the beginning of dust.
ok Shed, easy now.
yah,
Charles
Buk
Horse angels, feather-whip gaiety Hoc octobra hoc hastra hixty [27 October 1960]
m d sher—
oke, vents open; horse sky animal dangling, head hed hed eye, bang bang bang BLUE CLOUDS NOT WHITE, They iza comin in, hit d. double $117.00 bang bang, the bulls are veering off, sum otha wins—10, twnet fift on nose, hell wallet fulla stuffins not of money but of TIME to breathe n by a paint brush n new typewriter ribbon n house, am gona buy a little shack Sheri n I may quit everything and huddle in the corner and dream spain and Spam and dogs with wowfree muzzles on deathsass, so look, I received the photo a Martingale and Ernie back against sea chalk cliffs that will dip with bombers and sigh; ah, writ, thisa good thing u remember Gramps Jr. because altho I have failed n my first poems r no morean scratchings, I AM LOADED FOR BEAR an I cannot stop myself: I am six feet taller evra morning wen I wake up, no matter if wi hoo or what or how sick six, ther is somethin wirlin, n tha t weeh it gost, go dame u, u got me writin lak a friggin goat in lacepatch a curtain belly ballet bullets, so.
Very well. And so. The cliffs and Ernst. I wish u very well.
Pond something new book out. Hood reviews good. Pond say,
“If I can feel all this
there must be something
good
in the universe…”
I think we must go beyond this into the screeching sounds say of a washing machine gone wild—there is more here than supplication; there is some part of us that wishes to remain forever mystified, and I do not think this is ignorance or ill will or thin character or the hand-gallop toward elenchus; and I think this is where Pound has failed—this eternal reaching toward light, haitus…is much too much like gathering coins for the bank of the soul. There comes, finally, to all of us…the wish for retreat from Art…from finery…the studded brave challenge of the impossible, for the retreat to darkness and dankness and fish and bone and the sick cut flower. Each new grace becomes finally an obscenity and more than we can bear. I am not saying that your friend Pound was right: I am saying, that perhaps, in some ways, he is more toward wrong now.
Thanx for foto, yr face fathomless, mus admit interesting but can see u would be hard to handle and too much for me: I am slow man of much peace and quietness…while the oblique loom of the incurably absurd…the banging of grass against the bone keeps ants hustling thru the dreamground.
Charles
Buk
[postcard dated by SM 3 November 1960]
Dear Sheri:
Pound’s latest, which you pro know about: Thrones: 96-109 de los Cantares. New Directions, $3.50. They tell me Pond was pro reading Catherine Drinker Bowen’s The Lion and the Throne.
It appears to me that Pound reads too mc. and mrly translates into his wordage. Much trick of mounting history upon poetic stilts. To me, history is a series of liars with the writer of the final book carrying the largest gun. Pound has proved a much better poet than a politician. All he learned out of St. Liz was Sheri Martinelli. Which was plenty, and perhaps worth it. No, no, I’d say not: the pure poet must have neither woman nor country.
THE SUN HAS NOT BEEN OUT FOR DAYS, IT IS RAINING, THE SIDEWINDERS RUNNING POORLY, HYD.PK., COFFEE AND WINE BURNING MY TONGUE.
Charles
BUK
L.A., Late November [28] 1960
Dear Sheri:
Been wondering about poems, and good you will use…Have been getting rid of others here and there, even San Francisco Review took 4 or 5 or 6—he didn’t name them but I half remember some of them. Miller kept asking for poems and I hit him with a houseful, and now I suppose we’ll leave each other alone for a while. Jon Webb’s son dropped by, found me sick in bed, 3 day beard, hair in eyes. I sat there in old shrunken bathrobe, cracked him a beer, and I told him, now don’t expect anything brilliant from me, when it comes to talking I’m a ditch-digger with a hangover. He’s the son of the editor of this Outsider thing in New Orleans and the old man says Jon Jr. is “nuts” about my stuff. I had been spitting up blood all day and was unable to drink, and Jr. said he had originally planned to sketch me but had forgotten his materials, for which I was damned glad. It bothers me to have people run in on me like that because I am usually in such bad shape, but they’ve always got to see the guy who wrote that stuff, when to me, only the writing’s important, and maybe not even important, at that.
