection.
it is quiet.
I have broken off with all 3 of my girlfriends.
I felt better when everything was in
disorder.
it will take me some months to get back to
normal:
I can’t even find a roach to commune with.
I have lost my rhythm.
I can’t sleep.
I can’t eat.
I have been robbed of
my filth.

******

trashcan lives
the wind blows hard tonight
and it’s a cold wind
and I think about
the boys on the row.
I hope some of them have a bottle
of red.
it’s when you’re on the row
that you notice that
everything
is owned
and that there are locks on
everything
this is the way a democracy
works:
you get what you can,
try to keep that
and add to it
if possible.
this is the way a dictatorship
works too
only they either enslave or
destroy their
derelicts.
we just forget
ours.
in either case
it’s a hard
cold
wind

******

no help for that
there is a place in the heart that
will never be filled
a space
and even during the
best moments
and
the greatest
times
we will know it
we will know it
more than
ever
there is a place in the heart that
will never be filled
and
we will wait
and
wait
in that
space.

******

well, that’s just the way it is…
sometimes when everything seems at
its worst
when all conspires
and gnaws
and the hours, days, weeks
years
seem wasted—
stretched there upon my bed
in the dark
looking upward at the ceiling
I get what many will consider an
obnoxious thought:
it’s still nice to be
Bukowski.

******

the freeway life
some fool kept blocking me and I finally got around him, and in the
elation of freedom I ran it up to 85 (naturally, first checking the rear
view for our blue suited protectors); then I felt and heard the SMASH of a hard
object upon the bottom of my car, but wanting to make the track I willed
myself to ignore it (as if that would
make it vanish) even though I began
to smell gasoline.
I checked the gas gauge and it seemed to be holding…
it had been a terrible week already
but, you know, defeat can strengthen just as victory can weaken, and if
you have the proper luck and the holy endurance the gods just might deliver
the proper admixture…
then
traffic backed up and stopped, and then I really smelled gas and I saw my
gas gauge dipping rapidly, then my radio told me that a man
3 miles up
on the Vernon overpass had one leg over the side and was threatening
suicide,
and there I was threatened with being blown to hell
as people yelled at me that my tank was broken and pouring gasoline;
yes, I nodded back, I know, I know…
meanwhile, waving cars off and working my way over to the outer lane
thinking, they are more terrorized than I am:
if I go, those nearby might go also.
there was no motion in the traffic—the suicide was still trying to make
up his mind and my gas gauge dipped into the red
and then the necessity of being a proper citizen and waiting for opportunity
vanished and I made my move
up and over a cement abutment
bending my right front wheel
I made it to the freeway exit which was totally
clear
then worked on down to a gas station on Imperial Highway
parked it
still dripping gas, got out, made it to the phone, got in a call
for the tow truck, not a long wait at all, nice drive back in with a black
fellow who told me strange stories about stranded motorists…
(like one woman, her hands were frozen to the wheel, took 15 minutes of
talking and prying to make her let go.)
had the car back in a couple of days, was driving back from the track,
hit the brake and it wouldn’t go down, luckily I wasn’t on the freeway
yet, cut the ignition, glided to the curb, noted that the steering
column cover had ripped loose and blocked the brake, ripped that away, then
ripped some more to make sure, then a
whole mass of wires spilled out,
s h i t…
I turned the key, hit the gas but the car STARTED
and I drove off with the dangling wires against my leg
thinking
do these things happen to other
people or am
I just the chosen one?
I decided it was the latter and got onto the freeway where
some guy in a volks swung over and blocked my
lane
whereupon I swung around the son-of-a-bitch and hit
75, 80, 85…
thinking, the courage it took to get out of bed each
morning
to face the same things
over and over
was
enormous.

******

the crazy truth
the nut in the red outfit
came walking down the street
talking to himself
when a hotshot in a sports car
cut into an alley
in front of the nut
who hollered, “HEY, DOG DRIP!
SWINE SHIT! YOU GOT PEANUTS FOR
BRAINS?”
the hotshot braked his sports
car, backed toward the nut,
stopped,
said: “WHAT’S THAT YOU SAID,
BUDDY?”
“I said, YOU BETTER
DRIVE OFF WHILE YOU CAN,
ASSHOLE!”
the hotshot had his girl in the
car with him and started to
open the door.
“YOU BETTER NOT GET OUT OF THAT
CAR, PEANUT BRAIN!”
the door closed and the sports car
roared
off.
the nut in the red outfit then
continued to walk down the
street.
“THERE AIN’T NOTHIN’ NOWHERE,”
he said, “AND IT’S GETTING TO BE
LESS THAN NOTHING ALL THE
TIME!”
it was a great day
there on 7th Street just off
Weymouth
Drive.

******

drive through hell
the people are weary, unhappy and frustrated, the people are
bitter and vengeful, the people are de
luded and fearful, the
people are angry and uninventive
and I drive among them on the freeway and they project
what is left of themselves in their manner of driving—
some more hateful, more thwarted than others—
some don’t like to be passed, some attempt to keep others
from passing
—some attempt to block lane changes
—some hate cars of a newer, more expensive model
—others in these cars hate the older cars.
the freeway is a circus of cheap and petty emotions, it’s
humanity on the move, most of them coming from some place they
hated and going to another they hate just as much or
more.
the freeways are a lesson in what we have become and
most of the crashes and deaths are the collision
of incomplete beings, of pitiful and demented
lives.
when I drive the freeways I see the soul of humanity of
my city and it’s ugly, ugly, ugly: the living have choked the
heart
away.
for the concerned:
if you get married they think you’re
finished
and if you are without a woman they think you’re
incomplete.
a large portion of my readers want me to
keep writing about bedding down with madwomen and
streetwalkers—
also, about being in jails and hospitals, or
starving or
puking my guts
out.
I agree that complacency hardly engenders an
immortal literature
but neither does
repetition.
of humanity of
my city and it’s ugly, ugly, ugly: the living have choked the
heart
away.

******

friends within the darkness
I can remember starving in a
small room in a strange city
shades pulled down, listening to
classical music
I was young I was so young it hurt like a knife
inside
because there was no alternative except to hide as long
as possible—
not in self-pity but with dismay at my limited chance:
trying to connect.
the old composers—Mozart, Bach, Beethoven,
Brahms were the only ones who spoke to me and
they were dead.
finally, starved and beaten, I had to go into
the streets to be interviewed for low-paying and
monotonous
jobs
by strange men behind desks
men without eyes men without faces
who would take my hours
break them
piss on them.
now I work for the editors the readers the
critics
but still hang around and drink with
Mozart, Bach, Brahms and the
Bee
some buddies
some men
sometimes all we need to be able to continue alone
are the dead
rattling the walls
that close us in.

******

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