Screams From the Balcony

  and even tho W. infers that I am old, I infer that he is YOUNG in spite of the 5 and one half years he did, and there goes that argument. I suppose now that I will be referred to as an extreme rightist and that I voted for Barry while I was disguised in a stocking mask.—yet, W. is right: our anarchy is best served in the poetry we write. do you think we’ll all end up writing stuff for The New Yorker and Esquire? how much ya wanna bet some of us do? and Evergreen Review is halfway there.

  Got your flyer on Ole and the chapbooks, and well done, baby, well done. although reading about myself this CHARLES BUKOWSKI, seems very strange. I seem to see some pisser done up in white robes and tilting a winebottle. where is he? sitting in the ants? tickling his belly with red turpentine?

  look here, Bensenville, from Mo tzu:

  5. Seven causes of anxiety: bad city walls, no allies, careless expenditure, incompetent officials, overconfidence of sovereign, failure to recognize loyal officials, crop failures. Reduce expenditures and be prepared.

  14. 16. Love everybody uniformaly.

  17. 19. Against offensive war.

  26. 28. Will of Sky.

  (oh shit, I just spilled beer over my cigars! will of Sky? lucky they in cellophane. me drunk again? Blaz, you’re only person I know who is worse speller than I. you must be good person, yes. you are not interested in hopscotch while the walls are on fire.)

  31. Ghosts.

  35-37. Against belief in Fate.

  39. Against Confucianists who love narrowly, like music, and believe in Fate.

  (if I were Want-ling I would say that Fate is an excuse for lack of courage and disorder. I’ll say it anyhow, although it’s too simple—and not always so.) (Stevenson died. I saw the headlines. when E. E. Cummings died somebody told me—5 days later.)

  (ho, I am growing old old, silver threads amongst the gold, the kid keeps crawling in and I sit her up here and she bangs against the keys. and I am the man who once sneered at babies in carriages and dull-faced men walking along with their dull-faced wives.)

  oh hell, I have been reading some shit about summoning a gamekeeper with a hat of feathers. it should not be done. you use a hat of fur. good gamekeeper will not come (I mean appear) if you summon them with a hat of feathers, even if it means they will be shot. they just didn’t go for that hat of feathers jazz.

  of course I am almost drunk now, and fine, and I think reverence and adoration is horse-shit, there is no man that I adore, or a chance that I will; there are men that I would want to drink beer with, there are women I would want to fuck. that is as far as my love goes. we are contaminated by nearness. I say I love this child that has been on my lap but if I say this it also means that I do not love some child that I cannot see because if I can’t see her she surely does not exist, and although only what exists is that which is near us or what we can see—it traps us into error—like murder, war. the 8 or 12 hour job, the house, the flag, the love of the greasy tablecloth that we puked upon just last night. it is certainly logical to seek for the things which make us happy and safe and drunk and immortal and christlike and comecrazy but we are all banging heads to satisfy the teeth of our own souls—anarchists, rightists, leftists, religionists, judo practicers, horseplayers, drunks, chess players, all, all,…lost in the tilting glob of self. what the hell can we do? I have often thought that much more than suicide that MADNESS was the answer! think the sweetness! battering against rubber walls, screaming great poems and Nobody hearing! cold showers when you don’t want them. WATER? WATER, WATER!! wires jammed into theback of your neck jammed with electric shock. the TRUTH AT LAST: YOU DID NOT FIT. you are therefore crazy because we as members of society have practiced various standard devices that make us safe and you unsafe. nobody takes his pecker out in a stadium of 90,000 people and shouts SHIT ON AMERICA! that man must be crazy. he’s been treated so good. what the hell does he want? we can live without protest, what’s all this protest SHIT? so he lost his job? so he’s worried about the bomb? so he writes madrigals on the sleeves of his dirty shirts? some PANSY who wants GOOD? real men don’t fuck with good; real men are tough; real men can take it. the stockpiles of bombs don’t bother us. shit, we got more an’ they got. and we’ll figure a way to handle those chinks. Remember Teddy R.? a big stick and a soft woice. I mean, Blaz, I am ready to go crazy not because I think the good guys are not winning but because the good boys are almost the same as the bad boys, I mean it’s jazz and waste and holler, and all this expenditure and not even a young Portoguese girl say 19 licking my cock with her sandpaper tongue while whilst I lay back upon a mass of blue pillows while the VULTURE winks.

