чарльз буковски

******

Sparks

the factory off Santa Fe Ave. was
best.
we packed heavy lighting fixtures into
long heavy boxes
then flipped the boxes into stacks
six high.
then the loaders would
come by
clear your table and
you’d go for the next six.
ten hour day
four on Saturday
the pay was union
pretty good for unskilled labor
and if you didn’t come in
with muscles
you got them soon enough
most of us in
white t-shirts and jeans
cigarettes dangling
sneaking beers
management looking
the other way
not many whites
the whites didn’t last:
lousy workers
mostly Mexicans and
blacks
cool and mean
now and then
a blade flashed
or somebody got
punched-out
management looking
the other way
the few whites who lasted
were crazy
the work got done
and the young Mexican girls
kept us
cheerful and hoping
their eyes flashing
messages
from the
assembly line.
I was one of the
crazy whites
who lasted
I was a good worker
just for the rhythm of it
just for the hell of it
and after ten hours
of heavy labor
after exchanging insults
living through skirmishes
with those not cool enough to
abide
we left
still fresh
we climbed into our old
automobiles to
go to our places
to drink half the night
to fight with our women
to return the next morning
to punch in
knowing we were
suckers
making the rich
richer
we swaggered
in our white t-shirts and
jeans
gliding past
the young Mexican girls
we were mean and perfect
for what we were
hungover
we could
damn well
do the job
but
it didn’t touch us
ever
those filthy peeling walls
the sound of drills and
cutting blades
the sparks
we were some gang
in that death ballet
we were magnificent
we gave them
better than they asked
yet
we gave them
nothing.

******

the last generation

it was much easier to be a genius in the twenties, there were
only 3 or 4 literary magazines and if you got into them
4 or 5 times you could end up in Gertie’s parlor
you could possibly meet Picasso for a glass of wine, or
maybe only Miró.
and yes, if you sent your stuff postmarked from Paris
chances of publication became much better.
most writers bottomed their manuscripts with the
word “Paris” and the date.
and with a patron there was time to
write, eat, drink and take drives to Italy and sometimes
Greece.
it was good to be photo’d with others of your kind
it was good to look tidy, enigmatic and thin.
photos taken on the beach were great.
and yes, you could write letters to the 15 or 20
others
bitching about this and that.
you might get a letter from Ezra or from Hem; Ezra liked
to give directions and Hem liked to practice his writing
in his letters when he couldn’t do the other.
it was a romantic grand game then, full of the fury of
discovery.
now
now there are so many of us, hundreds of literary magazines,
hundreds of presses, thousands of titles.
who is to survive out of all this mulch?
it’s almost improper to ask.
I go back, I read the books about the lives of the boys
and girls of the twenties.
if they were the Lost Generation, what would you call us?
sitting here among the warheads with our electric-touch
typewriters?
the Last Generation?
I’d rather be Lost than Last but as I read these books about
them
I feel a gentleness and a generosity
as I read of the suicide of Harry Crosby in his hotel room
with his whore
that seems as real to me as the faucet dripping now
in my bathroom sink.
I like to read about them: Joyce blind and prowling the
bookstores like a tarantula, they said.
Dos Passos with his clipped newscasts using a pink type-
writer ribbon.
D. H. horny and pissed-off, H. D. being smart enough to use
her initials which seemed much more literary than Hilda
Doolittle.
G. B. Shaw, long established, as noble and
dumb as royalty, flesh and brain turning to marble. a
bore.
Huxley promenading his brain with great glee, arguing
with Lawrence that it wasn’t in the belly and the balls,
that the glory was in the skull.
and that hick Sinclair Lewis coming to light.
meanwhile
the revolution being over, the Russians were liberated and
dying.
Gorky with nothing to fight for, sitting in a room trying
to find phrases praising the government.
many others broken in victory.
now
now there are so many of us
but we should be grateful, for in a hundred years
if the world is not destroyed, think, how much
there will be left of all of this:
nobody really able to fail or to succeed—just
relative merit, diminished further by
our numerical superiority.
we will all be catalogued and filed.
all right…
if you still have doubts of those other golden
times
there were other curious creatures: Richard
Aldington, Teddy Dreiser, F. Scott, Hart Crane, Wyndham
Lewis, the
Black Sun Press.
but to me, the twenties centered mostly on Hemingway
coming out of the war and beginning to type.
it was all so simple, all so deliciously clear
now
there are so many of us.
Ernie, you had no idea how good it had been
four decades later when you blew your brains into
the orange juice
although
I grant you
that was not your best work.