I am sorry you can’t read my English but I can’t write any other way an’ I’m too old to begin looping with Esar Pund West Coasta Hafrika sign talk.
Heard from Thorne, other day (Epos), this, in part: “…has anyone ever called you Whitman in reverse…I hope that this will not annoy you, but your long dark catalogues do remind me of his long light ones…he saw America singing…you see it vomiting…both of you could have used a touch of each other…”
Well, I don’t know, America was more singing when Whitman was around, the newness hadn’t frozen to politic and graft and cartel, the piling of crowds, jaywalking, auto insurance, daylight thieves, falsies, celluloid, high-priced graves, taxes—oh, I could make a list that would take me 90 days to type; but it is very hard to see America singing now. The only thing that can sing is the individual who somehow remains alive under the lashing of a demeaning way of life, and it’s a full-time job, staying awake amongst the sleepers as you buy eggs or drive across a bridge or wonder why you haven’t put any paint on a piece of paper for five years.
I guess that planets are still in friction with my skull-bone: auto accident, pipe in bathroom leaks, left headlight of car out, bones cold cold cold, moving like an old man, the sun keeps coming down on nothing. Pound could find his light but I move forever in the dark. It is only sometimes when I hear a bit of symphony music that I rise up out of it. I hope I do not depress you, Sheri. I must close and clean this place up—if I am able.
Love,
Charles
Charles Bukowski
Uno/ Dicèmbre/ Mille nove cento sessanta SM poBx San Gregorio Calif
Buk/ ONE of the joys of being a female is that no one appears to rub dicks with me/ AND ONE OF THE REASONS THE UNIVERSE RETURNED TO IDOLATRY is because the males snuggled on each other…they did it to him & to you also/ Bukowski you are NOT an American Whitman in reverse—it aint then…it is NOW & we have been given the divine fire & you wont light it at all but persist in rubbing yr nose in accidental & fungoid muck
Buk—all you got to do is move out of the “money belt” “the golttt coast” as my Hollywood pals call it…move into our large & innocent area/ the center of the land…and all yr vomit vanishes—
One saw it driving home to Virginia—the Innocence—the descendants of the founding fathers…the Good Christians who actually read the buke & live by it…all yr symptoms of disease vanish Bukowski…yr entire list is only related to a single cause/ you live on top of a mold culture/ a rot growth that always appears on any ripe fruit that aint being put to any good use/ and you believe it to be the WHOLE story/ the marvel is that you do not report worse stuff than you do/ yr insights & perceptions are fascinating and you cd write us a poem that wd be as valuable as a novel of the times/ all but when you let yrself into the poem & then everything goes lopsided & abstract & meaningless…
my dear brother Buk/ suppose you were lost…in a strange land…no one to talk to…no one who knew wot or who you were…& frightened…& lonely & superstitious…then a SIGN POST…and hope & a feeling of safety…then the sign post jumps around & turns upside-down & you don’t know where the hell it is pointing…wd you bless it?
I mean the Universe returned to idolatry on the fulcrum of the 20thC…it might take another 2000 due mille but that aint much
yr english is fine in this letter/ don’t make fun of me Buk/ West Coasta Hafrika style—don’t know who this Thorne chap is but he sounds like a niz leedle goy out front/ america is NOT vomiting…goddam forever & eternally ma
y they rot alive—these bugger’d minds and left over scum from the war/ my baby sister is having her baby—my 2 & ½ yr old neice is so intelligent…all the Jews in the psyc racket…pester my 3rd sister to let them poke around in her intelligence…she completely threw them…a whole roomful of Nudttt Duckders until I warned my 3rd sister to not fk with them…they only want to investigate beautiful intelligences in order to know how to…enslave them
my mother & my father are dreaming out the last part of their lives…made joyous by their Elder Daughter’s post cards & monies & chinatown joy gifts…my middle sister’s children are getting engaged & falling in love…& my maw in law & paw in law are making a chinese thanksgiving dinner for my chinese nefuwwwww age 6 or so…the world is alive & joyous & not vomiting and Mr. Thorne can remove that dick from his mouth & stop being a goy out front…
I heard that Allen Ginsberg went to visit that greezer when he wuz up from Cuba—taking his little band of debauched christers wiff him…vodddt a thrill woddttt a reffffooolushunary t’ing to be doink…Allen I cannot blame…and I love Allen—he is pure & good & only doing his job…but the scum he hangs out with…a white hide and a blank inside…not ONE of those fucked in the mouth & in the ass christians…wd dare…dare approach any of our white house lice…but trot like dogs to see the greezer & get their kicks/ daring dews
and Thorne belongs in with them
[bottom of page 2; no closing signature, so third page possibly lost]
December [3] 1960
Mine Shed,
Re poem Paper: barnball said nothing because barnball knew nothing except what he hez heard insteada did, and so that’s it: snow upon roof, paper flying before wheels…nothing can be done really but record futility of flatness, no further digging left even into evil, but evil is not a word I like to use because it is used to bang against the heads of bong-sounding domes. What I mean is, the poem can go no further, and I stepped in and sliced its head off.
