CONTENTS
Cover
About the Book
About the Author
Title Page
PART 1
GERMAN
THE OLD GIRL
THE BIRDS
GAME DAY
GAS
MYSTERY LEG
BE COOL, FOOL
AN UNLITERARY AFTERNOON
POOP
THE END OF AN ERA
THE 60’S
THE WOULD-BE HORSEPLAYER
THE NIGHT RICHARD NIXON SHOOK MY HAND
THROWING AWAY THE ALARM CLOCK
PRETENDERS
$1.25 A GALLON
FLOSS-JOB
A FRIENDLY PLACE
THE OLD COUPLE
WHAT?
BORN AGAIN
CARD GIRLS
IT’S NEVER BEEN SO GOOD
GOADING THE MUSE
THE WAVERING LINE
THE ROAD TO HELL
CRUCIFIXION
BARFLY
PART 2
THOUGHTS WHILE EATING A SANDWICH
NOTHING’S FREE
WHAT BOTHERS THEM MOST
INTO THE WASTEBASKET
IT’S OVER AND DONE
NICE GUY
FEET TO THE FIRE
THE POETRY GAME
THE FIX IS IN
PHOTOS
TONIGHT
A VISITOR COMPLAINS
BESIEGED
THE NOVICE
CLEOPATRA NOW
PLEASE
THE BAROMETER
ENEMY OF THE KING, 1935
NIGHTS OF VANILLA MICE
LARK IN THE DARK
LONELY HEARTS
B AS IN BULLSHIT
A RIOT IN THE STREETS
INTERLUDE
D.N.F.
READING LITTLE POEMS IN LITTLE MAGAZINES
HOW TO GET AWAY?
THE DIFFICULTY OF BREATHING
HELP WANTED AND RECEIVED
HEART IN THE CAGE
PLACES TO DIE AND PLACES TO HIDE
POEM FOR THE YOUNG AND TOUGH
OW
MY DOOM SMILES AT ME—
HEY, KAFKA!
A STRANGE VISIT
1970 BLUES
SNOW WHITE
SOUR GRAPES
FENCING WITH THE SHADOWS
A HELL OF A DUET
THE DOGS
PART 3
COLD SUMMER
CRIME DOES PAY
THROWING MY WEIGHT AROUND
THEY ROLLED THE BED OUT OF THERE
CRAWL
NOTHING HERE
MY LAST WINTER
FIRST POEM BACK
A SUMMATION
WALKING PAPERS
ALONE IN THIS ROOM
FAREWELL, FAREWELL
ABOUT THE MAIL LATELY
LIFE ON THE HALF SHELL
THE HARDEST
A TERRIBLE NEED
BODY SLAM
THE GODS ARE GOOD
THE SOUND OF TYPEWRITERS
A FIGHT
SUNBEAM
APPARITIONS
SPEED
IT’S DIFFICULT TO SEE YOUR OWN DEATH APPROACHING
MADE IN THE SHADE (HAPPY NEW YEAR)
ONE FOR WOLFGANG
NIGHT UNTO NIGHT
NOTES ON SOME POETRY
THE BUZZ
A SIMPLE KINDNESS
GOOD TRY, ALL
PROPER CREDENTIALS ARE NEEDED TO JOIN
SILLY DAMNED THING ANYHOW
MOTH TO THE FLAME
7 COME 11
PUT OUT THE LIGHT
FOXHOLES
CALM ELATION, 1993
PART 4
I HAVE THIS NEW ROOM
WRITING
HUMAN NATURE
NOTATIONS
DEMOCRACY
KRAZNICK
HUNGARIA, SYMPHONIA POEM #9 BY FRANZ LISZT
CLUB HELL, 1942
UNLOADING THE GOODS
SARATOGA HOT WALKER
THE SIXTIES?