******

talking to my mailbox…

boy, don’t come around here telling me you
can’t cut it, that
they’re pitching you low and inside, that
they are conspiring against you,
that all you want is a chance but they won’t
give you a
chance.
boy, the problem is that you’re not doing
what you want to do, or
if you’re doing what you want to do, you’re
just not doing it
well.
boy, I agree:
there’s not much opportunity, and there are
some at the top who are
not doing much better than you
are
but
you’re wasting energy haranguing and
bitching.
boy, I’m not advising, just suggesting that
instead of sending your poems to me
along with your letters of
complaint
you should enter the
arena—
send your work to the editors and
publishers, it will
buck up your backbone and your
versatility.
boy, I wish to thank you for the
praise for some of my
published works
but that
has nothing to do with
anything and won’t help a
purple shit, you’ve just got to
learn to hit that low, hard
inside pitch.
this is a form letter
I send to almost everybody, but
I hope you take it
personally,
man.

******

some of my readers

I liked it coming out of that expensive
cafe in Germany
that rainy night
some of the ladies had learned that I
was in there
and as I walked out well-fed and
intoxicated
the ladies waved
placards
and screamed at me
but all I recognized was my
name.
I asked a German friend what they were
saying.
“they hate you,” he told me,
“they belong to the German Female
Liberation Movement…”
I stood and watched them, they were
beautiful and screaming, I
loved them all, I laughed, waved,
blew them kisses.
then my friend, my publisher and my
girlfriend got me into the car; the
engine started, the windshield wipers
began thrashing
and as we drove off in the rain
I looked back
watched them standing in that
terrible weather
waving their placards and their
fists.
it was nice to be recognized
in the country of my birth, that
was what mattered
most…

back at the hotel room
opening bottles of wine
with my friends
I missed them,
those angry wet
passionate ladies
of the night.

******

I don’t know how many bottles of beer
I have consumed while waiting for things
to get better.
I don’t know how much wine and whiskey
and beer
mostly beer
I have consumed after
splits with women—
waiting for the phone to ring
waiting for the sound of footsteps,
and the phone never rings
until much later
and the footsteps never arrive
until much later.
when my stomach is coming up
out of my mouth
they arrive as
fresh as spring flowers:
“what the hell have you done to yourself?
it will be 3 days before you can fuck me!”
the female is durable
she lives seven and one half years longer
than the male, and she drinks very little beer
because she knows it’s bad for the
figure.
while we are going mad
they are out
dancing and laughing
with horny cowboys.
well, there’s beer
sacks and sacks
of empty beer bottles
and when you pick one up
the bottles fall through the wet bottom
of the paper sack
rolling
clanking
spilling grey wet ash
and stale beer,
or the sacks fall over at 4 a.m.
in the morning
making the only sound in your life.
beer
rivers and seas of beer
beer beer beer
the radio singing love songs
as the phone remains silent
and the walls stand
straight up and down
and beer is all there is.

******

an art

all the way from Mexico
straight from the fields
to 14 wins
13 by k.o.
he was ranked #3
and in a tune-up fight
he was k.o’d by an unranked
black fighter who hadn’t fought
in 2 years.
all the way from Mexico
straight from the fields
the drink and the women had gotten
to him.
in the rematch he was k.o’d again
and suspended for 6 months.
all that way
for the bottle and 2 cases of
v.d.
he came back in a year
swearing he was clean, he’d
learned.
and he earned a draw with the
9th ranked in his division.
he came back for the rematch
and the fight was stopped in
the 3rd round because he
couldn’t protect
himself.
and he went all the way back
to Mexico
straight to the fields.
it takes a damned good poet
like me
to handle drink
and women
evade v.d.
write about failures
like him
and hold my ranking in the
top 10:
all the way from Germany
straight from the factories
among beerbottles
and the ringing of the
phone.

******

the good loser

red face
Texas
and age
he’s at an L.A.
racetrack
been talking to
a group of folks.
it’s the 4th race
and he’s ready to
leave:
“well, goodbye,
folks and God bless,
see you around
tomorrow…”
“nice fellow.”
“yeh.”
he’s going to the
parking lot to
get into a 12 year
old car
from there he’ll
drive to a
roominghouse
his room will neither
have a toilet nor a
bath
his room will have
one window with a
torn paper shade
and outside will be
a crumbling cement wall
spray-can graffiti courtesy
of a Chicano youth gang
he’ll take off his
shoes and
get on the bed
it will be dark
but he won’t turn
on the light
he’s got nothing
to do.

