LOVE IS A DOG FROM HELL
CHARLES BUKOWSKI
Poems 1974-1977
to Carl Weissner
table of contents
ONE
Sandra
you
the 6 foot goddess
I’ve seen too many glazed-eyed bums
sexpot
sweet music
numb your ass and your brain and your heart—
one of the hottest
ashes
fuck
me
another bed
trapped
tonight
the escape
the drill
texan
the spider
the end of a short affair
moaning and groaning
an almost made up poem
blue cheese and chili peppers
problems about the other woman
T.M.
Bee’s 5th
103 degrees
pacific telephone
225 pounds
turnabout
one for old snaggle-tooth
communion
trying to get even:
Chicago
quiet clean girls in gingham dresses…
we will taste the islands and the sea
TWO
this poet
winter
what they want
Iron Mike
guru
the professors
for Al—
how to be a great writer
the price
alone with everybody
the 2nd novel
Chopin Bukowski
gloomy lady
cockroach
who in the hell is Tom Jones?
defeat
traffic signals
462-0614
photographs
social
one to the breastplate
the worst and the best
coupons
luck
dog
trench warfare
the night I fucked my alarm clock
when I think of myself dead
Christmas eve, alone
there once was a woman who put her head into an oven
beds, toilets, you and me—
this then—
imagination and reality
stolen
the meek have inherited
the insane always loved me
Big Max
trapped
it’s the way you play the game
on the continent
12:18 a.m.
yellow cab
how come you’re not unlisted?
weather report
clean old man
something
a plate glass window
junkies
99 to one
the crunch
a horse with greenblue eyes
THREE
Scarlet
red up and down
like a flower in the rain
light brown
huge ear rings
she came out of the bathroom
a killer
longshot
the promise
waving and waving goodbye
liberty
don’t touch the girls
dark shades
prayer in bad weather
melancholia
a stethoscope case
eat your heart out
the retreat
I made a mistake
FOUR
girls in pantyhose
up your yellow river
artists:
I have shit stains in my underwear too
Hawley’s leaving town
an unkind poem
the bee
the most
ah…
the girl on the bus stop bench
I’m getting back to where I was
a lovely couple
the strangest sight you ever did see—
in a neighborhood of murder
private first class
love is a dog from hell
my groupie
now, if you were teaching creative writing
the good life
the Greek
my comrades
soul
a change of habit
$$$$$$
sitting in a sandwich joint
doom and siesta time
as crazy as I ever was
sex
dead now
twins
the place didn’t look bad
the little girls
rain or shine
cold plums
girls coming home
some picnic
bedpans
the good loser
an art
the girls at the green hotel
a good one
shit time
madness
a 56 year old poem
the beautiful young girl walking past the graveyard—
beer
artist
my old man
fear
little tigers everywhere
after the reading:
about cranes
a gold pocket watch
beach trip
one for the shoeshine man
About the Author
Other books by Charles Bukowski
Cover
Copyright
About the Publisher
one more creature
dizzy with love
Sandra
is the slim tall
ear-ringed
bedroom damsel
dressed in a long
gown
she’s always high
in heels
spirit
pills
booze
Sandra leans out of
her chair
leans
toward
Glendale
I wait for her head
to hit the closet
doorknob
as she attempts to
light
a new cigarette on an
almost burnt-out
one
at 32 she likes
young neat
unscratched boys
with faces like the bottoms
of new saucers
she has proclaimed as much
to me
has brought her prizes
over for me to view:
silent blonde zeros of young
flesh
who
a) sit
b) stand
c) talk
at her command
sometimes she brings one
sometimes two
sometimes three
for me to
view
Sandra looks very good in
long gowns
Sandra could probably break
a man’s heart
I hope she finds
one.
you
you’re a beast, she said
your big white belly
and those hairy feet.
you never cut your nails
and you have fat hands
paws like a cat
your bright red nose
and the biggest balls
I’ve ever seen.
you shoot sperm like a
whale shoots water out of the
hole in its back.
beast beast beast,
she kissed me,
what do you want for
breakfast?
the 6 foot goddess
I’m big
I suppose that’s why my women always
seem
small
but this 6 foot goddess
who deals in real estate
and art
and flies from Texas
to see me
and I fly to Texas
to see her—
well, there’s plenty of her to
grab hold of
and I grab hold of it
of her,
I yank her head back by the hair,
I’m real macho,
I suck on her upper lip
her cunt
her soul
I mount her and tell her,
“I’m going to shoot white hot
juice into you. I didn’t fly all the
way to Galveston to play
chess.”
later we lay locked like human vines
my left arm under her pillow
my right arm over her side
I grip both of her hands,
and my chest
belly
balls
cock
tangle into her
and through us
in the dark
pass rays
back and forth
back and forth
until I fall away
and we sleep.
she’s wild
but kind
my 6 foot goddess
makes me laugh
the laughter of the mutilated
who still need
love,
and her blessed eyes
run deep into her head
like mountain springs
far in
and
cool and good.
she has saved me
from everything that is
not here.
I’ve seen too many glazed-eyed bums sitting under a bridge drinking cheap wine
you sit on the couch
with me
tonight
new woman.
have you seen the
animal-eater
documentaries?
they show death.
and now I wonder
which animal of
us will eat the
other first
physically and
last
spiritually?
we consume animals
and then one of us
consumes the other,
my love.
meanwhile
I’d prefer you go
first the first way
since if past performance
charts mean anything
I’ll surely go
first the last
way.
sexpot
“you know,” she said, “you were at
the bar so you didn’t see
but I danced with this guy.
we danced and we danced
close.
but I didn’t go home with him
because he knew I was with
you.”
“thanks a bunch,” I
said.
she was always thinking of sex.
she carried it around with her
like something in a paper
bag.
such energy.
she never forgot.
she stared at every man available
in morning cafes
over bacon and eggs
or later
over a noon sandwich or
a steak dinner.
“I’ve modeled myself after
Marilyn Monroe,” she told
me.
“she’s always running off
to some local disco to dance
with a baboon,” a friend once told
me, “I’m amazed that you’ve
stood for it as long as you have.”
she’d vanish at racetracks
then come back and say,
“three men offered to buy me
a drink.”
or I’d lose her in the parking
lot and I’d look up and she’d
be walking along with a strange man.
“well, he came from this direction
and I came from that and we
kind of walked together. I
didn’t want to hurt his
feelings.”
she said that I was a very
jealous man.
one day she just
fell down
inside of her sexual organs
and vanished.
it was like an alarm clock
dropping into the
Grand Canyon.
it banged and rattled and
rang and rang
but I could no longer
see or hear it.
I’m feeling much better
now.
I’ve taken up tap-dancing
and I wear a black felt
hat pulled down low
over my right
eye.
sweet music
it beats love because there aren’t any
wounds: in the morning
she turns on the radio, Brahms or Ives