The Roominghouse Madrigals: Early Selected Poems, 1946-1966, Page 2
Charles Bukowski
it’s raining, oh damn it all, it’s raining!
and on the battlefield the rocks are wet and cool,
the fine grains of rock glint moon-fire,
and she curses under a small green hat
like a crown
and walks like a gawky marionette
into the strings of rain.
What to Do with Contributor’s Copies?
(Dear Sir: Although we realize it is
insufficient payment for your poems,
you will receive 4 contributor’s copies,
which we will mail directly to you or to
anyone you wish.—Note from the Editor.)
well, ya better mail one to M.S. or she’ll prob.
put her pisser in the oven, she thinks she is hot
stuff, and mabe she is, I sure as hell wd’t
know
then there is C.W. who does not answer his mail
but is very busy teaching young boys how to write
and I know he is going places, and since he is,
ya better mail ’m one…
then there’s my old aunt in
Palm Springs nothing but money and I have
everything but money…talent, a good singing voice,
a left hook deep to the gut…send her a copy,
she hung up on me, last time I phoned her drunk,
giving evidence of need, she hung up
on me…
then there’s this girl in Sacramento who
writes me these little letters…very depressed
bitch, mixed and beaten like some waffle, making
gentle intellectual overtures which I ignore,
but send her a magazine
in lieu of a hot poker.
that makes 4?
I hope to send you some more poems
soon because I figure that
people who print my poems are a little
mad, but that’s all right. I am also
that way. anyhow—
I hope
meanwhile
you do not fold up
before
I
do.
c.b.
Brave Bull
I did not know
that the Mexicans
did this:
the bull
had been brave
and now
they dragged him
dead
around the ring
by his
tail,
a brave bull
dead,
but not just another bull,
this was a special
bull,
and to me
a special
lesson…
and although Brahms
stole his First from Beethoven’s
9th.
and although
the bull
was dead
his head and his horns and
his insides dead,
he had been better than
Brahms,
as good as
Beethoven,
and
as we walked out
the sound and meaning
of him
kept crawling up my arms
and although people bumped me and
stepped on my toes
the bull burned within me
my candle of
jesus,
dragged by his tail
he had nothing to do
having done it all,
and through the long tunnels and minatory glances,
the elbows and feet and eyes, I prayed for California,
and the dead bull
in man
and in me,
and I clasped my hands
deep within my
pockets, seized darkness,
and moved on.
It’s Not Who Lived Here
but who died here;
and it’s not when
but how;
it’s not
the known great
but the great who died unknown;
it’s not
the history
of countries
but the lives of men.
fables are dreams,
not lies,
and
truth changes
as
men change,
and when truth becomes stable
men
will
become dead
and
the insect
and the fire and
the flood
will become
truth.
O, We Are the Outcasts
ah, christ, what a CREW:
more
poetry, always more
POETRY.
if it doesn’t come, coax it out with a
laxative. get your name in LIGHTS,
get it up there in
8½ x 11 mimeo.
keep it coming like a miracle.
ah christ, writers are the most sickening
of all the louts!
yellow-toothed, slump-shouldered,
gutless, flea-bitten and
obvious…in tinker-toy rooms
with their flabby hearts
they tell us
what’s wrong with the world—
as if we didn’t know that a cop’s club
can crack the head
and that war is a dirtier game than
marriage…
or down in a basement bar
hiding from a wife who doesn’t appreciate him
and children he doesn’t
want
he tells us that his heart is drowning in
vomit. hell, all our hearts are drowning in vomit,
in pork salt, in bad verse, in soggy
love.
but he thinks he’s alone and
he thinks he’s special and he thinks he’s Rimbaud
and he thinks he’s
Pound.
and death! how about death? did you know
that we all have to die? even Keats died, even
Milton!
and D. Thomas—THEY KILLED HIM, of course.
Thomas didn’t want all those free drinks
all that free pussy—
they…FORCED IT ON HIM
when they should have left him alone so he could
write write WRITE!
poets.
and there’s another
type. I’ve met them at their country
places (don’t ask me what I was doing there because
I don’t know).
they were born with money and
they don’t have to dirty their hands in
slaughterhouses or washing
dishes in grease joints or
driving cabs or pimping or selling pot.
this gives them time to understand
Life.
they walk in with their cocktail glass
held about heart high
and when they drink they just
sip.
you are drinking green beer which you
brought with you
because you have found out through the years
that rich bastards are tight—
they use 5 cent stamps instead of airmail
they promise to have all sorts of goodies ready
upon your arrival
from gallons of whiskey to
50 cent cigars. but it’s never
there.
and they HIDE their women from you—
their wives, x-wives, daughters, maids, so forth,
because they’ve read your poems and
figure all you want to do is fuck everybody and
everything. which once might have been
true but is no longer quite
true.
and—
he WRITES TOO.