******

bedpans

in the hospitals I’ve been in
you see the crosses on the walls
with the thin palm leaves behind them
yellowed and browned
it is the signal to accept the inevitable
but what really hurts
are the bedpans
hard under your
ass
you’re dying
and you’re supposed to sit up on this
impossible thing
and urinate and
defecate
while in the bed
next to yours
a family of 5 brings good cheer
to an incurable
heart-case
cancer-case
or a case of general rot.
the bedpan is a merciless rock
a horrible mockery
because nobody wants to drag your failing body
to the crapper and back.
you’d drag it
but they’ve got the bars up:
you’re in your crib
your tiny death-crib
and when the nurse comes back
an hour and a half later
and there’s nothing in the bedpan
she gives you a most
intemperate look
as if when nearing death
one should be able to do
the common common things
again and again.
but if you think that’s bad
just relax
and let it go
all of it
into the sheets
then you’ll hear it
not only from the nurse
but from
all the other patients…
the hardest part of dying
is that they expect you
to go out
like a rocket shot into the
night sky.
sometimes that can be done
but when you need the bullet and the gun
you’ll look up
and find
that the wires above your head
connected to the button
years ago
have been cut
snipped
eliminated
been
made
useless as
the bedpan

******

rain or shine

the vultures at the zoo
(all 3 of them)
sit very quietly in their
caged tree
and below
on the ground
are chunks of rotting meat.
the vultures are over-full.
our taxes have fed them
well.
we move on to the next
cage.
a man is in there
sitting on the ground
eating
his own shit.
I recognize him as
our former mailman.
his favorite expression
had been:
“have a beautiful day.”
that day, I did.

******

dead now

I always wanted to ball
Henry Miller, she said,
but by the time I got there
it was too late.
damn it, I said, you girls
always arrive too late.
I’ve already masturbated
twice today.
that wasn’t his problem,
she said. by the way,
how come you flog-off
so much?
it’s the space, I said,
all that space between
poems and stories, it’s
intolerable.
you should wait, she said,
you’re impatient.
what do you think of Celine?
I asked.
I wanted to ball him too.
dead now, I said.
dead now, she said.
care to hear a little
music? I asked.
might as well, she said.
I gave her Ives.
that’s all I had left
that night.

******

soul

oh, how worried they are about my
soul!
I get letters
the phone rings…
“are you going to be all right?”
they ask.
“I’ll be all right,” I tell them.
“I’ve seen so many go down the drain,”
they tell me.
“don’t worry about me,” I say.
yet, they make me nervous.
I go in and take a shower
come out and squeeze a pimple on my
nose.
then I go into the kitchen and make
a salami and ham sandwich.
I used to live on candy bars.
now I have imported German mustard
for my sandwich. I might be in danger
at that.
the phone keeps ringing and the letters keep
arriving.
if you live in a closet with rats and
eat dry bread
they like you.
you’re a genius
then.
or if you’re in the madhouse or
the drunktank
they call you a genius.
or if you’re drunk and shouting
obscenities and
vomiting your life-guts on
the floor
you’re a genius.
but get the rent paid up a month in
advance
put on a new pair of stockings
go to the dentist
make love to a healthy clean girl
instead of a whore
and you’ve lost your
soul.
I’m not interested enough
to ask about
their souls.
I suppose I
should.

******

my comrades

this one teaches
that one lives with his mother.
and that one is supported by a red-faced alcoholic father
with the brain of a gnat.
this one takes speed and has been supported by
the same woman for 14 years.
that one writes a novel every ten days
but at least pays his own rent.
this one goes from place to place
sleeping on couches, drinking and making his
spiel.
this one prints his own books on a duplicating
machine.
that one lives in an abandoned shower room
in a Hollywood hotel.
this one seems to know how to get grant after grant,
his life is a filling-out of forms.
this one is simply rich and lives in the best
places while knocking on the best doors.
that one had breakfast with William Carlos
Williams.
and this one teaches.
and that one teaches.
and this one puts out textbooks on how to do it
and speaks in a cruel and dominating voice.
they are everywhere.
everybody is a writer.
and almost every writer is a poet.
poets poets poets poets poets poets
poets poets poets poets poets poets
the next time the phone rings
it will be a poet.
the next person at the door
will be a poet.
this one teaches
and that one lives with his mother
and that one is writing the story of
Ezra Pound.
oh, brothers, we are the sickest and the
lowest of the breed.

