What Matters Most Is How Well You Walk Through the Fire, Page 2
Charles Bukowski
I suppose the historians will have a name and a meaning for it,
but the young wised-up first
and now the old are getting wise,
almost everybody’s anti-war,
no use having a war you can’t win,
right or wrong.
hell, I remember when I was a kid it
was ten or 15 years after World War One was over,
we built model planes of Spads and Fokkers,
we bought Flying Aces magazine at the newsstand
we knew about Baron Manfred von Richtofen
and Capt. Eddie Rickenbacker
and we fought in dream trenches with our dream rifles
and had dream
bayonet fights with the dirty
Hun…
and those movies, full of drama and excitement,
about good old World War One, where
we almost got the Kaiser, we almost kidnapped him
once,
and in the end
we finished off all those spike-helmeted bastards
forever.
the young kids now, they don’t build model warplanes
nor do they dream fight in dream rice paddies,
they know it’s all useless, ordinary,
just a job like
sweeping the streets or picking up the garbage,
they’d rather go watch a Western or hang out at the
mall or go to the zoo or a football game, they’re
already thinking of college and automobiles and wives
and homes and barbecues, they’re already trapped
in another kind of dream, another kind of war,
and I guess it won’t kill them as fast, at least not
physically.
it was wrong but World War One was fun for us
it gave us Jean Harlow and James Cagney
and “Mademoiselle from Armentières, Parley-Voo?”
it gave us
long afternoons and evenings of play
(we didn’t realize that many of us were soon to die in another war)
yes, they fooled us nicely but we were young and loved it—
the lies of our elders—
and see how it has changed—
they can’t bullshit
even a kid anymore,
not about all that.
my father’s big-time fling
I came home from grammar school
one day
and my mother was sitting,
crying
there was a woman there with a large nose
and my father was there.
my mother said, “come here.”
I walked over and she said,
“do you love me?”
I wasn’t quite sure but I told her,
“yes.”
then my father said to me,
“get the hell out of here.” and my mother
said, “no, Henry, stay.”
“I’ll kill you,” I told my father.
“oh, christ,” said the woman with the big nose,
“I’m getting out of here!”
“who do you love?” my mother asked my father.
my father began crying,
“I love you both,”
he said.
“I’ll kill you,”
I told him again.
the woman with the big nose grabbed her
purse and ran from the house.
“Edna! wait!” screamed my father.
he ran out of the house after her.
I ran out too.
Edna got into my father’s car and
began to drive it down the
street. she had the
keys. my father ran after the
car. he managed to reach in and
grab Edna’s purse. but Edna
drove off
anyhow.
back in the house
my mother said to me:
“he says he loves her. did you see her
nose, Henry?”
“yes, I saw it.”
“christ,” said my father, “get that kid out of
here!”
“I’ll kill you!” I told him.
he rushed toward me.
I didn’t see the blow.
my ear and face burned, I was on the
floor—
and inside my head
a flash of red
and a ringing sound.
it cleared. I got up and rushed at him,
swinging. I couldn’t
kill him.
a month later
somebody broke his arm in a fight
and it made me
very happy.
the bakers of 1935
my mother, father and I
walked to the market
once a week
for our government relief food:
cans of beans, cans of
weenies, cans of hash,
some potatoes, some
eggs.
we carried the supplies
in large shopping
bags.
and as we left the market
we always stopped
outside
where there was a large
window
where we could see the
bakers
kneading
the flour into the
dough.
there were 5 bakers,
large young men
and they stood at
5 large wooden tables
working very hard,
not looking up.
they flipped the dough in
the air
and all the sizes and
designs were
different.
we were always hungry
and the sight of the men
working the dough,
flipping it in the
air was a wondrous
sight, indeed.
but then, it would come time
to leave
and we would walk away
carrying our heavy
shopping bags.
“those men have jobs,”
my father would say.
he said it each time.
every time we watched
the bakers he would say
that.
“I think I’ve found a new way
to make the hash,”
my mother would say
each time.
or sometimes it was
the weenies.
we ate the eggs all
different ways:
fried, poached, boiled.
one of our favorites was
poached eggs on hash.
but that favorite finally
became almost impossible
to eat.
and the potatoes, we fried
them, baked them, boiled
them.
but the potatoes had a way
of not becoming as tiresome
as the hash, the eggs, the
beans.
one day, arriving home,
we placed all our foodstuffs
on the kitchen counter and
stared at them.
then we turned away.
“I’m going to hold up a
bank!” my father suddenly
said.
“oh no, Henry, please!”
said my mother,
“please don’t!”
“we’re going to eat some
steak, we’re going to eat
steaks until they come out
of our ears!”
“but Henry, you don’t have
a gun!”
“I’ll hold something in my
coat, I’ll pretend it’s a gun!”
“I’ve got a water pistol,”
I said, “you can use that.”
my father looked at me.
“you,” he said, “SHUT UP!�
�
I walked outside.
I sat on the back steps.
I could hear them in there
talking but I couldn’t quite make it
out.
then I could hear them again, it was
louder.
“I’ll find a new way to cook every-
thing!” my mother said.
“I’m going to rob a god-damned
bank!” my father said.
“Henry, please, please don’t!”
I heard my mother.
