I’m on fire in my bed alone
I’m on fire with you
I’m on fire reading a book
about Trotsky, Hitler, Alexander the Great,
anybody at all, any walking living dead
human once upon the
earth
I’m on fire looking at the grass
I’m on fire looking at birds sitting on telephone wires
I’m on fire answering the phone—
I leap straight up when it rings
I am burning
I’m on fire looking at velvet
I’m on fire looking at a sleeping cat
I am a helpless burning thing
among other helpless burning things
I lay on my left side and look at the tombstones
then I lay on my right side and look at the tombstones—
they are all
burning
I’m on fire putting a stamp on an envelope
I’m on fire wrapping garbage into a newspaper
I’m on fire with heroes and dwarfs and poverty and hope
I’m on fire with love and anger
I’m on fire like a bat hanging upsidedown
like a bellboy hating the rich and smiling at their tips
I’m on fire in a supermarket
watching a most womanly woman
bend over to pick up some potato salad
I’m on fire like a scissors cutting the eyes out of the sky
I’m on fire like onehundredthousand monkeys boiled into one heart
and sobbing through centuries of
hopelessness
I’m on fire like a clean sharp knife in a kitchen drawer
I’m on fire like a beggar in India
a beggar in New York
a beggar in Los Angeles…
the smoke and burning rises
and the ash is crushed under…
I’m on fire like the circus that went away
the champion who quit on one knee
all burning
all alone
all one
ash
I’m on fire like a dirty bathtub in a lonely roominghouse
I’m on fire like the roach I kill with my shoe
I’m on fire with men and woman and animals
who are being tortured and mutilated in dark and
isolated places
I’m on fire with the armies and anti-armies
I’m on fire with the man I hate most in the world
I’m on fire without a chance
the fat is in the fire, the lamb is over it
the sacrifice seems forever
the enduring seems forever
the sun is on fire…
and the glazed horizon is red
and the weeping
and the weeping
and you and me
the sun is burning everything:
the dogs, the clouds, the icecream
the end
the end of the stairway
the end of the ocean
the last scream
the bug in the jar
spouts into flame
and the inside of the skull
gives up
at last
the smoke blows
away.
ww 2
since fact is an artifice of fiction
let’s call this fiction so like all good boys and girls
we can relax
i was in frisco a dandy place with lakes or something
i could see the gold bridge and it wasn’t teeth from my window
enough to drink almost always enough to drink
i wrote the old man down in l.a. you might as well get a story
ready for your god damned neighbors because i am not going to yr
war
if it were not for the war the last war you would not be here
i would not have met your mother and you would not have been born
SON, YOUR COUNTRY IS AT WAR ! ! ! !
the fact that i was born because of circumstances of war
did not seem to me a proper argument to create further circumstances
i went out and got drunk properly
then the next morning i went down to the draft board
a boy fainted when they took blood out of his arm and i looked at the
needle dip into my vein and watched the red of me run up into the tube
and felt rugged
they looked up my ass
and then i went in to see the sike
u have yr shorts on backwards he told me
i got up and switched them
he sat there looking at me
WHAT DO YOU THINK OF PICASSO?
at first i said all right now not much
do you write or paint?
yes
and?
and what? I ASKED IF YOU WROTE OR PAINTED. leave me alone
i told him
WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN PUBLISHED? PAINTINGS HUNG?
nothing accepted
nothing accepted anywhere
do you believe in the war? he asked no i said
ARE YOU WILLING TO GO TO WAR? he asked no i said
WHY DON’T YOU BE A CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTOR? because i said
i am not sure there is a God
NEXT WEDNESDAY NIGHT WE ARE HAVING A MEETING, A PARTY
FOR DOCTORS, WRITERS AND ARTISTS I WANT YOU TO BE
THERE I AM INVITING YOU WILL YOU COME?
no
all right he said u don’t have to go
u mean i asked the party or the war?
either one he said you didn’t think we’d understand did you?
no
he wrote something on a slip of paper and folded it and stuck it to my card
with a paperclip give them this, up the line
he had written a hell of a lot on the slip as i walked i managed
to lift the edge of the slip but all i cd see was
HIDES AN EXTREME,
SENSITIVITY UNDER A POKER FACE
which was news to me
and then some guy in a uniform screamed at me
ALL RIGHT SON UNCLE SAM DOESN’T WANT YOU
and i walked out into
the clear and beautiful air
are you going to war my landlady asked me no i said bad heart
that’s too bad i’m sorry she said and i went upstairs and poured
a good one
bad heart bad heart bad heart have u done the wrong thing
maybe u ought to go maybe you ought to go and walk right into it
hell, friend they turned you down uncle sam does not want you
you are insane
i smiled and poured another one
i don’t know how much later but some time later i am sitting in another
cheap room philly i am drinking a bottle of port have a record
player and i am listening to the 2nd movement of brahms’ 2nd symphony
when there is a knock on the door
it is a very polite knock
and since i do not know anybody much i figure it is either
one of the whores down at the corner in love with me
or somebody come to give me the nobel prize
and i opened the door and 2 big men were there and one of them said
F.B.I. and the other one said yr under arrest
i went over and took the needle out of brahms’ arm
we want to question u they said downtown
all right
u better put on a coat you might be gone some time
we walked down the stairs and out into the street and got into the car
and it seemed as if each window had a face hanging out of it
and there was another guy in the back and he said keep one hand
on each knee and don’t move them
we drove along a while and then
i reached up to scratch my nose
WATC
H THAT HAND! one of them screamed
this guy is pretty casual another one said
i think we got a good one yep i think we got a good one
oh lord oh christ i thought i wonder what i done
i wonder what i done
they took me into a room that was mostly empty except for pictures
photos on the walls
you see those one of them pointed voice most serious
yes i said
those are men who died in the service of the fbi
they took me into another room where a man
sat behind his desk with his shirtsleeves rolled up
BUKOWSKI?
yes
HENRY C. JR.?
yes
WHERE THE HELL’S YOUR UNCLE JOHN?
my what?