******

the crunch

too much
too little
too fat
too thin
or nobody.
laughter or
tears
haters
lovers
strangers with faces like
the backs of
thumb tacks
armies running through
streets of blood
waving winebottles
bayoneting and fucking
virgins.
or an old guy in a cheap room
with a photograph of M. Monroe.
there is a loneliness in this world so great
that you can see it in the slow movement of
the hands of a clock.
people so tired
mutilated
either by love or no love.
people just are not good to each other
one on one.
the rich are not good to the rich
the poor are not good to the poor.
we are afraid.
our educational system tells us
that we can all be
big-ass winners.
it hasn’t told us
about the gutters
or the suicides.
or the terror of
one person
aching in one place
alone
untouched
unspoken to
watering a plant.
people are not good to each other.
people are not good to each other.
people are not good to each other.
I suppose they never will be.
I don’t ask them to be.
but sometimes I think about
it.
the beads will swing
the clouds will cloud
and the killer will behead the
child
like taking a bite out of an ice cream cone.
too much
too little
too fat
too thin
or nobody
more haters than lovers.
people are not good to each other.
perhaps if they were
our deaths would not be so sad.
meanwhile I look at young girls
stems
flowers of chance.
there must be a way.
surely there must be a way we
have not yet
thought of.
who put this brain inside of me?
it cries
it demands
it says that there is a chance.
it will not say
“no.”

******

all I’ve ever known are whores, ex-prostitutes,
madwomen. I see men with quiet,
gentle women—I see them in the supermarkets,
I see them walking down the streets together,
I see them in their apartments: people at
peace, living together. I know that their
peace is only partial, but there is
peace, often hours and days of peace.
all I’ve ever known are pill freaks, alcoholics,
whores, ex—
prostitutes, madwomen.
when one leaves
another arrives
worse than her predecessor.
I see so many men with quiet clean girls in
gingham dresses
girls with faces that are not wolverine or
predatory.
“don’t ever bring a whore around,” I tell my
few friends, “I’ll fall in love with her.”
“you couldn’t stand a good woman, Bukowski.”
I need a good woman. I need a good woman
more than I need this typewriter, more than
I need my automobile, more than I need
Mozart; I need a good woman so badly that I
can taste her in the air, I can feel her
at my fingertips, I can see sidewalks built
for her feet to walk upon,
I can see pillows for her head,
I can feel my waiting laughter,
I can see her petting a cat,
I can see her sleeping,
I can see her slippers on the floor.
I know that she exists
but where is she upon this earth
as the whores keep finding me?

******

fact

careful poetry
and careful
people
last
only long
enough
to
die
safely

******

returning to an old love

well, here the computer is down again for
the count and I am back with the good old IBM electric.
it really doesn’t matter as long as I have something
to get the word down with.
I get physically and mentally ill when I am
locked away from the
word,
and at least the IBM—
this machine—doesn’t suddenly gulp pages
and pages of words
that you have celebrated the hours with,
words that vanish
forever.
this machine is slow but safe
and I welcome it back like the good friend it still
is.
I hope that it forgives me
and arranges more good luck for me.
now it’s balking a bit,
looking me over.
come on baby, I say,
do it.
do it again.
I’m sorry about that whore,
you warned me about her
but I wouldn’t listen.
now we’re back together.
come on, baby,
do it
again.
be a lady
tonight.

******

Bach, come back

sitting in this old chair, listening to Bach,
the music splashes across me, refreshing, delightful.
I need it, tonight I feel like a man who has come back
from the same old war, death in life,
as my guts say not again, not again, to have fought
so hard for what?
too often, the only escape is sleep.
Bach saves me, momentarily.
so often I hear my father laughing, the dead laughter
of the father who seldom laughed in life
is laughing now.
then I hear him speak: “You haven’t escaped me.
I appear in new forms and work at you through
them.
I’m going to make sure that hell never stops for
you.”
then Bach is back.
Bach couldn’t you have been my father?
nonetheless, you make my hell
bearable.
I have come back from suicide, the park bench, it was a
good fight
but my father is still in the world,
he gets very close at times
and suicide creeps back into my brain,
sits there, sits there.
as old as I have gotten,
there is still now no peace,
no place,
and it has been months since I,
myself, have laughed.
now Bach has stopped
and I sit in this old chair.
old man, old chair.
I still have the walls, I still have my
death to do.
I am alone but not lonely.
we all expect more than there
is.
I sit in undershirt, striped pants, slippers.
hell has a head, hell has feet and a mouth,
hell has hair and nostrils,
hell curves down and encircles me
and I think of bridges, windows,
buildings, sidewalks,
last New Year’s Eve,
an eyeball in the sand,
the dogs, the dogs, running in this
room now,
eight of them,
nine of them,
many of them,
coming closer and closer,
I watch them,
I wait,
old in my slippers,
something cutting through me,
the dark night humming and
no laughter,
no laughter
ever
again.