  your stuff about letters, your u putting out these letters I don’t quite know about because men seem to lie in their letters as while well as in their poems, theonly thing bing being that maybe the lies in the letters are the more relaxed lies. this helps. and of course, the letters the pomes are maybe the best of the sorid worst of us, but I keep thinking of everybody shitting and then getting up to wipe their asses, dabbing in the paper, holding it in the hand, looking tat the smear smears of brown and then the terds and the n flushing it away, looking at the swirl of guggling white anhi hi hoping tit high that it does not stuff up that the mackeral holy get it so we can eat it again and jam it down and out, hurrah. I give top shit advice so listen, I am one eight eighth of your heart, and I say, you’;l get some good ones, the very worst and best of men come clean sometimes, but really, mostly, I guess as your finding out—you’ll get flashes and flares, but mostly sandin the motor, crap, hackneyed, and it being loose will often be worse, and so that’s more hell, yet we are used to that, so I’d say (the voice from above) that you should try to pick the meat, the avocado, I mean EXCERPTS, baby, you read? sure you do. of course, like thaat ass C.C. would say, all my letters are good, but if you printed all my letters y’d probably make a fortune and I’m not quite ready to spill I mean spoil you yet.

  the rats are drunk and the bluebells dance upon the top of

  WITHERED TITS.

  not being shit, but I wish you could get hold of the 50 or 60 letters I wrote CORRINGTON, but doubt that he’ll let you peek. do I guess right here? Willie all right, mostly more so once, but gone off on tangent of success and power, and maybe he’s right, shit, I don’t know, I don’t know, we did not get on wll in new Orleansin that room full of prefessers and laymen hymen lawyers and bigwigs, and I didn’t say anthihing which was cowardly, but on the other hand, they didn’t give me much a chance too. all that exposition of brilliance and nobody really wanting to get drunnk. I just get the toothache of everywhere, these people sitting around matching wits and in the pocket brilliances…I sometimesdo think that I am XRA crAZY because I am tired and do not seem to care, although actually I do care, andI remember Williams, Miller Williams was hard but kind and gave me a book of his poems, but even Jon gave me a tough time—holding things against me that I said anddid while drunk, and I think this is amatuer, and I keep thinking of the boys who did a lot of TIME up there and I keep thinking they haven’t learned basics—the 8 or 9 whores I shacked with knew more about me drunk than Jon could understand. what good’s the lockup if you come out like a little boy with a blackboard? you and Jon Webb and Louise Webb are the only living editors that I know in this world—yet if if it comes to a break I will go elsewhere—and not be published. God, I guess I give a lot of shit and ask forgiveness, but I’ve

  what? whet where am I?

  the woman just camein and asked me to fk readone of her pomes. o.k. pome but title way off, I had to tell her so. all right?

  man, I can barely findthe keys where was I?

  woman came in and said we she was almost outa cigarettes

  I said go get some I’ll watch t h e kid

  and I pray that this is what keeps us from conquering room

  Rpm Rome I mean or not being a tetrander

  I guess by now that you gather by now that I my my am a nut case instead of the true inspirational ½poet, but I do not think that this bother
s you, so far you are the only man I can trust, and I do not mean some kind of fictional handholding duressof gag ignomy, when you rot or I ror rot roar, it will be time enough to let go, where was I???

  o, yes—

  a native American citizen must submit with his application for transport: a birth certificate, or, if such a certificate is is not obtainable, a bapistmal certicite or a certified cop y of the record of

  bastardism.