POETRY, of
course. everybody
wr
ites
poetry.
he has plenty of time and a
postoffice box in town
and he drives there 3 or 4 times a day
looking and hoping for accepted
poems.
he thinks that poverty is a weakness of the
soul.
he thinks your mind is ill because you are
drunk all the time and have to work in a
factory 10 or 12 hours a
night.
he brings his wife in, a beauty, stolen from a
poorer rich
man.
he lets you gaze for 30 seconds
then hustles her
out. she has been crying for some
reason.
you’ve got 3 or 4 days to linger in the
guesthouse he says,
“come on over to dinner
sometime.”
but he doesn’t say when or
where. and then you find that you are not even
IN HIS HOUSE.
you are in
ONE of his houses but
his house is somewhere
else—
you don’t know
where.
he even has x-wives in some of his
houses.
his main concern is to keep his x-wives away from
you. he doesn’t want to give up a
damn thing. and you can’t blame him:
his x-wives are all young, stolen, kept,
talented, well-dressed, schooled, with
varying French-German accents.
and!: they
WRITE POETRY TOO. or
PAINT. or
fuck.
but his big problem is to get down to that mail
box in town to get back his
rejected poems
and to keep his eye on all the other mail boxes
in all his other
houses.
meanwhile, the starving Indians
sell beads and baskets in the streets of the small desert
town.
the Indians are not allowed in his houses
not so much because they are a fuck-threat
but because they are
dirty and
ignorant. dirty? I look down at my shirt
with the beerstain on the front.
ignorant? I light a 6 cent cigar and
forget about
it.
he or they or somebody was supposed to meet me at
the
train station.
of course, they weren’t
there. “We’ll be there to meet the great
Poet!”
well, I looked around and didn’t see any
great poet. besides it was 7 a.m. and
40 degrees. those things
happen. the trouble was there were no
bars open. nothing open. not even a
jail.
he’s a poet.
he’s also a doctor, a head-shrinker.
no blood involved that
way. he won’t tell me whether I am crazy or
not—I don’t have the
money.
he walks out with his cocktail glass
disappears for 2 hours, 3 hours,
then suddenly comes walking back in
unannounced
with the same cocktail glass
to make sure I haven’t gotten hold of
something more precious than
Life itself.
my cheap green beer is killing
me. he shows heart (hurrah) and
gives me a little pill that stops my
gagging.
but nothing decent to
drink.
he’d bought a small 6 pack
for my arrival but that was gone in an
hour and 15
minutes.
“I’ll buy you barrels of beer,” he had
said.
I used his phone (one of his phones)
to get deliveries of beer and
cheap whiskey. the town was ten miles away,
downhill. I peeled my poor dollars from my poor
roll. and the boy needed a tip, of
course.
the way it was shaping up I could see that I was
hardly Dylan Thomas yet, not even
Robert Creeley. certainly Creeley wouldn’t have
had beerstains on his
shirt.
anyhow, when I finally got hold of one of his
x-wives I was too drunk to
make it.
scared too. sure, I imagined him peering
through the window—
he didn’t want to give up a damn thing—
and
leveling the luger while I was
working
while “The March to the Gallows” was playing over
the Muzak
and shooting me in the ass first and
my poor brain
later.
“an intruder,” I could hear him telling them,
“ravishing one of my helpless x-wives.”
I see him published in some of the magazines
now. not very good stuff.
a poem about me
too: the Polack.
the Polack whines too much. the Polack whines about his
country, other countries, all countries, the Polack
works overtime in a factory like a fool, among other
fools with “pre-drained spirits.”
the Polack drinks seas of green beer
full of acid. the Polack has an ulcerated
hemorrhoid. the Polack picks on fags
“fragile fags.” the Polack hates his
wife, hates his daughter. his daughter will become
an alcoholic, a prostitute. the Polack has an
“obese burned out wife.” the Polack has a
spastic gut. the Polack has a
“rectal brain.”
thank you, Doctor (and poet). any charge for
this? I know I still owe you for the
pill.
Your poem is not too good
but at least I got your starch up.
most of your stuff is about as lively as a
wet and deflated
beachball. but it is your round, you’ve won a round.
going to invite me out this
Summer? I might scrape up
trainfare. got an Indian friend who’d like to meet
you and yours. he swears he’s got the biggest
pecker in the state of California.
and guess what?
he writes
POETRY
too!
Poem for My 43rd Birthday
To end up alone
in a tomb of a room
without cigarettes
or wine—
just a lightbulb
and a potbelly,
grayhaired,
and glad to have
the room.
…in the morning
they’re out there
making money:
judges, carpenters,
plumbers, doctors,
newsboys, policemen,
barbers, carwashers,
dentists, florists,
waitresses, cooks,
cabdrivers…
and you turn over
to your left side
to get the sun
on your back
and out
of your eyes.
The Genius of the Crowd
There is enough treachery, hatred,
violence,
Absurdity in the average human
being
To supply any given army on any given
day.
AND The Best At Murder Are Those
Who Preach Against It.
AND The Best At Hate Are Those
Who Preach LOVE
AND
THE BEST AT WAR
—FINALLY—ARE THOSE WHO
PREACH
PEACE
Those Who Preach GOD
NEED God
Those Who Preach PEACE
Do Not Have Peace.
THOSE WHO PREACH LOVE
DO NOT HAVE LOVE
BEWARE THE PREACHERS
Beware The Knowers.
Beware
Those Who
Are ALWAYS
READING
BOOKS
Beware Those Who Either Detest
Poverty Or Are Proud Of It
BEWARE Those Quick To Praise
For They Need PRAISE In Return
BEWARE Those Quick To Censure:
They Are Afraid Of What They Do
Not Know
Beware Those Who Seek Constant
Crowds; They Are Nothing
Alone
Beware
The Average Man
The Average Woman
BEWARE Their Love
Their Love Is Average, Seeks
Average
But There Is Genius In Their Hatred
There Is Enough Genius In Their
Hatred To Kill You, To Kill
Anybody.
Not Wanting Solitude
Not Understanding Solitude
They Will Attempt To Destroy
Anything
That Differs
From Their Own
Not Being Able
To Create Art