WHERE THE HELL’S YOUR UNCLE JOHN?
i thought he meant i had some
kind of secret thing i was murdering people with
YOUR UNCLE: JOHN BUKOWSKI!
oh hell john he’s dead
NO WONDER we can’t find the son of a bitch!
WHY DID YOU DODGE THE DRAFT?
i’m 4f
4f eh?
psycho yes
why did you move without notifying your draft board?
i didn’t bother jesus i thought it was over
why did you move?
i got kicked out for being drunk all the time
landlady said i got blood on the sheets
WHY DIDN’T YOU NOTIFY YOUR DRAFT BOARD?
look are you guys crazy i only moved around the corner 80 yards
away gave the post office my forwarding address if i wanted
to hide i could do better than that
NOW WE DIDN’T BEAT YOU, DID WE?
no
AND WE DIDN’T PUT HANDCUFFS ON YOU, DID WE?
no
WE ARE GOING TO HAVE TO HOLD YOU FOR FURTHER INVESTIGATION….
they took me down to a small cell with toilet and sink
no bunk no chair i stood by the window and looked out the bars
it was Saturday morning and it was one of the main downtown
streets and it was sunny it looked good ouside people
walking along easily unnervous a record shop speakered its
music onto the street i did not feel good you only begin to
miss the simple life after it is taken away from u after u go
into a hospital and u are on a bed maybe to die or go back
or in a jail never knowing when or if you’ll get out
that’s when you think that’s when the sunshine looks good
that’s when just walking down to the corner to buy a paper
is something like beethoven’s 9th
i was transferred to a prison a much larger prison the next day
they put me in a cell with a little fat man who looked like
a businessman
he put out his hand: I am Courtney Taylor
public enemy number one
i shook his hand
what are you in for? he asked
they say i’m a draft dodger
listen he said there’s just one thing we don’t like around here
one kind we have no use for and that’s the draft dodger
honor among thieves
eh?
what do you mean?
I mean u fucker,
leave me alone
leave me alone
if u want to kill yourself i’ll tell you how he said
i don’t want to hear it i said
all you do is take that bucket over there fill it with water
take your shoe off put your foot in it but first bring down
the overhead light i’ll hold you on my shoulders and you can work
the screws loose from the pipe then u bend it down take the
globe out stick your finger in the hole yr foot in the bucket
and yr out of here
it sounded good to me but there was something grotesque and
embarrassing about it somehow so i decided not to do it
i stretched out on the bunk and pretty soon i felt things
biting me bedbugs
look i said do u gamble?
what do u mean?
i mean i said let’s bet a nickel a bed bug i bet i can catch
more than u
they don’t really come out till lights out he said
u mean it gets worse i asked
multiply by 30,
have u told the guard?
the screw? i’ll tell him again
HEY SCREW SCREW !!! WE GOT BUDBUGS IN HERE ! GET
THESE GOD DAMNED BEDBUGS OUT OF HERE HEY SCREW !
nobody showed up
we began playing 21 blackjack and 5 minutes later the screw
walked in
let’s not have so much screaming and you bastards probably
brought those things in here with you
i got hot in a crapgame in the exercise
yard and stayed hot 3, 4, 5 days and began to feel better i was
making more money than i ever made on the outside we were always
hungry there but after lights out the cook would come down with
jello and whipcream and coffee and bits of tenderloin and i’d slip
him a dollar or 2 and my public enemy friend stopped talking about
the evils of celling with a 4f and just when we were beginning to
enjoy our nickel a bedbug bets Taylor being a swindler of grand
order couldn’t resist breaking some of his in half but i being
poetaster and counter of tombstones feeling the blade against my
whimpering brain i i was more agile…and so psycho and public
enemy number one pinched out the souls of bedbugs while the world
grabbed its balls in more agony: ww 2
and we forgot in our small dying to acknowledge the small nobility
of whatever it was
BUTTT as i wuz saying
just as we were beginning to
enjoy our bedbugs they rushed us out of the cell
5 or 6 days after
the original complaint to fumigate
and they put me in with a polack
or something
old old old
he tore up my bedsheet the first time
i went to exercise yard to make a clothesline out of it
and i have a very sensitive skin despite my poker face
and the wool blankets only those who can’t stand rough wool will
know what i mean and so i told the old man
he was always on the crapper
puffiing on an empty pipe and all these makeshift makeshit
clotheslines hanging about dripping polack stockings and rags
(forget my name i am a Prussian nobleman) (this is fiction)
(isn’t it) (i am getting a little bored with this and could use a
hot piece of ass as what man cd not?)
he wuz always on the crapper
puffing and saying
TARA BUBU EAT TARA BUBU SHEET
TARA BUBU EAT TARA BUBU SHEET
over and over
then he’d laugh
he was telling me the facts of life but all i could feel
as the bluebirds were driven away from the white cliffs of dover
was that wool blanket against me all and everywhere
LISTEN YOU OLD FUCK i told him I’VE KILLED TWO
MEN ALREADY AND I’D JUST AS SOON KILL U AS SCRATCH
MY ASS !!!
and the old idiot just laughed at me and for a moment i saw it
it was possible why not my hands about that wrinkled morgue of
flesh hoo says u can’t kill what’s already dead the eyes pop out
the tongue the lungs reach for air like kittens chasing a roll of
yarn but it was too ugly i don’t think what got Dos in
Crime and Pu
nishment was that a single man could not judge what to