чарльз буковски

on the bum

moving from city to city
I always had two pairs of
shoes,
my looking-for-work
shoes and my working
shoes.
my work shoes were
heavy and black
and stiff.
sometimes when I
first put them on
they were very
painful,
the toe
hardened and
twisted
but I’d get them
on
on a hangover
morning,
thinking, well,
here we go
again
working for
miserable wages
and expected to
be grateful
for that
(having been chosen
from a score of
applicants).
it was probably my
ugly and
honest
face.
putting on
those shoes
again
was always
another hard
beginning.
I
imagined myself
somehow
escaping
it all.
making it at the
gaming table
or in the
ring
or in the bed
of some rich
lady.
maybe I got
that notion from
living too long in
Los Angeles,
a place far too
close to
Hollywood.
but going down
those roominghouse
steps
with each new
beginning,
the stiff shoes
murdering my
feet,
stepping out into
the early
sun,
the sidewalk
there,
the city
there
and I was just one
more
common laborer,
one more
common
man,
the universe
sliding through
my head
and out my
ears,
the timecard waiting
to check me in
and out,
and afterwards
something to
drink and the
ladies from
hell.
work shoes
work shoes
work shoes
and me
inside of
them with
all the lights
turned
out.

******

society should realize…

you consult psychiatrists and philosophers
when things aren’t going well
and whores when they are.
the whores are there for young boys and old
men; to the young boys they say,
“don’t be frightened, honey, here I’ll put it
in for you.”
and for the old guys
they put on an act
like you’re really hooking it home.
society should realize the value of the
whore—I mean, those girls who really enjoy their
work—those who make it almost an
art form.
I’m thinking of the time
in a Mexican whorehouse
this gal with her little bowl and her rag
washing my dick,
and it got hard and she laughed and I
laughed and she
kissed it, gently and slowly, then she walked over and
spread out
on the bed
and I got on and we worked easily, no effort, no
tension, and some guy beat on the door and
yelled,
“Hey! what the hell’s going on in there?
Hurry it up!”
but it was like a Mahler symphony—you just don’t
rush
it.
when I finished and she came back, there was
the bowl and the rag again
and we both laughed; then she kissed it
gently and
slowly, and I got up and put my clothes back on and
walked out—
“Jesus, buddy, what the hell were ya doin’ in
there?”
“Fuckin’,” I told the gentleman
and walked down the hall and down the steps and stood
outside in the road and lit one of those
sweet Mexican cigarettes in the moonlight.
liberated and human again
for a mere $3, I
loved the night, Mexico and
myself.

******

madman

while
being
checked into the L.A. City jail (I
was still a bit drunk)
there was a crowd of prisoners waiting and
nobody noticed me smoking a cigarette
until some ash dropped off the end
then a cop screamed at me about how
“we kept this fucking place CLEAN!”
“oh,” I said, and then the cop said,
“wise fucker, huh?…O.K., now you
get it!”
and he pushed me into a back room and
locked the door behind
me.
there behind a thick yellow floor-to-ceiling
wire screen was this total
madman
he saw me and screamed
ran violently toward me
smashed into the wire screen
bounced back
rushed the wire again
grabbing it
shaking it
wanting to get through it
trying to get at me
trying to kill me
it was frightening
but I was drunk
found another cigarette
lit it trembling
pushed it through the wire
expecting to get my hand ripped
off
he took the smoke
put it to his lips
inhaled
exhaled
I lit up
also
and we stood there together
smoking.
that’s the way the cop
found us
when he opened the door
behind
me.
“son of a bitch,” he said, “that’s
beautiful, I wish I could let
you go for that.”
“I wish you could too,”
I told him.
“come on,” he
said.
as we walked out the door
the madman grabbed the wire again and
screamed
screamed
screamed
he rattled and banged the
wire
that thick wire
with the yellow paint flaking off
revealing the
pale grey paint
underneath.

