чарльз буковски

they ruin your day

I parked the BMW and went in to get some papers
xeroxed.
I watched the white sheets of paper jump out of
the machine.
it was a warm and easy day.
I clipped the papers together
paid the clerk and walked out on the street again.
and here he came in seaman’s cap
blue work shirt and pants rolled too high.
there were others but he walked right up to me
grabbed my hand and began shaking it:
“hey, buddy, urgworg buddy lapu ssot udorob
I am your brother sag llah worg…”
“you’re breaking my hand,” I told
him.
I reached into my pocket and gave him a
quarter.
“wrogssarg buddy ssamniknat, you yremaerc…”
I walked on but he shouted after me: “ecin
wolley yemttrid ereth…”
I never liked such situations because I felt like
a fool if I gave up the money and I felt like a
bastard if I didn’t.
and no matter what I did or didn’t do
it just didn’t go away for a while.
I walked to my car
unlocked it
got in and sat there.
some girls were coming out of a cafe after lunch.
they were going back to work
a whole group of them chatting and walking along
and I stared hard at their breasts and their legs
and their behinds
but it didn’t help.
I started the car and drove down 6th to Pacific.
I crossed Pacific and went all the way to Gaffey
and it wasn’t until I turned off Gaffey and
on to 3rd and saw a boy on a lawn holding a dog
while another boy strangled the dog with a rubber
hose
that I forgot about that bum at all.

******

order

I’ve cleaned this room up
entirely
everything is up off the
floor
I even washed the top of this
desk
all is in order
now
paper clips
there
dictionary
here
stapler over to the
left
radio against the
wall
ashtray cleaned
out
stamps and international coupons in cigar
box
proper month showing on
calendar
unanswered letters in middle
drawer
3 corkscrews in a
dish
all is in order
now
the garbage in this room filled an
entire trash can
I look about
all this space
this cleanliness
it’s nice
here
but I can’t
write
I can’t
write
I CAN’T
WRITE
and I think of Lenny
Bruce’s immortal line:
I CAN’T
COME
now I sit in this
place
and
I can’t
write
and
I can’t
come
either.

******

my big fling

it was a bad night
one of those
where all the talk
only makes it worse,
uglier and uglier.
I was never one
who cared much for
“discussion”
anyhow
so I slammed the
door
got into my car
and then I was
on the freeway
radio on
driving north
into the big town.
I still knew a
few girls
from the past.
I got a motel room
on Sunset Boulevard
opened the bottle
had a drink
undressed
took a shower
came out
turned on the black
and white tv
laid on the bed
and had another drink.
then something came to
me,
I knew that any woman
an old girl friend
or a new one
only meant more of
what I had just gotten away
from.
I didn’t turn on the
lights, it felt good
in that dark room,
it was quiet, far away
from war
of any sort.
I stayed on the bed
and watched tv.
I had never cared much
for tv
but watching
all those people
with all their desires
and all their troubles
amused me.
I watched and I had
two bottles and I finished
one and I started the other
and I watched tv.
I felt like a boy who had
run away from home and
had found
his first room.
when the second bottle was
emptied
I slept.
when I got back
at noon
the next day
I didn’t expect her
to ask me if I had been
fucked
and she didn’t.
also, I didn’t ask
her and I didn’t care.
she was quiet.
the screaming was
over.
and two or three days
later
talking easily about
it
we found out
we had watched the same
tv programs,
the only thing was
she said she didn’t like
them
and I said
I did.
and we left it
like that.

******

the secret of my endurance

I still get letters in the mail, mostly from cracked-up
men in tiny rooms with factory jobs or no jobs who are
living with whores or no woman at all, no hope, just
booze and madness.
Most of their letters are on lined paper
written with an unsharpened pencil
or in ink
in tiny handwriting that slants to the
left
and the paper is often torn
usually halfway up the middle
and they say they like my stuff,
I’ve written from where it’s at, and
they recognize that. truly, I’ve given them a second
chance, some recognition of where they’re at.
it’s true, I was there, worse off than most
of them.
but I wonder if they realize where their letters
arrive?
well, they are dropped into a box
behind a six-foot hedge with a long driveway leading
to a two car garage, rose garden, fruit trees,
animals, a beautiful woman, mortgage about half
paid after a year, a new car,
fireplace and a green rug two-inches thick
with a young boy to write my stuff now,
I keep him in a ten-foot cage with a
typewriter, feed him whiskey and raw whores,
belt him pretty good three or four times
a week.
I’m 59 years old now and the critics say
my stuff is getting better than ever.