Sounds and utterances of the people are only good as sounds and utterances and can never be taken as embarkations into wisdom except as accident; their thoughts are multitude thoughts and their sins are patented, or as you said Gramps put it: “When you are the light it is bound to be dark”, or as I would say, when you are lighting light at your best it is only the beginning of the fetching away of a darkness that has closed lives before us and will close lives after us, and whether this is a trick of God through a purposely bent imbecility of Man, or whether it is no God at all, it is dark and it will stay dark until this God comes and brings us light or until we are blown away.
Barnball can say nothing, and although I can say more, I can say very little more, and I made this clear upon my entrance and…exit from the poem.
Now Gramps utters of cosmos and light, and this is all good ego, and by uttering shows some light and some of the cosmos, and this is important to us as we boil our beans or sit upon the edge of a chair listening to the blackbird cats rubber-wheeling it down to the edge of hell, but Gramps himself knows there are plenty of clouds and planets and jade eagles that scratch the spirit and misdirect it in its very now-essence of wanting to jell and flow in our brainguts as the secret pall of a nothing greater than death, than the death of the living faces and nations, than the death of ourselves or where a rose finally goes.
And you have to watch carefully when you talk this way because it is easy to say sounds for sounds and our clay words break and we lose the way because we keep babbling to make feeling when feeling has long gone and we only bury what we seek. In other words, down with bullshit. And most poetry is bullshit. Most of Gramps isn’t. And you aren’t because you won’t be fooled. This is very important with you, Martinelli: not to be fooled. I noticed it early. Or fooled with. Except as real. I don’t bother quite as much with that because I laugh more without sound and I am tired. I don’t think I am as much German as I am tired and I should have died five or 6 times but I merely sit boiling beans, which might be German after all: too stupid to die, and also too stupid to love: hung in between great blanks of air, wondering.
I must get this off now because the crab-feet are clutching my brain. This clock to my left ticks and there is nothing but grass outside my window, 3 floors down. A gifted phonepole throws a black line more beautiful than I can paint, and in the four pink courts below, 4 great gramps drink their beer, 4 great gramps, 4 great gramps, and your ocean plays a gramophone.
LOVE,
Charles Bukowski
Buk
Sometime, rain comin’ down thru darkness—[postcard dated by SM 9 December 1960]
Deah Sheri:
this to let u know letta be up soon. I tripped and fell, clawed inside, but now eating Scandinavian bread and facing East, and mebe soon the pieces will form the puzzle away.
Po’ Jon Web Sr. torn by 23 year ole maniac. I will buck him up soon’s I get my feet.
Your letters better than mountain music or Schuman Concerto in A Minor. Don’t cut away the pieces: the salt is important too, and I take it better than most poem-people.
But right now—just this card, and letter mebe tomorrow n tomorrow n tomorrow.
L.,
Buk
tomorrow n tomorrow n tomorrow: from Macbeth (act 5, scene 5).
Los Angeles, Calif. Dec. (9-60)
Dear Sheri:
Am bit downcast because you praised me on sending without cards and I just sent card, but was so down, and tho still up a little, am still down, but mostly spirit-down, the body warming up a little. Even so, I tried to keep card enough mystery-wise to confound the people, but in your eyes I may have failed. Well, no more cards…if not too late.