******

16 Jap machine gun bullets

Norman
Jimmy
Max killed in World War II
while I hid in old roominghouses
in Philadelphia and San
Francisco
listening to
Mozart and Bach.
others fared differently:
with George it was a bad
liver. Dale died of misled
ambition. Nick went the common hard way of
cancer.
Harry of a
wife and 5 beautiful children.
Jimmy had it right—
trying to bring that bomber back to
England with the motors shot
out. Norman had it
right—
taking 3 hours to die from
16 Jap machine gun bullets.
now we’ve all got it quite right—
sitting around reading the
comic strips
drinking warm wine and
rolling smokes.
at 6 in the evening we charm our blood and
our manner
as we walk our faces through the
spiderwebs.
we’ve got it right
we’ve got it right—
the raven and the waves
the tired sunsets and the tired
people—
it takes a lifetime to die and
no time at
all.

******

bar stool

each day and each night were
about the same.
the bartender let me in at
5 a.m.
I had to listen to his stories
as he mopped the place up
and got things
ready
but the drinks were free
until 7 a.m. when the bar
opened.
the 7 a.m. crowd was a
good one,
I could usually work them
for some drinks
but by 8:15 a.m. there were
few patrons left.
I had to nurse my drinks
and wait.
I used the few coins I had
to keep the drinks slowly
arriving.
the painful time came
when I ran out of
coin.
the trick was to never
empty your glass.
it was a rule: as long as
you had something in
your glass you
stayed.
sometimes the time
really bludgeoned
me
and my damned
tongue was hanging
out too.
at noon a few
more would drift in,
they all knew
me.
I put on a good
late night
show—
wild sentences of
gibberish,
fist fights,
even a few
profound
statements,
and the times
I had money
I bought for
everybody.
I was the nut.
the good guy.
the bad
guy.
but in the daylight
hours I had
no zip.
those were the
hard hours.
I had to milk
those drab suckers
for
drinks.
one way or the other
I got them,
ran errands,
got a little
coin.
as the afternoon
went toward
evening
things began to
get better,
I got drunker,
more inventive,
more interesting,
it got into party
time,
good luck
time.
and the nights
were great.
drinks arrived
before me
and I had no
idea where they
had
come
from.
sometimes the
nights and the days
got mixed up.
I seemed to be
sitting in daylight
and then it was
dark all at once,
or it worked the
other way around,
it was dark
and in the next
moment
it was daylight.
I once asked the
bartender, “hey,
Jim, did you notice
that it was dark
and now the sun
is shining!
isn’t that strange?”
“no,” he answered,
“you went to your
room and then came
back again.”
at times I resented
my role.
the patrons were
hardly intellectual,
there was a lifeless
and satisfied deadness
about them
and yet I had to
depend upon their
whims.
I was on
that bar stool for
3 years from 5 a.m.
to 2 a.m.
I must have slept
while I drank.
I believe that I was
trying to kill myself
with drink and
back alley
brawls
but it wasn’t
working.
my greatest problem
were my toenails
which I never
cut
and which pained
me in my
shoes.
but eventually
they broke off
or the whole
nail would fall
off
leaving that
tender flesh
plus
a few split
lips,
mangled fingers,
lumps on the
knee
from falling,
and that was the
extent of
it.
I was evicted from
room after room
but always managed
to find
another.
it was as good a
life as I could
eke out.
I was avoiding
becoming ensnared
in a common
manner of
living.
I truly believed
that this was
important to me
when everything
else was
not.
and the one
stool was
mine.
the one down
at the end of
the
bar.
it was all that
I owned.
it was all that
I needed.
there was no
other man
I preferred to be
or no
other way that
I preferred.
I was at the
peak of my
courage,
sitting there
waiting for
that next
drink.
do you see
what I
mean?

******

a woman, a
tire that’s flat, a
disease, a
desire: fears in front of you,
fears that hold so still
you can study them
like pieces on a
chessboard…
it’s not the large things that
send a man to the
madhouse. death he’s ready for, or
murder, incest, robbery, fire, flood…
no, it’s the continuing series of small tragedies
that send a man to the
madhouse…
not the death of his love
but a shoelace that snaps
with no time left …
The dread of life
is that swarm of trivialities
that can kill quicker than cancer
and which are always there -
license plates or taxes
or expired driver’s license,
or hiring or firing,
doing it or having it done to you, or
roaches or flies or a
broken hook on a
screen, or out of gas
or too much gas,
the sink’s stopped-up, the landlord’s drunk,
the president doesn’t care and the governor’s
crazy.
light switch broken, mattress like a
porcupine;
$105 for a tune-up, carburetor and fuel pump at
sears roebuck;
and the phone bill’s up and the market’s
down
and the toilet chain is
broken,
and the light has burned out -
the hall light, the front light, the back light,
the inner light; it’s
darker than hell
and twice as
expensive.
then there’s always crabs and ingrown toenails
and people who insist they’re
your friends;
there’s always that and worse;
leaky faucet, christ and christmas;
blue salami, 9 day rains,
50 cent avocados
and purple
liverwurst.