I got up from the steps.
walked away into the
afternoon.
the people
all people start to
come apart finally
and there it is:
just empty ashtrays in a room
or wisps of hair on a comb
in the dissolving moonlight.
it is all ash
and dry leaves
and grief gone
like an ocean liner.
when the shoes fill with blood
you know
that the shoes are dead.
true revolution
comes from true revulsion;
when things get bad enough
the kitten will kill the lion.
the statues in the church of my childhood
and the candles that burn at their feet
if I could only take these
and open their eyes
and feel their legs
and hear their clay mouths
say the true
clay
words.
the pretty girl who rented rooms
down in New Orleans
this young pretty girl
showed me a room for rent and
it was dark in there and we stood
very close
and as we stood there
she said,
“the room is $4.50 a week.”
and I said,
“I usually pay $3.50.”
as we stood there in the dark
I decided to pay her $4.50 because
maybe I’d see her in the hall once in a
while
and I could not understand then why
women had to be like she was
they always waited for you
to give a sign
to make the first move
or not to make the first move
and I said,
“I’ll take the room,” and I gave her
the money
although I could see that
the sheets were dirty and the bed
wasn’t made
but I was young and a virgin,
frightened and
confused
and I gave her the money
and she closed the door behind her
and there was no toilet and no sink
and no window.
the room was damp with suicide and death
and I undressed and lay down on the bed
and I lived there a week
and I saw many other people in the hall
old drunks
people on relief
crazy people
good young people
dull old people
but I never saw her again.
finally
I moved around the corner
to a new place
for $3.50 a week
run by another female
a 75-year-old religious maniac
with bad eyes and a limp
and we didn’t have any trouble
at all
and there was a sink
and a window
in the room.
too soon
this dutchman
in a Philly bar put
3 raw eggs in his
beer
before he took a
drink.
71, he was.
I was 23 and sat 3
barstools away
burning
sorrows.
I held my head in all its
tender precious
agony
and we drank
together.
“feelin’ bad, kid?” he asked.
“yeh. yeh. yeh.”
“kid,” he said, “I’ve slept longer than you’ve
lived.”
a good old man
he was
soothing
gold
and too soon
dead.
canned heat?
not that I minded but I believe that my stint
while bumming drinks from the end barstool in
Philly
was about as low on the social scale as
you could get
until one day this gentleman walked in
and sat down beside me.
now his breath really REEKED.
I had to ask him,
“what the hell have you been drinking?”
“canned heat,” he said.
“canned heat?” I asked.
“yeah, it’s cheaper than the crap
you’re drinking, I got a whole closet full
of it.”
I was a little afraid of him and he sensed
that.
“don’t worry about me,” he said, “I’m all right, let me
buy you a beer.”
“no, no, that’s all right…”
“I insist…I’ll even drink one myself.”
he ordered two draft beers from Jim the
bartender.
I lifted mine. “cheers!” I said.
“cheers!” he said.
“we’re different,” he said, “you bum drinks,
I bum money for canned heat.”
“but we’re both bums!”
“right,” he laughed.
we drank our beers.
I had a few coins so then I bought him
one.
we sat there not saying much.
he finished his beer, then
noticed two men sitting at the middle
of the bar.
“pardon me,” he said.
he walked down, stood behind
them, asked something.
“get the hell away from me!” one of the
men said loudly.
“yeah!” yelled the other man.
then Jim the bartender yelled,
“get the hell out of here!”
the man walked to the door and was
gone.
Jim walked over to me.
“I don’t want you talking to that son-of-a-
bitch!” he told me.
“Jim, he seemed like a nice guy!”
“he’s crazy, he drinks canned heat!”
Jim walked off and began picking up glasses
and washing them.
he seemed very angry.
the other two men looked straight ahead,
not talking.
they also seemed quite angry.
I had no idea what canned heat was,
never heard of anybody in Philly
drinking it.
I sat and waited for happier
times.
Pershing Square, Los Angeles, 1939
One orator proving there was a God
and another proving that there wasn’t.
and the crazy lady with the white and yellow
hair with the big dirty blue ribbon,
the white-striped dress, the tennis shoes,
the bare dirty ankles and the big dog
with the matted hardened fur.
and there was the guitar player and
the drum player and the flute player
all about, the winos sleeping on
the lawn
and all the while the war was rushing
toward us
but somehow nobody argued about the
war
or at least I never heard them.
>
in the late afternoon I would go into
one of the bars on 6th street.
I was 19 but I looked 30.
I ordered scotch-and-water.
I sat in a booth and nobody bothered
me
as the war rushed toward us.
as the afternoon dipped into evening
I refused to pay for my drinks.
and demanded more.
“Give me another drink or I’ll
rip this place up!”
“All right,” they told me, “one
more but it’s the last and don’t
come back, please.”
I liked being young and mean.
the world didn’t make any sense
to me.
as the night darkened I’d go back
to Pershing Square
and sit on the benches and watch
and listen to the
people.
the winos on the lawn passed bottles
of muscatel and port about
as the war rushed toward
us.
I wasn’t interested in the war.
I didn’t have anything, I didn’t want
anything.
I had my half pint of whiskey and I
nipped at it, rolled cigarettes
and waited.
I’d read half the books in the library
and had spit them out.
the war rushed toward us.
the guitar player played his guitar.
the drummer beat his drums.
and the flute player played that thing
and it rushed toward us,
the air was clear and cool.
the stars seemed just a thousand feet
away above us
and you could see the red burning tips of
cigarettes
and there were people coughing and
laughing and swearing,
and some babbled and some prayed
and many just sat there doing
nothing,
there was nothing to do,
it was 1939 and it would never be
1939 again
in Los Angeles or any place