Sitting here with towel around my neck, drinking coffee, December down on me like a wet toad sitting across the mind, and it appears he will not jump off, and I am weighted with little toad-turds, 5,6,7,8, 9, and if it is not a bad time, it is not a good time, indeed. This time it is in the form of a personality…cutting across my sights. However, it is an gd ugly story and I will spare you…a little of what I still feel. It will go away soon, I hope, if I am good enough to learn from it, and I don’t mean learning in the book-sense or the “Correct” sense…but in the sense that is Buk, and must be nursed as Buk thru Buk; dying not but growing, which means: sun and chewing on a piece of bread and listening to music and looking out the window at plants and the sides of houses and feeling way up the arms and shoulders the substance of being full without the blight awareness of striving…and what I mean is that sometimes day by day we are cut down, until we feel that there are not many cuts left to reach down to zero—and sometimes you can reach ZERO without knowing—ah, those who reach zero never know!—and your good letters full of grain and ground and leaf have sometimes reached me with sounds of living when living sounds were very light, maybe just the remembrance of an old road or the side of a hill, or a rabbit running right on through headlights in Utah desert…bad sick times, the spirit raped and bugged and dwindling…oh, God damn, how often can we come back? It’s amazing, isn’t it?…how a thing as trigger-hair fine as the spirit will give you another chance…if you will only wait on it. It comes back like the good lover, standing in the door.
Rasputin survived as I survived one time because mainly I did not think of dying…the thought of death did not enter my mind, and although the body was gone, Buk sat in it and waited like a rat beneath the wharf. You watch what you eat and try to keep warm; the salt of the ocean is good when the sun is there but when it is roofed and robbed by cold clouds yd never want to paint, you are attacked no matter what you say. I god hope u feelin’ better and making some adjustments…
I didn’t mind being called “Whitman in reverse” by Thorne. Yes, of course, the inland is better…if you don’t become too known to the people…their injustice is that instead of separating into cold cells of unfeeling they set up a society of measurement in which each is given a place, with no moving up or down, in or out, no matter what you do. This makes things relaxed because there is nowhere to go e
xcept where you are, and this is what gives you the feeling “this would seem a nice place to stop”; but no, they wouldn’t let you rest until they found your place on the ladder. At least here…104 steps south of Hollywood Blvd., I am as unknown as a bug on the underside of a leaf, and I do not chase through their ladybug air.
I am lost in a strange land.
Thorne is woman, editor of Epos.
A poet should hang alone. If Ginsburg wants to visit Castro that’s his business, but to me…it is going too far out to make a sound. I believe he will suffer from it without ever knowing it.
Thorne-woman prints poetic poetry, all life-forms dominated down to acceptable line. She has published me but let me run a little looser, I don’t know why. Something of mine will be in Dec. Epos: The Sun Wields Mercy.
Yes, Webb Sr. seems good slow sort without too much pretense, but GAWD the Jr. is in hero-whoreship stage: (Sr. says he wrote him of meeting Buk): “…a nice meeting, short, honest & within the manner and respect one would pay a great poet as he is. I could not get over the feeling that I was an autograph seeker, but he, I think, sensed how I felt and very nicely directed the atmosphere so as to make me feel a fellow writer etc.” Balls. I didn’t sense anything. I told the kid that I didn’t run around with writers and not to expect a lot of fancy statements and that I was sick. He asked me what I thought of Jory Sherman. I guess he knew I had met him. I didn’t care for the direct question so I parried with a few lines of general literary criticism and pretty soon he called a cab and got the hell out of there.
ooh god…no pure red wool next ta my body…my skin…very sensitive, I’d die dy dy! too protestant perhaps, too ivory, and yet the bestial wail. Griffith already talking about future chapbook, I thinking titles: Trinkets for Whores, Gamblers and Imbeciles or Our Bread Is Blessed and Damned or or or or or…What happened to Payne? Well, we don’t agree on hardly anything but he took a coupla poems for his Light Year, wrote: “Bulliski your bull hits the mark.” Which I think is a very weak expression and I think he wanted to say, “Bullshitski” which would have been better, only Payne plays the gentleman, read and ready, but his lines do not hold…Miller is ed. of San Francisco Review and he took handful of poems I wrote when drunk and I don’t know exactly what they are…there might be four or five or maybe even more, but I don’t know what they say exactly and will have to wait until he prints to see what I have written. I have learned when drunk to type directly off the typewriter. I have written too many poems longhand and could read nothing the next day…. The blood thing is from when my stomach broke open…When I open a beer, it does crack. Maybe we open em different.