On Drinking
Charles Bukowski
Publisher’s Note
Rendering poetry in a digital format presents several challenges, just as its many forms continue to challenge the conventions of print. In print, however, a poem takes place within the static confines of a page, hewing as close as possible to the poet’s intent, whether it’s Walt Whitman’s lines stretching to the margin like Route 66, or Robert Creeley’s lines descending the page like a string tie. The printed poem has a physical shape, one defined by the negative space that surrounds it—a space that is crafted by the broken lines of the poem. The line, as vital a formal and critical component of the form of a poem as metaphor, creates rhythm, timing, proportion, drama, meaning, tension, and so on.
Reading poetry on a small device will not always deliver line breaks as the poet intended—with the pressure the horizontal line brings to a poem, rather than the completion of the grammatical unit. The line, intended as a formal and critical component of the form of the poem, has been corrupted by breaking it where it was not meant to break, interrupting a number of important elements of the poetic structure—rhythm, timing, proportion, drama, meaning, and so on. A little like a tightrope walker running out of rope before reaching the other side.
There are limits to what can be done with long lines on digital screens. At some point, a line must break. If it has to break more than once or twice, it is no longer a poetic line, with the integrity that lineation demands. On smaller devices with enlarged type, a line break may not appear where its author intended, interrupting the unit of the line and its importance in the poem’s structure.
We attempt to accommodate long lines with a hanging indent—similar in fashion to the way Whitman’s lines were treated in books whose margins could not honor his discursive length. On your screen, a long line will break according to the space available, with the remainder of the line wrapping at an indent. This allows readers to retain control over the appearance of text on any device, while also indicating where the author intended the line to break.
This may not be a perfect solution, as some readers initially may be confused. We have to accept, however, that we are creating poetry e-books in a world that is imperfect for them—and we understand that to some degree the line may be compromised. Despite this, we’ve attempted to protect the integrity of the line, thus allowing readers of poetry to travel fully stocked with the poetry that needs to be with them.
—Dan Halpern, Publisher
Contents
Cover
Publisher’s Note
Title Page
ants crawl my drunken arms
[To Jon and Louise Webb]
beerbottle
brewed and filled by . . .
From Confessions of a Man Insane Enough to Live with Beasts
[To Douglas Blazek]
Buffalo Bill
Notes of a Dirty Old Man
The Great Zen Wedding
From Post Office
short non-moon shots to nowhere
[Lafayette Young]
on the wagon
drinking
the angels of Sunday
From “Charles Bukowski Answers 10 Easy Questions”
drunk ol’ Bukowski drunk
From “Notes on the Life of an Aged Poet”
my landlady and my landlord
The Blinds
Notes of a Dirty Old Man
another poem about a drunk and then I’ll let you go
in the name of love and art
the drunk tank judge
some people never go crazy
Notes of a Dirty Old Man
From “Confessions of a Badass Poet”
some picnic
18,000 to one
From “Paying for Horses: An Interview with Charles Bukowski”
From Factotum
ah, shit
who in the hell is Tom Jones?
beer
shit time
From “Buk: The Pock-Marked Poetry of Charles Bukowski. Notes of a Dirty Old Mankind”
From “Charles Bukowski. Dialog with a Dirty Old Man”
smashed
the image
From Women
fat head poem
From Shakespeare Never Did This
the drunk with the little legs
Hemmingway
Mozart wrote his first opera before the age of fourteen
on the hustle
night school
fooling Marie
[To Jack Stevenson]
From Ham on Rye
barred from the Polo Lounge
trying to dry out
speaking of drinking . . .
From Tough Company
40 years ago in that hotel room
my vanishing act
the master plan
this
From The Bukowski Tapes
[To A.D. Winans]
dark night poems
From “An Evening at Buk’s Place”
immortal wino
cleansing the ranks
From “Gin-Soaked Boy”
240 pounds
From Hollywood
2 Henry Miller paintings and etc.
the gigantic thirst
From “Charles Bukowski”
[To Carl Weissner]
From “Q&A”
hangovers
the replacements
From “Interview with Charles Bukowski”
and it didn’t even break
tonight
[To John Martin]
11/6/92 12:08 AM
wine pulse
Sources
Acknowledgments
About the Authors
Also by Charles Bukowski
Copyright
About the Publisher
ants crawl my drunken arms
O ants crawl my drunken arms
and they let Van Gogh sit in a cornfield
and take Life out of the world with a
shotgun,
ants crawl my drunken arms
and they sent Rimbaud
to running guns and looking under rocks
for gold,
O ants crawl my drunken arms,
they put Pound in a nuthouse
and made Crane jump into the sea
in his pajamas,
ants, ants, crawl my drunken arms
as our schoolboys scream for Willie Mays
instead of Bach,
ants crawl my drunken arms
through the drink I reach
for surfboards and sinks, for sunflowers
and the typewriter falls like a heart-attack
from the table
or a dead Sunday bull,
and the ants crawl down my throat
and into my mouth,
and I wash them down with wine
and pull up the shades
and they are on the screen
and on the streets
climbing church towers
and into tire casings
looking for something else
to eat.