******

we evolve

at first it seems like fucking is the big thing,
then after that—social consciousness,
then intellectual accomplishment,
and then after that
some fall into religion
others into the arts.
after that begins the gathering of money
and after the gathering of money
the stage where we pretend that
money doesn’t matter.
then it’s health and hobbies,
travel, and finally just sitting around
thinking vaguely of vague things,
rooting in gardens
hating flies, noise, bad weather, snails,
rudeness, the unexpected, new neighbors,
old friends, drunks, smoking, fucking,
singing, dancing, upstarts,
the postman and weeds.
it gives one the fidgets: waiting on
death.

******

the man at the piano

the man at the piano
plays a song
he didn’t write
sings words
that aren’t his
upon a piano
he doesn’t own
while
people at tables
eat, drink and talk
the man at the piano
finishes
to no applause
then
begins to play
a new song
he didn’t write
begins to sing
words
that aren’t his
upon a piano
that isn’t his
as the
people at the tables
continue to
eat, drink and talk
when
he finishes
to no applause
he announces
over the mike
that he is
going to take
a ten-minute break
he goes
back to the men’s
room
enters
a toilet booth
bolts the door
sits down
pulls out a joint
lights up
he’s glad
he’s not
at the piano
and the
people at the tables
eating, drinking and talking
are glad
he isn’t there
either
this is
the way it goes
almost everywhere
with everybody and
everything
as fiercely
in the highlands
the
black swan burns.

******

beasts bounding through time—

Van Gogh writing his brother for paints
Hemingway testing his shotgun
Celine going broke as a doctor of medicine
the impossibility of being human
Villon expelled from Paris for being a thief
Faulkner drunk in the gutters of his town
the impossibility of being human
Burroughs killing his wife with a gun
Mailer stabbing his
the impossibility of being human
Maupassant going mad in a rowboat
Dostoevsky lined up against a wall to be shot
Crane off the back of a boat into the propeller
the impossibility
Sylvia with her head in the oven like a baked potato
Harry Crosby leaping into that Black Sun
Lorca murdered in the road by the Spanish troops
the impossibility
Artaud sitting on a madhouse bench
Chatterton drinking rat poison
Shakespeare a plagiarist
Beethoven with a horn stuck into his head against deafness
the impossibility the impossibility
Nietzsche gone totally mad
the impossibility of being human
all too human
this breathing
in and out
out and in
these punks
these cowards
these champions
these mad dogs of glory
moving this little bit of light toward
us
impossibly.

******

ANYHOW

the nights you light best
are
when all the guns are pointed
at you,
when all the voices are
dark,
when the dream is being
strangled.
the nights you fight best
are
when reasonability gets
kicked in the
ass,
when the chariots of
gloom
circle
you.
the nights you fight best
are
when the laughter of tools
conquers the
air,
when the kiss of death is
celebrated as
love;
the nights you light best
are
when the judges are
fixed,
when the crowd screams
for you blood.
the nights you light best
are
on a night like
this
as you shake a thousand
dank rats from
your brain,
as you rise up against
impossibility
as you become brother
with the tender miracle
of joy
moving on through
anyhow.

******

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.

******

the lost generation

have been reading a book about a rich literary lady
of the twenties and her husband who
drank, ate and partied their way through
Europe
meeting Pound, Picasso, A. Huxley, Lawrence, Joyce,
F. Scott, Hemingway, many
others;
the famous were like precious toys to
them,
and the way it reads
the famous allowed themselves to become
precious toys.
all through the book
I waited for just one of the famous
to tell this rich literary lady and her
rich literary husband to
get off and out
but, apparently, none of them ever
did.
Instead they were photographed with the lady
and her husband
at various seasides
looking intelligent
as if all this was part of the act
of Art.
perhaps because the wife and husband
fronted a lush press that
had something to do
with it.
and they were all photographed together
at parties
or outside of Sylvia Beach’s bookshop.
it’s true that many of them were
great and/or original artists,
but it all seems such a snobby precious
affair,
and the husband finally committed his
threatened suicide
and the lady published one of my first
short stories in the
40’s and is now
dead, yet
I can’t forgive either of them
for their rich dumb lives
and I can’t forgive their precious toys
either
for being
that.

******

my non-ambitious ambition

my father had little sayings which he mostly shared
during dinner sessions; food made him think of
survival:
“succeed or suck eggs…”
“the early bird gets the worm…”
“early to bed and early to rise makes a man (etc.)…”
“anybody who wants to can make it in America…”
“God takes care of those who (etc.)…”
I had no particular idea who he was talking
to, and personally I thought him a
crazed and stupid brute
but my mother always interspersed these
sessions with: “Henry, listen to your
father.”
at that age I didn’t have any other
choice
but as the food went down with the
sayings
the appetite and the digestion went
along with them.
it seemed to me that I had never met
another person on earth
as discouraging to my happiness
as my father.
and it appeared that I had
the same effect upon
him.
“You are a bum,” he told me, “and you’ll
always be a bum”
and I thought, if being a bum is to be the
opposite of what this son-of-a-bitch
is, then that’s what I’m going to
be.
and it’s too bad he’s been dead
so long
for now he can’t see
how beautifully I’ve succeeded
at
that.

