On Love

  BY CHARLES BUKOWSKI

  The Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over the Hills (1969)

  Post Office (1971)

  Mockingbird Wish Me Luck (1972)

  South of No North (1973)

  Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame: Selected Poems 1955–1973 (1974)

  Factotum (1975)

  Love Is a Dog from Hell (1977)

  Women (1978)

  You Kissed Lilly (1978)

  Play the Piano Drunk Like a Percussion Instrument Until the Fingers Begin to Bleed a Bit (1979)

  Shakespeare Never Did This (1979)

  Dangling in the Tournefortia (1981)

  Ham on Rye (1982)

  Bring Me Your Love (1983)

  Hot Water Music (1983)

  There’s No Business (1984)

  War All the Time: Poems 1981–1984 (1984)

  You Get So Alone At Times That It Just Makes Sense (1986)

  The Movie: “Barfly” (1987)

  The Roominghouse Madrigals: Early Selected Poems 1946–1966 (1988)

  Hollywood (1989)

  Septuagenarian Stew: Stories & Poems (1990)

  The Last Night of the Earth Poems (1992)

  Screams from the Balcony: Selected Letters 1960–1970 (1993)

  Pulp (1994)

  Living on Luck: Selected Letters 1960s–1970s (Volume 2) (1995)

  Betting on the Muse: Poems & Stories (1996)

  Bone Palace Ballet: New Poems (1997)

  The Captain Is Out to Lunch and the Sailors Have Taken Over the Ship (1998)

  Reach for the Sun: Selected Letters 1978–1994 (Volume 3) (1999)

  What Matters Most Is How Well You Walk Through the Fire: New Poems (1999)

  Open All Night: New Poems (2000)

  The Night Torn Mad with Footsteps: New Poems (2001)

  Beerspit Night and Cursing: The Correspondence of Charles Bukowski & Sheri Martinelli 1960–1967 (2001)

  Sifting Through the Madness for the Word, the Line, the Way: New Poems (2003)

  The Flash of Lightning Behind the Mountain: New Poems (2004)

  Slouching Toward Nirvana (2005)

  Come On In! (2006)

  The People Look Like Flowers At Last (2007)

  The Pleasures of the Damned (2007)

  The Continual Condition (2009)

  On Writing (2015)

  On Cats (2015)

  On Love (2016)

  On Love

  CHARLES BUKOWSKI

  Edited by Abel Debritto

  First published in Great Britain in 2016 by Canongate Books Ltd,

  14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE

  www.canongate.tv

  This digital edition first published in 2016 by Canongate Books

  Copyright © 2016 by Linda Lee Bukowski

  Photograph on page 33 courtesy of Marina Bukowski.

  All other photographs courtesy of Linda Lee Bukowski

  The moral right of the author has been asserted

  First published in the USA by Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollins

  Publishers, 195 Broadway, New York, NY, 10007

  British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

  A catalogue record for this book is available on

  request from the British Library

  ISBN 978 1 78211 728 5

  eISBN 978 1 78211 729 2

  Contents

  mine

  layover

  the day I kicked a bankroll out the window

  I taste the ashes of your death

  love is a piece of paper torn to bits

  to the whore who took my poems

  shoes

  a real thing, a good woman

  one night stand

  the mischief of expiration

  love is a form of selfishness

  for Jane: with all the love I had, which was not enough

  for Jane

  notice

  my real love in Athens

  sleeping woman

  a party here—machineguns, tanks, an army fighting against men on rooftops

  for the 18 months of Marina Louise

  poem for my daughter

  answer to a note found in the mailbox

  all the love of me goes out to her (for A.M.)

  an answer to a critic of sorts

  the shower

  2 carnations

  have you ever kissed a panther?

  the best love poem I can write at the moment

  balling

  hot

  smiling, shining, singing

  visit to Venice

  love poem to Marina

  I can hear the sound of human lives being ripped to pieces

  for those 3

  blue moon, oh bleweeww mooooon how I adore you!

  the first love

  love

  raw with love (for N.W.)

  a love poem for all the women I have known

  fax

  one for the shoeshine man

  who in the hell is Tom Jones?

  sitting in a sandwich joint just off the freeway

  a definition

  an acceptance slip

  the end of a short affair

  one for old snaggle-tooth

  prayer for a whore in bad weather

  I made a mistake

  the 6 foot goddess (for S.D.)