or making it
as a waitress at norm’s on the split shift,
or as an emptier of
bedpans,
or as a carwash or a busboy
or a stealer of old lady’s purses
leaving them screaming on the sidewalks
with broken arms at the age of 80.

suddenly
2 red lights in your rear view mirror
and blood in your
underwear;
toothache, and $979 for a bridge
$300 for a gold
tooth,
and china and russia and america, and
long hair and short hair and no
hair, and beards and no
faces, and plenty of zigzag but no
pot, except maybe one to piss in
and the other one around your
gut.

with each broken shoelace
out of one hundred broken shoelaces,
one man, one woman, one
thing
enters a
madhouse.

so be careful
when you
bend over.

******

the weak

are always proclaiming that
they are now going to concentrate
on their work, which is usually
painting or writing.
it is known, of course, that they have
talent, they simply haven’t…well…
they haven’t truly been given a
chance.
there were matters that got
in the way: bad affairs, children,
jobs, illness, etc.
but now, that’s all put aside, they
proclaim.
they are going to concentrate
on their work
they are finally going to do it
now.
they have the talent.
now the world will see.
oh yes, it’s going to happen.
the proclaimers are everywhere.
they are always getting
ready.
they seldom begin.
and when they do
they quit easily.
it’s all a whim with
them.
they want fame.
they want it quickly
but they really have no urge
to do their work
except for fame
and to proclaim,
proclaim,
proclaim.

******

what can you do?

there is always somebody to chop wood
for you,
to speak of
God,
there is always somebody to kill the
meat,
to unplug the toilet,
there is always somebody to bury
you,
there are always animals with
beautiful eyes,
and there are always those
like Stanley leaning toward me
and saying in a soft voice,
“do you know that at the end of
his career Saroyan had other
people writing his stuff and that he
gave them twenty-five
percent?”
this was supposed to make me
feel original,
feel good because I was a starving
writer and the rejects were arriving
in record numbers.
it didn’t make me feel
good.
there is always somebody or something
to make
you feel worse.
there is always the dead dog on
the freeway.
there is always a fog full of
cutting
blades.
there is always Christ drunk in
the tavern with dirty
fingernails.

******

12 minutes to post

as we stand there before the purple mountains
in our stupid clothing, we pause, look
about: nothing changes, it only congeals,
our lives crawl slowly, our companions depreciate
us.
then
we awaken a moment—
the animals are entering the track!
Quick’s Sister, Perfect Raj, Vive Le Torch,
Miss Leuschner, Keepin’ Peace, True To Be,
Lou’s Good Morning.
now, it’s good for us: the lightning flash
of hope, the laughter of the hidden gods.
we were never meant to be what we are or where
we are, we are looking for an escape, some music
from the sun, the girl we never found.
we are betting on the miracle again
there before the purple mountains
as the horses parade past
so much more beautiful than
our lives.

******

the young

I watch them going up and down the hill on their
Suzukis, gunning them, ripping the night with
sound, the lights are bright, up and down
the hill they go, it’s only Thursday
night but any night will do, there’s hardly
any place to go, gang territory across Pacific
Avenue and more gangs on Gaffey Street, only
a few safe blocks to play with and they park
their bikes, stand around talking, there’s not
much money, they share joints and a few pills,
school tomorrow, maybe, hell, maybe not.
I stand out front watering a patch of lawn, maybe they
see me, and if they do, it doesn’t matter, I’m just
another old fart in a world of old farts, yet I
feel like walking over and saying, “come on,
let’s find something to do…” but I know better, I know
that they don’t know any more than I do and they
are probably more scared, I had my fling
ripping at the walls, I used to stand and beat
my hands against the bricks until they bled and
I kept punching but the world stayed there
unlikeable, monstrous, deadly.
I see them talking, then shut off the water, drag
the hose back into the yard, walk up the drive
and they are left standing in the world I passed on to them, they
are hopelessly screwed, castrated, denuded.
—the passing of the torch through the centuries,
they have it now.
Thursday night, nowhere to go.
Friday night. Saturday. Sunday. Monday.
etc.
the oldest young on earth.
Thursday night. Thursday night. Thursday
night.
“come on, let’s find something to do…”