******

education

at that small inkwell desk
I had trouble with the words
“sing” and “sign.”
I don’t know why
but
“sing” and “sign”:
it bothered
me.
the others went on and learned
new things
but I just sat there
thinking about
“sing” and “sign.”
there was something there
I couldn’t
overcome.
what it gave me was a
bellyache as
I looked at the backs of all those
heads.
the lady teacher had a
very fierce face
it ran sharply to a
point
and was heavy with white
powder.
one afternoon
she asked my mother to come
see her
and I sat with them
in the classroom
as they
talked.
“he’s not learning
anything,” the teacher
told my
mother.
“please give him a
chance, Mrs. Sims!”
“he’s not trying, Mrs.
Chinaski!”
my mother began to
cry.
Mrs. Sims sat there
and watched
her.
it went on for some
minutes.
then Mrs. Sims said,
“well, we’ll see what we
can do…”
then I was walking with
my mother
we were walking in
front of the school,
there was much green grass
and then the
sidewalk.
“oh, Henry,” my mother said,
“your father is so disappointed in
you, I don’t know what we are
going to do!”
father, my mind said,
father and father and
father.
words like that.
I decided not to learn anything
in that
school.
my mother walked along
beside me.
she wasn’t anything at
all.
and I had a bellyache
and even the trees we walked
under
seemed less than
trees
and more like everything
else.

******

sunny side down

NOTHING. sitting in a cafe having breakfast. NOTHING. the waitress,
and the people eating. the traffic runs by. doesn’t matter what
Napoleon did, what Plato said. Turgenev could have been a fly. we are worn-
down, hope stamped out. we reach for coffee cups like the robots about
to replace us. courage at Salerno, bloodbaths on the Eastern front didn’t
matter. we know that we are beaten. NOTHING. now it’s just a matter of
continuing
anyhow—
chew the food and read the paper. we
read about ourselves. the news is
bad. something about
NOTHING.
Joe Louis long dead as the medfly invades Beverly Hills.
well, at least we can sit and
eat. it’s been some rough
trip. it could be
worse. it could be worse than
NOTHING.
let’s get more coffee from the
waitress.
that bitch she knows we are trying to get her
attention.
she just stands there doing
NOTHING.
it doesn’t matter if Prince Charles falls off his horse
or that the hummingbird is so seldom
seen
or that we are too senseless to go
insane.
coffee. give us more of that NOTHING
coffee.

******

the finest of the breed
there’s nothing to
discuss
there’s nothing to
remember
there’s nothing to
forget
it’s sad
and
it’s not
sad
seems the
most sensible
thing
a person can
do
is
sit
with drink in
hand
as the walls
wave
their goodbye
smiles
one comes through
it
all
with a certain
amount of
efficiency and
bravery
then
leaves
some accept
the possibility of
God
to help them
get
through
others
take it
straight on
and to these
I drink
tonight.

******

ОДИН СО ВСЕМИ

плоть покрывает кости
и где-то здесь есть разум
и иногда душа
и женщины разбивают
вазы о стену
а мужики слишком
часто пьют
и никто не находит
главного,
но ищут
и прыгают
из постели
в постель.
плоть покрывает кости
и плоть ищет чего-то большего
чем плоть.

но шансов
нет:
у нас одна судьба
и мы в её ловушке.

никто не найдёт
того самого.

переполнены свалки
переполнены полигоны
переполнены психушки
переполнены больницы
переполнены кладбища

но всё другое
пусто.


Перевод А. Куницына

******

I’m not a misogynist
more and more
I get letters from
young ladies:
“I’m a well-built 19
am between jobs and
your writing turns me
on
I’m a good housekeeper
and secretary and
would never get in
your way
and
would send a
photo but that’s
so tacky…”
“I’m 21
tall and attractive
have read your books
I work for a
lawyer and
if you’re ever in
town
please call me.”
“I met you
after your reading
at the Troubadour
we had a night
together
do you remember?
I married
that man
you told me had a
mean voice
when you phoned and
he answered
we’re divorced now
I have a little
girl
age 2
I am no longer in
the music
business but
miss it
would like to
see you
again…”
“I’ve read
all your books
I’m 23
not much
breast
but have great
legs
and
just a few
words
from you
would mean
so much
to me…”
girls
please give your
bodies and your
lives
to
the young men
who
deserve them
besides
there is
no way
I would welcome
the
intolerable
dull
senseless hell
you would bring
me
and
I wish you
luck
in bed
and
out
but not
in
mine
thank
you.

