she put me thro plenty of hell years ago and I think what puzzles her now is that she can’t put me in hell anymore…
Guess you are right: Jory is all for me, thinks I am somebody. letter from him today giving me addresses of some new mags. As front-runner he gets a lot of this stuff.
According to Griff of Hearse I have a chapbook coming out in less than month: Flower, Fist and Bestial Wail. Will get a copy to you. More or less earlier pomes, he left out some of what I think are best. Not apologizing, only saying not my selection.
Jory said Morris reading was a mess, everybody walking out, Wang, etc and only wuz a coupla snot-nosed poets reading vury thin poesy…frum wha’ I unerstan’ Morris waited for the boys to come to him, and they did not. But hermit does not unnerstan all this doubletalk, and so forget.
Stars still feel all outa kilt so I am quitting now. All right, Sheri, baby, I am thinkin’ of u, oney don’ tell Po’ Li.
L.,
Charles (Buk)
Lost Angels Monday [15 August 1960]
Dear Sheri:
rec. your wand-waving exhort and expl. of canto 90, and Pound knew good gal when he saw one…read several times, caught no mostly light and let rough edges go, if I may say rough edges: the rough edges are me, no Pound nor Sheri…thank you.
oh only to say awfully sick this morning…somebody’s symphony in C. Minor on. would prefer D. minor key this morn. celebrated birthday last night. awful thing, staring down thru orange juice this morn, still alive…
ended up in vile dive on Hollyw’d blvd, strippers on v. bias shaking breasts and box in my face…one all inlum. in neon…wang wang wang, blap alp blap, right in face and I laughed, I laughed when all others including women serious…all this illuminated fuck…and I laughed and everybody got angry, so I walked out to make them feel better and went across street to brightlight cheap palace fulla bums and I felt better.
thanx again for Rockdrill, my west coast a Africa cleared up.
but now awfully sick, will sleep and try to put this body together.
lobelight and love,
Charles
Bukowski
Los Angeles
August 16th. 1960
Dear Sheri:
well, I am sitting around waiting for a singing telegram which will arrive about 9 am and embarrass me, but the gal means well: I will pretend, if possible, to enjoy it. But she should know, after these years, that this type of thing simply dissolves me into a liquid pain that lasts for days. well, hell, there’s nothing to do but wait. it’s 8:30 am now and I am halfdead with agony…Christ, maybe she’ll only send a flower. but no, she’s too raw, she’s been drinking and somewhere out of her past life she thinks this is the gay, all-gallant thing to do. Happy birthday. Jesus Christ. oh.
well, maybe it will be nothin. maybe it is all a dream. but she tipped her hand phoning last night and I read right thru her mind. You would never do a thing like this to me Sheri. would you? I don’t think you would crash my insides with some shrimp bastard wailing in my ears. I know you wouldn’t, Sheri.
I know she means well. In her mind it is a great thing and I should be happy that someone remembered my birthday. This type of thing is done in movies: a singing telegram.
OH GREAT GOD JESUS I AM DYING. LET ME FACE THE SIMPLE TIGER.
It’s 8:40.
Sheri, I read your explan. of Canto 90 again; I was awful sick yesterday and it came thru clearer now. You have the pure classical style, in feeling and in love. You are the one woman I know that Pound deserved, and you deserved him. You could never make ignoble love. The only thing ignoble about a love between you and any man is that perhaps the man could not stand up to you, he would not deserve you. I am not sure I would deserve you, ever. I have much growing up to do. I have always moved slowly, developed slowly. The poems I wrote, the poems that are to be collected in this chapbook I will send you—they are not poems, but beginnings, small rantings. But the trash must be burned first. I feel inside…some growing, but whether it is life or death, we will have to wait and see. You have helped me grow by putting me in touch with the larger equation, and yet there is a part of me that does not want to lose sight of the small. The small holds its secrets too. I think it is human to notice the small and to speak about it, but to remain ever small is error. I will have both: the large and the small. I think this is both: humanity and immortality, today and tomorrow, you…and I. Sheri. invisible love.
8:55. Perhaps it won’t happen.