  quiet clean girls in gingham dresses

  tonight

  pacific telephone

  hunchback

  mermaid

  yes

  2nd. street, near Hollister, in Santa Monica

  the trashing of the dildo

  a place to relax

  snap snap

  for the little one

  hello, Barbara

  Carson McCullers

  Jane and Droll

  we get along

  it was all right

  my walls of love

  eulogy to a hell of a dame

  love

  eulogy

  40 years ago in that hotel room

  a magician, gone

  no luck for that

  love poem to a stripper

  love crushed like a dead fly

  shoes

  pulled down shade

  Trollius and trellises

  turn

  oh, I was a ladies’ man!

  love poem

  a dog

  the strong man

  the bluebird

  the dressmaker

  confessions

  mine

  She lays like a lump.

  I can feel the great empty mountain

  of her head

  but she is alive. She yawns and

  scratches her nose and

  pulls up the covers.

  Soon I will kiss her goodnight

  and we will sleep.

  And far away is Scotland

  and under the ground the

  gophers run.

  I hear engines in the night

  and through the sky a white

  hand whirls:

  goodnight, dear, goodnight.

  layover

  Making love in the sun, in the morning sun

  in a hotel room

  above the alley

  where poor men poke for bottles;

  making love in the sun

  making love by a carpet redder than our blood,

  making love while the boys sell headlines

  and Cadillacs,

  making love by a photograph of Paris

  and an open pack of Chesterfields,

  making love while other men—poor

  fools—

  work.

  That moment—to this . . .

  may be years in the way they measure,

  but it’s only one sentence back in my mind—

  t
here are so many days

  when living stops and pulls up and sits

  and waits like a train on the rails.

  I pass the hotel at 8

  and at 5; there are cats in the alleys

  and bottles and bums,

  and I look up at the window and think,

  I no longer know where you are,

  and I walk on and wonder where

  the living goes

  when it stops.

  the day I kicked a bankroll out the window

  and, I said, you can take your rich aunts and uncles

  and grandfathers and fathers

  and all their lousy oil

  and their seven lakes

  and their wild turkey

  and buffalo

  and the whole state of Texas,

  meaning, your crow-blasts

  and your Saturday night boardwalks,

  and your 2-bit library

  and your crooked councilmen

  and your pansy artists—

  you can take all these

  and your weekly newspaper

  and your famous tornadoes

  and your filthy floods

  and all your yowling cats

  and your subscription to Life,

  and shove them, baby,

  shove them.

  I can handle a pick and ax again (I think)

  and I can pick up

  25 bucks for a 4-rounder (maybe);

  sure, I’m 38

  but a little dye can pinch the gray

  out of my hair;

  and I can still write a poem (sometimes),

  don’t forget that, and even if

  they don’t pay off,

  it’s better than waiting for death and oil,

  and shooting wild turkey,

  and waiting for the world

  to begin.

  all right, bum, she said,

  get out.

  what? I said.

  get out. you’ve thrown your

  last tantrum.

  I’m tired of your damned tantrums:

  you’re always acting like a

  character

  in an O’Neill play.

  but I’m different, baby,

  I can’t help

  it.

  you’re different, all right!

  God, how different!

  don’t slam

  the door

  when you leave.

  but, baby, I love your

  money!

  you never once said

  you loved me!

  what do you want

  a liar or a

  lover?

  you’re neither! out, bum,

  out!

  . . . but baby!

  go back to O’Neill!

  I went to the door,

  softly closed it and walked away,

  thinking: all they want

  is a wooden Indian

  to say yes and no

  and stand over the fire and

  not raise too much hell;

  but you’re getting to be

  an old man, kiddo:

  next time play it closer

  to the

  vest.

  I taste the ashes of your death

  the blossoms shake

  sudden water

  down my sleeve,

  sudden water

  cool and clean

  as snow—

  as the stem-sharp

  swords

  go in

  against your breast

  and the sweet wild

  rocks

  leap over

  and

  lock us in.

  love is a piece of paper torn to bits

  all the beer was poisoned and the capt. went down

  and the mate and the cook

  and we had nobody to grab sail

  and the N.wester ripped the sheets like toenails

  and we pitched like crazy

  the bull tearing its sides

  and all the time in the corner

  some punk had a drunken slut (my wife)

  and was pumping away

  like nothing was happening

  and the cat kept looking at me

  and crawling in the pantry

  amongst the clanking dishes

  with flowers and vines painted on them

  until I couldn’t stand it anymore

  and took the thing

  and heaved it

  over

  the side.