[To Jon and Louise Webb]
March 25, 1961
[ . . . ] What bothers me is when I read about the old Paris groups, or somebody who knew somebody in the old days. They did it then too, the names of old and now. I think Hemingway’s writing a book about it now. But in spite of it all, I can’t buy it. I can’t stand writers or editors or anybody who wants to talk Art. For 3 years I lived in a skid row hotel—before my hemorrhage—and got drunk every night with an x-con, the hotel maid, an Indian, a gal who looked like she wore a wig but didn’t, and 3 or 4 drifters. Nobody knew Shostakovich from Shelley Winters and we didn’t give a damn. The main thing was sending runners out for liquor when we ran dry. We’d start low on the line with our wor
st runner and if he failed—you must understand, most of the time there was little or no money—we’d go a little deeper with our next best man. I guess it’s bragging but I was top dog. And when the last one staggered through the door, pale and shamed, Bukowski would rise with an invective, don his ragged cloak and stroll with anger and assurance into the night, down to Dick’s Liquor Store, and I conned him and forced him and squeezed him until he was dizzy; I would walk in in big anger, not beggary, and ask for what I wanted. Dick never knew whether I had any money or not. Sometimes I fooled him and had money. But most of the time I didn’t. But anyhow, he’d slap the bottles in front of me, bag them, and then I’d pick them up with an angry, “Put ’em on my tab!”
And then he’d start the old dance—but, jesus, u owe me such and such already, and you haven’t paid anything off in a month and—
And then came the ACT OF ART. I already had the bottles in my hand. It would be nothing to walk out. But I’d slap them down again in front of him, ripping them out of the bag and shoving them toward him, saying, “Here, you want these things! I’ll take my god damned business somewhere else!”
“No, no,” he’d say, “take them. It’s all right.”
And then he’d get out that sad slip of paper and add onto the total.
“Lemme see that,” I’d demand.
And then I’d say, “For Christ’s sake! I don’t owe you this much! What’s this item here?”
All this was to make him believe that I was going to pay someday. And then he’d try to con me back: “You’re a gentleman. You’re not like the others. I trust you.”
He finally got sick and sold his business, and when the next one came in I started a new tab . . .
And what happened? At eight o’clock one Sunday morning—EIGHT O’CLOCK!!! gd damn it—there was a knock on the door—and I opened it and there stood an editor. “Ah, I’m so and so, editor of so and so, we got your short story and thought it most unusual; we are going to use it in our Spring number.” “Well, come on in,” I’d had to say, “but don’t stumble over the bottles.” And then I sat there while he told me about his wife who thought a lot of him and about his short story that had once been published in The Atlantic Monthly, and you know how they talk on. He finally left, and a month or so later the hall phone rang and somebody wanted Bukowski, and this time it was a woman’s voice, “Mr. Bukowski, we think you have a very unusual short story and the group was discussing it the other night, but we think it has one weakness and we thought you might want to correct the weakness. It was this: WHY DID THE CENTRAL CHARACTER BEGIN TO DRINK IN THE FIRST PLACE?”
I said, “Forget the whole thing and send the story back,” and I hung up.
When I walked back in the Indian looked up over his drink and asked, “Who was it?”
I said, “Nobody,” which was the most accurate answer I could give.
* * *
[To John William Corrington]
January 14, 1963
[ . . . ] Born Andernach, Germany, August 16th, 1920. German mother, father with American Army (Pasadena born but of German parentage) of Occupation. There is some evidence that I was born, or at least conceived out of wedlock, but I am not sure. American at age of 2. Some year or so in Washington, D.C., but then on to Los Angeles. The Indian suit thing true. All grotesques true. Between the imbecile savagery of my father, the disinterestedness of my mother, and the sweet hatred of my playmates: “Heinie! Heinie! Heinie!” things were pretty hot all around. They got hotter when I was in my 13th years on, I broke out not with acne, but with these HUGE boils, in my eyes, neck, back, face, and I’d ride the streetcar to the hospital, the charity ward, the old man was not working, and there they’d drill me with the electric needle, which is kind of a wood drill that they stick into people. Stayed out of school a year. Went to L.A. City College a couple of years, journalism. Tuition fee was two dollars but the old man said he couldn’t afford to send me anymore. I went to work in the railroad yards, scrubbing the sides of trains with OAKITE. I drank and gambled at night. Had a small room above a bar on Temple Street in the Filipino district, and I gambled at night with the aircraft workers and pimps and etc. My place got to be known and every night it was packed. It was hell getting my sleep. One night I hit big. Big for me. 2 or 3 hundred. I knew they’d be back. Got in a fight, broke a mirror and a couple of chairs but held onto the money and early in the morning caught a bus for New Orleans. Some young gal on there made a play for me, and I let her off at Fort Worth but got as far as Dallas and swung back. Wasted some time there and made N.O. Roomed across from THE GANGPLANK CAFE and began writing. Short stories. Drank the money up, went to work in a comic book house, and soon moved on. Miami Beach. Atlanta. New York. St. Louis. Philly. Frisco. L.A. again. New Orleans again. Then Philly again. Then Frisco again. L.A. again. Around and around. A couple of nights in East Kansas City. Chicago. I stopped writing. I concentrated on drinking. My longest stays were in Philly. I would get up early in the morning and go to a bar there and I would close that bar at night. How I made it, I don’t know. Then finally back to L.A. and a wild shack job of seven years drinking. Ended up in same charity hospital. This time not with boils but with my stomach torn open finally with rot gut and agony. 