  god, thanks for your invite to sleep u ½ on your rug when the human beasts close in, but I cannot accept mostly because I love yor wife and your children and your walls, and also my love for you goes too deep to allow myself to die prick thing or wounded dove within your gentle hands, and now christ I’ve said p5ick-thing andnow you think it’s my prick between your hands and that I am jiving you, god god I mustn’t drink so much exce t I want to, what I mean to say, my sorrow nose a way to end get off the head when it hurts enough, I got the secret, you know what I mean.

  look, don’ ever send me money: I will take it

  it’s not lack of money keeps me from sending letters

  shit written to me it’s only that after reading the

  letters I am scard scared thatnobody has written to

  me. it came as a kind of shcok I keep dying up and

  down, dull-eyed sacroscant mar macarroni of self

  I don’t think anybody knows

  and it is really very much like

  being lockedin a closetful of

  socks and wrinkled shirst

  and hearing the breadman’s whistel

  at noon and no way to get out

  to buy a taffy-roll or a green smock

  full of warm woman bending over a cupcake

  whileher husband dies in a Kansas City

  electrodude of shock

  and victory.

  another free pome for your shithouse…

  your furnish the paper and I’ll furnish the

  HA HA HA hahaha

  rest,

  baby.

  what seems the cunt mock intonation of the gravity of my sadness is not a play game it is eyow HEAVY

  and I do not promise you suicide or anything that must

  be cone snapped intto turtle’s mouth

  done

  only what I’ve got to do want feel now here hear hear you cotton-stainer long-haird squash bug ally in

  pn pendulous necktie drifting

  HOSUMMA!

  I’ve run out o of my children

  (they keep playing Gustave Hotlz “The Planets” becauw of these space cocksuckers and I grow very tired of bad music and plentifuf timing)

  I lost it.

  look, don’t worry about paper for Asshole Insane Enough to Live Between Breasts, I am most happy that you understood the manuscript but I can’t write any novel I think, unless I feel like it and I just don’t feel like it and maybe never will, andso here we go on being poor, novels means dollars, and I still envision the smashed face not giving in, stoking in the cigar, lighting it, saying fuck you, and all escxuxses of later times if I even am around will call me a homo a coward a fink a seller of cowardice, and who knows? maybe I am all or any of hell these, yet I sometimes think of those who makethe decisions, I sometimes think of what they are and where they are and do not

  feel so good

  now Richard Wagner.

  they stoked off Wagner and tossed him in the corner, these laterists, an expelled jack-off kid, and even an anti-Wagner school, and he had certain ways, of grandeur of malicious exploitation of sound but shit, don’t they all? every man who arrives upon the scene thinks he knows it and most of them do, like Corrington, but they know too god damned much, and what they missed was the fact that Wagner had

  MUSCLE

  ENERGY

  HEART

  and the guts to fill 40,000 pigs,

  or 80,000

  human?

  beings.

  see Hon Jonathan Swift

  see Schopenhauer

  see Orpahn Anney.

  I am going to close this letter while I am drunk and this is the onl y way to do it otherwise we choose sides of ourselves to see

  I HOPE THAT YOUR PORCH STEPS HAVE SPLINTERS

  I HOPE THAT YOUR BALLS ACHE WHEN THE MOON IS HIGH HIGH HIGH

  I HOPE THAT THEY KILL THE FACTORIES

  AND THE ALREADY DEAD

  I HOPE THAT THEY KILL THEM SOMEMORE SO THAT MY $$$# EYES MAY SEE

  MERCY

  within them

  within

  me.

  bathroom poem.

  something about Jean’s Journal. you were good man not too attack too hard, cd. have told the bitch she shd have named dog after her pussy.