It is odd…that Pound who was my personal god…has come upon me through you. How they used to rave, my women, EZRA POUND, EZRA POUND, oh god damn it, I’M SICK OF THE NAME! But I loved them all with my scarred face and body, my scarred soul…until they turned against my spirit…as Fry did…calling Franck’s Symphony in D ugly…ugly. I have never heard any music that is ugly. i have heard inane music, I have heard silly music, I have heard discordant music…but music in itself, even the simplest modern tune carries in it part of the human crying, and to call it ugly…esp. the Symphony in D.…and she was tone-deaf and I told her so, and how her little face twisted up in hatred, in defense…and I said, tell me one piece you like, classical, modern, anything, and she could not answer, and I was sorry for her.
Sheri, I am no angel. women cannot stand me for long. perhaps it is that I am selfish, I will not submit my soul wholly, I save a secret piece for myself…and woman wants to control her man to feel secure. I can understand this. But I do not ask a woman for her complete soul either. I feel that when all secrets are gone, love ends, love becomes unbearable. And how many couples have unveiled the last shreds? millions upon millions and they turn outward instead of inward and die before a television set or clipping a hedge or boiling a can of soup…tenuous, tenuous…beware showing all, the dirty underwear of the mind, the tired cravings, the cowardice, and worst of all…the strengths. a tenuous, subtle tuning…an almost perfect love must have two almost perfect people…all this, Sheri, on reading yr Canto 90, Pound’s canto 90…
I would liked to have seen the Jays and Squirells fighting over the nuts in the shell. Too bad the jays won. One time I was driving toward Caliente, a race track, Mexico. But something was wrong with me. I didn’t want to go. I didn’t want to see horses, to bet. Something inside of me was twisting. I said, turn back, turn back. But I kept driving. But I didn’t want to see a horse, make a bet, buy a drink, push and fight the mob. All of a sudden, I could drive no longer. Just outside San Diego I pulled over to the side of the road and sat in my car and I looked at the water. The waves came in and rolled around inside of my chest. It was hot in there, a sewer of flame, and I let the blue rool there, the foam sizzling in the fire. What I’m trying to say is, finally got out of the car and stood over edge of cliff hanging over sea…and out they came…two squirells (spell?) or squirrels? think latter…and they stood and simply looked at me…these 2 sea sqs. and they looked for minutes on end, for centuries, and they sensed in their animal way that there was no danger within me…I was no enemy, and this puzzled them and they had the long look, awfully long look, squirrel eye whirling with each sea and each sun and with me and we fell across the gulf that held us separate and we each were one within the other…until at last some shifting in space…sent us apart, 2 small squirells and I, like lost lovers ended, and they ran down their rocks, all tail and fur, and my heart pounded in pain of severence. Well, hell, I drove on to the track and dropped 50 or 60, and no wonder, my mind was not on the horse and I did not care…
Well, 10 am and no telegram. the gods must have answered my call. I am glad. I am going to sleep.
Down in mailbox…letter from Jory, business-like, names, addresses, remarks on literary world. Jory still front-running. Tells me he got long Auntly letter from Thorne. How these gals love a Jorum. Also acceptance from mag in Texas Quagga, for this Summer’s issue. My poem Riot, memo of jail life when celled with public enemy #1, Courtney Taylor. Bit about riot took place one day in dining hall…
10:15…wel
l, it came…no singing telegram…but flowers, flowers, flowers, FLOWERS…gladiolous, roses, carnations, daiseys, nastrusums, and some I don’t know, some I don’t know…a bundle of color and smell and leaves, and no silly singing messenger boy…this is bread for the soul, brown bread and singing and the sea and the squirrels…I have wronged a lady again…she knows me…she KNOWS ME…and I will sleep…and I will sleep…in peace…
love,
Charles
Buk
L.A. Too late for thunder [6 September 1960]
Dear Sheri:
slept in the ossuary 24 hours, no o weary slip, 5 day drunk, lost wallet, robbed, raped, tangled in vines covered with strange grey bugs…armies by, out of side of head, shadows, palms, nuns stripping before the pale red seas of god…ouch, water running out of pipes, water better than music…can wash halfsoul in water like dirty underwear…go go numbers and sound…blast of shotgun that broke the veins of Van Gogh’s brushes, stroking sunlight into corn and feet and malaria and flies and the thin wafting of useless air. well, it’s all right. I don’t need much more than this. I can hear the water running and I will drown my burning feet. where are the cloves? where is the minister spitting in a jar? water, rain, wine, time running away with our lives like a dog with an old bone to bury.
so well, no more than this
Charles
Buk
L.A. Thursday, maybe Sept. 9, ’60
Dear Sheri:
got your cookies today. o good good and in radius of calm light when all is lutarious.
heavy wagons of unknow now run over all fingers of feeling, combs a thousand harpoons, grass only covers dead, catfeet running with mice under obnoxious moon.
polination of giggling backless mass continues: fruit, rock and boar. etlolate yearheart.
sick, sick, sick, can write no more.