******

disgusting

I’ve got this large plastic floater with headrest
and I get onto it
and float about the pool
looking up at the tall majesty of the trees
through the unclear California air
I paddle about searching for
different views.
some of my cats
sitting at the edge of the pool,
stare,
thinking that I have gone
crazy.
maybe I have.
they are used to seeing me
sleeping or
at the computer
they don’t mind
that.
but this?
have I turned into a
fish?
or what?
I flip off my floating bed,
sink down into the blue
pool,
rise up,
swim to the
edge.
I climb out,
walk toward my
towel.
dinner soon
and the boxing matches on
tv,
later a bottle of
cabernet.
it’s so nice, this
road to
hell.

******

reunion

the cat sprayed in my
computer
and knocked it
out.
now I’m back to the
old
typer.
it’s
tougher.
it can handle
cat spray, spilled beer
and wine,
cigarette and
cigar ashes,
damned near
anything.
reminds me of
myself.
welcome back,
old boy,
from the
old boy.

******

the last song

driving the freeway while
listening to the Country and Western boys
sing about a broken heart
and the honkytonk blues,
it seems that things just don’t work
most of the time
and when they do it will be for a
short time
only.
well, that’s not news.
nothing’s news.
it’s the same old thing in
disguise.
only one thing comes without a
disguise and you only see it
once, or
maybe never.
like getting hit by a freight
train.
makes us realize that all our
moaning about long lost girls
in gingham dresses
is not so important
after
all.

******

death in the modern age

I am writing a novel now and one way or
the other I have lost 4 chapters in this
computer.
now like everything else
this isn’t such an important thing
unless it happens to
you.
like driving the freeway
you might see three or four cars
crashed and smoking
but the effect is only momentary.
in a few moments you are thinking
about something
else.
like you’ll read this poem and
think, too bad, well, he lost 4
chapters
but couldn’t he have written a
poem about
reaming some whore in a
motel room
instead?
pain seeks each individual
separately
and that’s where hell
begins
stays
festers
celebrates
its
greatness.
now.

******

quiet in a quiet night

I can feel myself getting fat, old and
stupid.
I wheeze putting on my shoes.
I am no longer sure if I have years
left, months left, weeks left,
days left
or if the last minute is arrowing
in.
no matter.
this bottle of 1983
Saint-Emilion Grand Cru Classé
still rings the damned gong,
at least I’ve avoided sitting around
with the other old farts
sorting out unprecious
memories
the young are no help either,
they are shining mirrors without
reflection.
death sits in the chair across from
me and watches.
death sees but has no eyes.
death knows but has no mind.
we often sit together in the night.
death has one move left.
I have none.
this is an excellent wine.
it connects me with infinity.
a man without wine is like a fish without
water,
a bird without wings.
wine runs in the blood of the tiger
and me.
death is inferior
to this.
it can only win an obvious
victory.
death gets out of the chair and
stands behind
me.
it is a beautiful night.
I reach down and pull a long hair
from my forearm.
I touch it to my cigarette and watch
it sizzle away.
I am ripe.
the trees outside are silent.
there is no more,
no less.

******

nights and years

the days of hell arrive on schedule,
ahead of schedule.
and the nights of hell.
and the years of hell.
hell gnawing away like a rat
in your belly.
hell inside.
hell outside.
these poor words,
tossed into hell,
punched silly, sent
running.
I walk outside into the
night,
look up.
even the palm trees shriek
in agony.
the world is being pounded
by a senseless
force.
I go inside, shut the
door.
at this machine,
I write these words for
nobody.
the sun is dead.
the day is dead,
the living are dead.
only hell lives
on.

******

the old guy in the piano bar

doesn’t know how bad he is in that
white tablecloth place,
he’s probably a relative of the
owner
and he sits at the piano and bangs
out
in the most obvious tired
manner
Jerome Kern or Scott Joplin
or Gershwin
and nobody ever applauds or
requests a tune,
they are into chewing or
conversation.
I don’t feel sorry for him
and he doesn’t feel sorry
for me
and part of his job is to
greet you when you
enter
looking up from his
keys
and to say
good night as you
exit
while still banging at
his keys.
but I do have a
fantasy
sometimes while
sitting at my table:
I see it all:
a stranger in a dark
overcoat,
fedora pulled
low over his
eyes
reaches into the
overcoat
and out comes a
45
and he fires four
shots,
two into the piano
and two into the
player.
then it is silent.
the man rises slowly,
walks out and is
gone.
and the people
keep on talking and
laughing and drinking
and chewing
and the waiter walks
up and asks me,
“is everything all
right, sir?”
and I answer,
“everything is
beautiful.”
“thank you, sir,”
he says and
walks off
as approaching
us
through the night is
the sound of a
siren.

******

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