  I guess Stravinsky Pound

  John Fante to be the best men

  of our age

  with the early Saroyan

  even then lying to himself

  but wide and lovely style of floating

  yet to go down in the muck when the war began

  WORLD WAR 2

  he did not follow his dream

  and he therefore died

  and I am trying to pick up some of the strings from the best of M91ton dante inferno big nose wax mustache death of them all

  somebody once took me into seeing this old and almost famous poet andI did not want to go u know fuck u but I got drunk enough and we went, the id kid with the scarf around and and around his neck and me I went with some whore some woman and the great poet finally leaned forward and he said to me:

  I THOUGH YOU WERE YOUNGER THAN YOU ARE.

  and we watched his young boy who looked like a woman

  pa. play

  the piano and he p.a played it good good

  I got icehole asshole chills on t into the dark of me,

  he was good

  yet he was pitiful—

  like a srouge a stranger trained to die a certain way,

  and his mother knew

  as, I said goodbye

  she said

  he’s so strange, he’s so little man, I don’t think

  he’s ever kissed a,

  girl.

  don’t worry, mama, I told her, your little boy is

  beautiful, and goodnight, and I stole

  one of there gentle little statutes of

  pewter

  and then gabe it very much back and

  smiled

  and they, Mr. Bukowski, I’m very sorry we do not

  drin herem, but good to meet you we’ve

  read your work

  somewhere.

  …look blaz not much good

  list ning to Srav Strav

  and trhing to fond i find

  keys

  I better leave

  now.

  if I could piss only be

  the shadow of this

  man’s

  giant.

  I’ve got to wake up to that yellow ;pro mise of action and I w n’t certainly bd be ready.

  think of the

  breadmaan,

  Buk

  * * *

  [To Steven Richmond]

  July 23, 1965

  [* * *] I am reading Celine, who is somebody else who writes better than I do, and I find this comforting, I like to be led along, I like somebody else to do THE DIRTY WORK. there are so few people that I can read—Camus’ The Stranger, the early Sartre, the few poems of that homo Genet; Jeffers; Auden before he got comfortable; the early Shapiro (and then with a sense of distrust); Cummings when he didn’t get too too fucking cute; the early Spender—

  “the living or the dying,

  this man’s dead life or

  that man’s life

  dying.”

  Patchen’s got a little too much sugar for me, too much melodramatic bravado which makes me feel as if I had been crying in a movie house, but I find his drawings innocent and lovely and they continue to appear that way to my eye at this stage.

  Of course, the Dickey boys, Allen Tate, the whole South Ke
nyon Sewanee snob cocksuckers of the blood of Life, they write so very well, and they are real bastards, they know the game, it’s a power game, and they know the language and the history, but they are truly a bad people, the worst people of all in the worst game of all: conning men out of their souls. Last March in New Orleans I met a couple of Southern profs who had once been men and I could see that they were gone, and didn’t speak, or that is, they spoke. one had acquired a whole new line of degrees, had gone to England and written a batch of research on James Joyce (but history will find, I say, that he wrote only one decent book: Finnegans Wake), and this boy had even been given a grant to do this, and the other one had been given a grant too and he went somewhere and translated somebody in South America (hell! vallejo again? or the other one? can’t think, can’t think), and one had a fine red beard and the other a beret and they shouted across the room arguing various things of university power—degrees, control of magazines, publication credits, all that shit, my god, jesus, all that shit, and there was some lawyer who had come over to the Quarter and this lawyer collected John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate, Y. Winters, the mess, and I thought sure they would all leap together in the center of the room and kiss and ream and kiss and feel each other’s balls if they had any. yet, in a sense, I was hurt, let’s admit it: they did not admit the reality of my existence and soon forgot me. I should have known because I have been cooled all my life—beginning with my 2 bugged-up parents and down through the schoolyards and into the alleys with the winos and down through the women and the years and the living I was either always something to laugh at or forget, which was all right with me, I almost liked it, and still almost do, being alone, being alone here now with the girl-child screaming and the woman flushing the toilet…[***]