Charles
Buk
L.A.., Oct. 5 or 6, ’60
Dear Sheri:
Poetry, at times, must be allowed the emotion that the pretext of philosophy is denied under the chains of knowledge.
Ez said many good things—good things for him—rules, lights, which made the mostly good Ez, but forms change: I am no Ez, don’t want to be, but must follow more a sense that screams when I bang my toe.
There is no one more disgusted with the similarity and posing of the poets than I. I have for a while been mulling on an Essay: The Fallacy of Poetry, Modern or Otherwise. However, I felt, finally, that the energy had rather be put to the poem than to qualing over inadequacies.
Good to hear from you, Sheri; I need a new ribbon and hope you can read this. Feel rather dull today, not a good time to write. All poems out, nothing on hand, nothing boiling. Am in Autumn Epos, will be in Winter also present Quagga. Targets have given me 8 pages in Winter issue and I have sent him bucket of poems to narrow down on. Webb of Outsider taking some. On the other hand, there are those who sit and sit…and sit, and neither accept or reject, and don’t even answer inquiries and I don’t know who has what or why. I don’t have any carbons, just a lot of empty beer cans. Between the 15th. and 29th. of last month wrote 20 or 30 new poems, sent to San Francisco Review, and now if they don’t take, for a while will leave alone, giving them full shot and the hell with it. What I am trying to say, Sheri, is—there simply aren’t any poems around, but if I write some new ones, or if something comes back that does not dismal me too much I will send it up to you for a look. Would rather have you look at a few than simply send you something that I want…The classics dull me, Sheri, please stop putting me on the classics, I have read most of them, or tried. I understand the falsity of most poetry and the poetic world by reading any little mag of poetry.
I have my back against the wall on another issue, but mention of it here would seem—integral with the locale of petty grief, so to hell.
Yes, got birthday cookies, best god damn, I can say with clarity, I ever ate. To say thanks would not be good message, don’t know message to say, simply I ate GOOD.
Maybe I ate God, I dunno, but guess he would taste kind of bitter.
Jory Sherman? How do you SPELL that?
X-wife B. Fry regales me, bringing in aid of “The Republic” in Trace 39. I proud for her, and do not mind whipping. She looks good and needs victory; I give her victory. Not saying, turn other cheek, only Texas far away—I remember Wheeler only as a dog, some boards, old leaves, and sitting on picnic tables waiting for snow. The rest is senseless.
I hope to get some poems to you. Everything now, rather odd. oh, vacation all gone, used up. More on card in Feb., if I am still there. May run up for a week or so. Right now: all dull.
L.,
Charles
10/octobre/60 s.m. 15 lynch
darling buk/
’z all right—take yr time/ you KNO I will/ zo damm’d much to do…and still in fk up dept due to it being the Tai Yin or Grit Dark…acc’d to Slant philo.
the A & P Rev will take some few months yet—so whenever you have anything for us…mail over/ am boiling sea water—dr. lovell sez it is GOOT for yew/ go get some and boil it ’bout 10 min. to moidre the unsusp. germs within or still lifes & take 10 tbsp. daily or place it within yr beer & lo an’ beholt but from the old self emerges a watersnake/ Po Li reading yr poem in the expensive paper maz “man this guy sure knows a LOT…‘carbon on filiments of brain’…do YEW know wot that means Butterfly-Brains?”…she said: “go fk yrself darling…no I DON’T…but IF Bukowski said that I YAM sure that Bukowski MEANT that…” said MezzoSlant “it means…wot it means to an electric light bulb…when carbon appears on its filiments…it is a burn’t out bulb…man, this guy sure knows a hellivaLOT…” yew haz a hadmirerer…in Po’ Li…Buk/
from New O/ comes a Sr. Webb who says you are a rec. & asks if I’ll contrib. something on Hezra…I will submit something controversial—WHY ought’n I treat Ezra like a m a l e in MOI life/ ’stead me bein’ in Hiz’n?/ aaaaaah? zo I vill keez & squeel…or sqweel or howhellspell’d…just to “pull Bun’s leg”…Ezra’s name is ‘Bun’ or ‘Br’r Rabbit’ as Mr. E. is ‘Possum’…or I’ll see…maybe one ought to present Gramps to her contemporaries…as a Boet? a Heconomist? a Hanti-sezmide? a cat’lik? a prot?…ah preferz him az a m a l e that’s moi dish/ sorry Buk now don’t get sniffy…as the weekend fresh air went to one’s brain-combs…
very glad to see yr face/ one said: “is he German?” since Po Li spent some time in Germany & knows the races within ’em/ he said: “oh boy—IS he German!” It seems yr brooding…moody…deep…deep…face cometh from the ancient race…I see wot ‘how yew spell dot’ Jory meant when he said: “he’s beautiful!”