  to the whore who took my poems

  some say we should keep personal remorse from the

  poem,

  stay abstract, and there is some reason in this,

  but jezus:

  12 poems gone and I don’t keep carbons and you have

  my

  paintings too, my best ones; it’s stifling:

  are you trying to crush me out like the rest of them?

  why didn’t you take my money? they usually do

  from the sleeping drunken pants sick in the corner.

  next time take my left arm or a fifty

  but not my poems:

  I’m not Shakespeare

  but sometimes simply

  there won’t be any more, abstract or otherwise;

  there’ll always be money and whores and drunkards

  down to the last bomb,

  but as God said,

  crossing his legs,

  I see where I have made plenty of poets

  but not so very much

  poetry.

  shoes

  shoes in the closet like Easter lilies,

  my shoes alone right now,

  and other shoes with other shoes

  like dogs walking avenues,

  and smoke alone is not enough

  and I got a letter from a woman in a hospital,

  love, she says, love,

  more poems,

  but I do not write,

  I do not understand myself,

  she sends me photographs of the hospital

  taken from the air,

  but I remember her on other nights,

  not dying,

  shoes with spikes like daggers

  sitting next to mine,

  how these strong nights

  can lie to the hills,

  how these nights become quite finally

  my shoes in the closet

  flown by overcoats and awkward shirts,

  and I look into the hole the door leaves

  and the walls, and I do not

  write.

  a real thing, a good woman

  they are always writing about the bulls, the bullfighters,

  those who have never seen them,

  and as I break the webs of the spiders reaching for my wine

  the umhum of bombers, gd.dmn hum breaking the solace,

  and I must write a letter to my priest about some 3rd. st. whore

  who keeps calling me up at 3 in the morning;

  up the old stairs, ass full of splinters,

  thinking of pocket-book poets and the priest,

  and I’m over the typewriter like a washing machine,

  and look look the bulls are still dying

  and they are razing them raising them

  like wheat in the fields,

  and the sun’s black as ink, black ink that is,

  and my wife says Brock, for Christ’s sake,

  the typewriter all night,

  how can I sleep? and I crawl into bed and

  kiss her hair sorry sorry sorry

  sometimes I get excited I don’t know why

  friend of mine said he was going to write about

  Manolete . . .

  who’s that? nobody, kid, somebody dead

  like Chopin or our old mailman or a dog,

  go to sleep, go to sleep,

  and I kiss her and rub her head,

  a good woman,

  and soon she sleeps and I wait

  for m
orning.

  one night stand

  the latest hardware dangling upon my pillow catches

  window lamplight through the mist of alcohol.

  I was the whelp of a prude who whipped me when

  the wind shook blades of grass the eye could see

  move and

  you were a

  convent girl watching the nuns shake loose

  the Las Cruces sand from God’s robes.

  you are

  yesterday’s

  bouquet so sadly

  raided. I kiss your poor

  breasts as my hands reach for love

  in this cheap Hollywood apartment smelling of

  bread and gas and misery.

  we move through remembered routes

  the same old steps smooth with hundreds of

  feet, 50 loves, 20 years.

  and we are granted a very small summer, and

  then it’s

  winter again

  and you are moving across the floor

  some heavy awkward thing

  and the toilet flushes, a dog barks

  a car door slams . . .

  it’s gotten inescapably away, everything,

  it seems, and I light a cigarette and

  await the oldest curse

  of all.

  the mischief of expiration

  I am, at best, the delicate thought of a delicate hand

  that quenches for the mixing rope, and when

  beneath the love of flowers I am still,

  as the spider drinks the greening hour—

  strike gray bells of drinking,

  let a frog say

  a voice is dead,

  let the beasts from the pantry

  and the days that have hated this,

  the contrary wives of unblinking grief,

  plains of small surrender

  between Mexicali and Tampa;

  hens gone, cigarettes smoked, loaves sliced,

  and lest this be taken for wry sorrow:

  put the spider in wine,

  tap the thin skull sides that held poor lightning,

  make it less than a treacherous kiss,

  put me down for dancing

  you much more dead,

  I am a dish for your ashes,

  I am a fist for your air.

  the most immense thing about beauty

  is finding it gone.

  love is a form of selfishness

  pither, the eustachian tube and the green bugdead ivy

  and the way we walked tonight

  with the sky climbing on our ears and in our pockets