******

the lady in the castle
she lived in this house
that looked like a
castle
and when you got inside
the ceilings were so very
high
and I was poor
and it all rather
fascinated
me.
she
was no longer
young
but she had
masses
of hair
that damn near
went down to her
ankles
and
I thought about
how strange
it would be
doing it
with all that
hair.
I drove up there
several times
in my old
car
and she had fine
liquors to
drink
and we sat
but I could
never quite get
near her
and though I didn’t
push at
it
something about
not
connecting
did offend my
ego
for ugly as I was
I had always been
lucky with the
ladies.
it confused me
and I suppose
I needed
that.
she liked to
talk about
the arts and
about
film making
and listening
to all that
only made me
drink
more.
I
finally
just
gave her
up
and a good year
or so
went by
when
one night
the phone
rang: it was the
lady.
“I want to come see
you,” she said.
“I’m writing now, I’m
hot…I can’t see
anybody…”
“I just want to come
by, I won’t bother you,
I’ll just sit on the couch,
I’ll sleep on the couch, I
won’t bother you…”
“NO! JESUS CHRIST, I
CAN’T SEE ANYBODY!”
I hung up.
the lady who was actually
on the couch
said, “oh, you’re all
SOFT now!”
“yeah.”
“come here…”
she took my penis
in her hand
flicked out her
tongue
then
stopped.
“what are you writing?”
“nothing…I’ve got writer’s
block…”
“sure you have…your pipes are
clogged…you need to get
cleaned out…”
then she had me in her
mouth
and then the phone rang
again…
in a fury
I ran over to the
phone
picked it
up.
it was the lady in the
castle:
“listen, I won’t bother you,
you won’t even know I’m
there…”
“YOU WHORE, I’M GETTING A
BLOW JOB!”
I hung up and
turned back.
the other lady was walking
toward the
door.
“what’sa matter?” I
asked.
“I can’t STAND that
term!”
“what term?”
“BLOW JOB!” she
screamed.
she slammed the door and
was gone…
I walked to where the
typewriter sat
put a new piece of paper
in there.
it was one
a.m.
I sat there and
drank scotch and
beer chasers
smoked cheap
cigars.
3:15 a.m.
I was still sitting
there
re-lighting old
cigar stubs and
drinking ale.
the new
piece of paper was still
unused.
I switched out the
lights
worked my way toward
the bedroom
got myself on the
bed
clothes still
on
I could hear the toilet
running
but couldn’t get up
to tap the handle
to end that
sound
my god damned pipes were
clogged.

******

relentless as the tarantula
they’re not going to let you
sit at a front table
at some cafe in Europe
in the mid-afternoon sun.
if you do, somebody’s going to
drive by and
spray your guts with a
submachine gun.
they’re not going to let you
feel good
for very long
anywhere.
the forces aren’t going to
let you sit around
fucking-off and
relaxing.
you’ve got to do it
their way.
the unhappy, the bitter and
the vengeful
need their
fix—which is
you or somebody
anybody
in agony, or
better yet
dead, dropped into some
hole.
as long as there are
human beings about
there is never going to be
any peace
for any individual
upon this earth (or
anywhere else
they might
escape to).
all you can do
is maybe grab
ten lucky minutes
here
or maybe an hour
there.
something
is working toward you
right now, and
I mean you
and nobody but
you.

******

escape
the best part was
pulling down the
shades
stuffing the doorbell
with rags
putting the phone
in the
refrigerator
and going to bed
for 3 or 4
days.
and the next best
part
was
nobody ever
missed
me.

******

wearing the collar
I live with a lady and four cats
and some days we all get
along.
some days I have trouble with
one of the
cats.
other days I have trouble with
two of the
cats.
other days,
three.
some days I have trouble with
all four of the
cats
and the
lady:
ten eyes looking at me
as if I was a dog.

******

a cat is a cat is a cat is a cat
she’s whistling and clapping
for the cats
at 2 a.m.
as I sit in here
with my
Beethoven.
“they’re just prowling,” I
tell her…
Beethoven rattles his bones
majestically
and those damn cats
don’t care
about
any of it
and
if they did
I wouldn’t like them
as
well:
things begin to lose their
natural value
when they approach
human
endeavor.
nothing against
Beethoven:
he did fine
for what he
was
but I wouldn’t want
him
on my rug
with one leg
over his head
while
he was
licking
his balls.

******

hot
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.

******

how is your heart?
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.

******

ОГЛАВЛЕНИЕ