now Lamb one must distill one’s swamp wat’r…and love, love, love…to buk/ from us all…will send pix shortly yaz…but ah wanz a flatter’n one & Po Li is fkn me op…
Sheri
yr letter of “oct. 5 or 6’60”: all right Buk/ scream when yew bang yr toe—or follow the sense which does…I comprehend/ isn’t that wot Ezra is doing: “oh, let an old man rest”
& Canto 92
“Le Paradis n’est pas artificial
but is jagged,
For a flash,
for an hour.
Then agony,
then an hour,
then agony…”
that was when the cruel Miz Martinelli was his beloved & she was out…down in Spade-town…turning on…and sweet gramps was locked up inside St. Liz…longing to protect his fragile Butterfly…so intent upon self-moidre…and he came to know the “sense which screams when you bang yr toe…” he banged his entire male nature…
but one don’t expect from the Bukowski child…wot EzraInfant cd do…age “110” that is…to keep the head…after banging the toe…& give them a little French because it will exercise their “brains” (?) and grampa is a fkn stzientizst…so he carefully records the precise information on it…as UNemotionally as possible…“only those who make the journey know the way”…only a real man…in love with a wayward infant…
who HAD to EXplore her age…entirely…to know where each one had been…‘down with it’…she was…iz…only our real man…chained in his prison cell…longing to protect his love…in legal, moral, ethical, physical, psychical, metaphysical & economic danger…only he wd know how much agony was in ezra’s lines—so wrung from emotion…actually…ezra had the whole hospital upset…he was sending telegrams…writing spec. del. letters & phoning with special get-dr-op-middle-night permission…and he was writing…“2. a.m.…the moon…delecta…”
I cannot read those lines without weeping furiously & bitterly—my god…but one pays for what one gets AFTER one has used it all up…Life, you’ll be the death ob me…
…ezra gazing out of that bar’d & wire’d narrow long gothic window…out on the lawn of St. Liz…on the still enormous pine tree…& watching the moon at 2 a.m.…oh I have endured many torments…but that is more than I can bear…master thyself then others can thee put op wiff…/ no buk ’z no use pleading wit’ me—when I make yew those EzraPoundKakes…I’m sticking the classics inside them and you’ll NEVER know…darling…NEVER…you’ll swallow ’em entire/
yew spell Jory Sherman: I n n o c e n t e Caro
all right Little Lamb who Laid thee…I’ll wait until Buk has something to send and right now I send Love/
Sheri
Monday nite—Oct. 10, 1960—10:00 p.m.[typed postcard; postscript is handwritten around edges]
Yes, Shed:
CHAPTER IX of L’AFFAIR BUK*MARTINELLI:
Repeat chapter II: “Where in hell are mah cookies?”…not much else gong: off won, feet running head, blue sea shakes water glass full of tremble and shark…mete more watts of condecension for Buk, he story-naked in Big-pinch world, you too tough with formula standing Buk in giant Pound-shadow…columbine and chasms, you listen, I will send you poems but u gotta be more consistent; love on Thursday, hate on Friday too big a knot to untie, rather eat mugwort…Pro raining in Hamburg now, people black umbrellas, spider hulls sick wet closing heads puffed to single tune: almost zero…Looky Sheri, easy on this leveret—your lense will double back and split in your beer…You right on bad year: this has been a heller; but today I give you sympathy, and what love is left, and a postcard to read.