8 pints of blood and 7 pints of glucose transfused in without a stop. My whore came to see me and she was drunk. My old man was with her. The old man gave me a lot of lip and the whore was nasty too, and I told the old man, “Just one more word out of you and I’m going to yank this needle outa my arm, climb off this deathbed and whip your ass!” They left. I came out of there, white and old, in love with sunlight, told never to drink again or death would be mine. I found among changes in myself, that my memory which was once pretty good was now bad. Some brain damage, no doubt, they let me lay there a couple of days in the charity ward when my papers got lost and the papers called for immediate transfusions, and I was out of blood, listening to hammers against my brain. Anyhow, I got on a mail truck and drove it around and delivered letters and drank lightly, experimentally, and then one night I sat down and began writing poetry. What a hell of a thing. Where to send this stuff. Well, I took a shot. There was a magazine called Harlequin and I was a fucking clown and it was out in some small town in Texas and maybe they wouldn’t know bad stuff when they saw it, so—. There was a gal editor there, and the poor dear went wild. Special edition. Letters followed. The letters got warm. The letters got hot. Next thing I knew the gal editor was in Los Angeles. Next thing I knew we were in Las Vegas for marriage. Next thing I knew I was walking in a small Texas town with the local hicks glaring at me. The gal had money. I didn’t know she had money. Or her folks had money. We went back to L.A. and I went back to work, somewhere.
The marriage didn’t work. It took 3 years for her to find out that I was not what she had thought I was supposed to be. I was anti-social, coarse, a drunkard, didn’t go to church, played horses, cursed when intoxicated, didn’t like to go anywhere, shaved carelessly, didn’t care for her paintings or her relatives, sometimes stayed in bed 2 or 3 days running etc. etc.
Very little more. I went back to my whore who had once been such a cruel and beautiful woman, and who was no longer beautiful (as such) but who had, magically, become a warm and real person, but she could not stop drinking, she drank more than I, and she died.
There is not much left now. I drink mostly alone and discourage company. People seem to be talking about things that don’t count. They are too eager or too vicious or too obvious.
* * *
[To John William Corrington]
October 1963
[ . . . ] Something by Brahms on now, piano. Woman just phoned me, some Brazilian who lives above the Sunset Strip. Maybe I ought to strip her. But I am getting enough and although there’s some trouble attached, I feel a sense of normalcy for it all. Have cut the drinking down some, mainly beer. I read in the paper today where the average alcoholic lives to be 51 (which leaves me 8 years), while the av. non-drinker lives to be 70. I think the best
years are from 30 to 40; you are definitely out of the childhood thing, know more what you don’t want, and usually have the health and strength to go with it. Of course, there’s something wrong with all of us & if you pour alcohol over it you get rid of it faster.
* * *
[To Jon and Louise Webb]
March 1, 1964
[ . . . ] I am getting a little drunk, a good wall to hide behind, the coward’s flag. I remember once in some city in some cheap room, I believe it was St. Louis, yes, a hotel on the corner and the gas fumes of traffic going to work used to come up and choke my sick lazy lungs, and I’d send her out for beer or wine and she was trying to get me straight, trying to mother me or hang me or figure me, as all women will try to do, and she gave me this old bit: “Drinking is only escapism.” Sure, I told her, and thank old red-balled God it is, and when I fuck you, that is escapism too, you may not think it is, to you it might be living, now, let’s have a drink.
I wonder where she is now? A big fat black maid with the fattest biggest most loveliest legs in the universe and ideas about “escapism.”
beerbottle
a very miraculous thing just happened:
my beerbottle flipped over backwards
and landed on its bottom on the floor,
and I have set it upon the table to foam down,
but the photos were not so lucky today
and there is a small slit along the leather
of my left shoe, but it’s all very simple:
we cannot acquire too much: there are laws
we know nothing of, all manner of nudges
set us to burning or freezing; what sets
the blackbird in the cat’s mouth
is not for us to say, or why some men
are jailed like pet squirrels
while others nuzzle in enormous breasts
through endless nights—this is the
task and the terror, and we are not
taught why. still, it’s lucky the bottle
landed straightside up, and although
I have one of wine and one of whiskey,
this forsooths, somehow, a good night,
and perhaps tomorrow my nose will be longer:
new shoes, less rain, more poems.