******

the two toughest

there’s this big guy comes to see me, he sits in
this big chair and starts smoking cigars
and I bring out the wine
and we pour it down.
the big guy gulps them down and I gulp
right along with him.
he doesn’t say much, he’s a stoic.
when other people visit they say, “Jesus, Hank,
what do you see in that guy?”
and I say, “hey, he’s my hero, every man has to have a
hero.”
the big guy just keeps lighting cigars and drinking.
he never even gets up to piss, he doesn’t have
to.
he doesn’t bother.
he smokes ten cigars a night and matches me
drink for drink.
he doesn’t blink.
I don’t either.
even when we talk about women we
agree.
it’s best when we’re alone because he never
talks to the other people.
and I never remember seeing him
leave.
in the morning his chair is there
and all the cigar stubs and
all the empty bottles but he’s
gone.
what I like best is he never disturbs the
image I have of him,
he’s a tough son-of-a-bitch and I’m a
tough son-of-a-bitch
and we meet about once
every 3 months and put on our
performance.
anything more than that would
wipe us
both
out.

******

the racetrack salutes you!

MILITARY DAY,
Sunday Sept. 8
FREE Grandstand Admission for
ALL Active Duty, Reserves, Retired,
Widows, Widowers & Dependents

Present I.D. at specially marked gates.

we hope you win
this time.

******

thanks to the computer

you write a bad poem and you just
press the “delete” key and watch the
lines vanish as if they had never been,
no ripping pages out of the typer,
balling them up and tossing them into the
wastebasket.
the older I get the more I delete.
I mean, if I see nothing in a work, what
will the reader see?
and the computer screen is a tough judge,
the words sit and look back at you,
with the typewriter you don’t see them
until you pull out the
page.
also, the keyboard on a computer is
more efficient than that on the
typer, with the computer the thoughts
leap more quickly from your mind to your
fingers, to the screen.
is this boring?
probably.
but I won’t delete it because it isn’t boring
me.
I am in love with THIS
MACHINE
see what it can do
now let’s get back to
work

******

safe

the house next door makes me
sad.
both man and wife rise early and
go to work.
they arrive home in early evening.
they have a young boy and a girl.
by 9 p.m. all the lights in the house
are out.
the next morning both man and
wife rise early again and go to
work.
they return in early evening.
by 9 p.m. all the lights are
out.
the house next door makes me
sad.
the people are nice people, I
like them.
but I feel them drowning.
and I can’t save them.
they are surviving.
they are not
homeless.
but the price is
terrible.
sometimes during the day
I will look at the house
and the house will look at
me
and the house will
weep, yes, it does, I
feel it.
the house is sad for the people living
there
and I am too
and we look at each other
and cars go up and down the
street,
boats cross the harbor
and the tall palms poke
at the sky
and tonight at 9 p.m.
the lights will go out,
and not only in that
house
and not only in this
city.
safe lives hiding,
almost
stopped,
the breathing of
bodies and little
else.

******

3 blacks

it’s midway through the card at the
track.
I am standing at a table,
getting my figures ready for the
next race.
I see them approaching,
coming down the
aisle.
the biggest one is
nearest me.
as he walks by
he gives me a bit of
elbow.
they keep walking on.
then the big one turns,
looks back
to see how I will react.
his face is blank as he
looks.
mine is blank.
he turns and walks on.
something about me bothered
him:
white skin.
brother, that’s just the way it
is.
you drive a car?
what color is it?
don’t blame the
car.

******

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.

******

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.

******

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.

******

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.

******

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.

******

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.

******

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.

******

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.

******

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.

******

fact

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

******

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?

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