EXPERIENCE
FAME AT LAST
PARTY OF NINE
HE SHOWED ME HIS BACK
THE UNFOLDING
DRUNK BEFORE NOON
THUMBS UP, THUMBS DOWN
THEY ARE AFTER ME
FEELING FAIRLY GOOD TONIGHT
THERE’S A POET ON EVERY BAR STOOL
VALET
PRESCIENCE
10:45 A.M.
THE HORSES OF MEXICO
A BIG NIGHT
A MUSICAL DIFFERENCE
YOU TELL ME WHAT IT MEANS
DEAR READER:
NOT MUCH SINGING
THE SHADOWS
A PAUSE BEFORE THE COUNTER ATTACK
PICTURE THIS
9 BAD BOYS
ONE MORE DAY
Copyright
About the Book
Charles Bukowski was one of America’s best-known writers and one of its most influential and imitated poets. Although he published over 45 books of poetry, hundreds of his poems were kept by him and his publisher for postumous publication. This is the third collection of these unique poems, which Bukowski considered to be among his best work.
Bukowski’s Beat Generation writing reflects his slum upbringing, his succession of menial jobs and his experience of low life urban America. He died in 1994 and is widely acknowledged as one of the most distinctive writers of the last fifty years.
About the Author
Born in 1920, Charles Bukowski became one of America’s best-known writers. During his lifetime he published more than forty-five books of poetry and prose including the novels Post Office (1971), Factotum (1975), Women (1979) and Pulp (1994) all available from Virgin Books.
PART 1.
I watch the old ladies
in the supermarket,
angry and alone.
GERMAN
being the German kid in the 20’s in Los Angeles
was difficult.
there was much anti-German feeling then,
a carry-over from World War I.
gangs of kids chased me through the neighborhood
yelling, “Hienie! Hienie! Hienie!”
they never caught me.
I was like a cat.
I knew all the paths through brush and alleys.
I scaled 6-foot back fences in a flash and was off through
backyards and around blocks
and onto garage roofs and other hiding places.
then too, they didn’t really want to catch me.
they were afraid I might bayonet them
or gouge out their eyes.
this went on for about 18 months
then all of a sudden it seemed to stop.
I was more or less accepted (but never really)
which was all right with me.
those sons-of-bitches were Americans,
they and their parents had been born here.
they had names like Jones and Sullivan and
Baker.
they were pale and often fat with runny
noses and big belt buckles.
I decided never to become an American.
my hero was Baron Manfred von Richthofen
the German air ace;
he’d shot down 80 of their best
and there was nothing they could do about
that now.
their parents didn’t like my parents
(I didn’t either) and
I decided when I got big I’d go live in some place
like Iceland,
never open my door to anybody and live on my
luck, live with a beautiful wife and a bunch of wild
animals:
which is, more or less, what
happened.
> THE OLD GIRL
she was very thin, gray, bent, and each day she
waited at the door of the
First Interstate Bank in San Pedro,
and as the people came and went she
approached them
one by one
and asked for money.
about 75% of the time
I respond to those who ask but with
the other 25% I am instinctively put off
and just don’t have the will to
give.
the frail old woman at the bank put me off, she had
put me off for some time and we had a silent
understanding: I would lift my hand in a
gesture of protest and she would turn quickly
away, this had happened so often
that now she remembers and doesn’t
approach me.
one noon I sat in my car and watched
her
and after 20 attempts she scored
17 times.
I drove off as she was approaching yet another
soft touch, and even so I
suddenly felt real guilt for my unfeeling habit of
refusing the old
girl.
later in the clubhouse at Hollywood
park
between the 6th and 7th races
I saw her again as she was going up the
aisle
frail and bent, a large wad of
paper money clutched tight in a bony hand
clearly on her way to
bet the next race.
of course, she had every right to
be there,
to place her bets with the rest of us,
she only wanted and needed
what most people want and need:
a chance.
I watched as she
reached the top of the aisle and
I saw her stop and speak to a young man
who smiled and then
handed her a
bill.
not to be distracted I
rose and went to the betting window
to place my own
wager.
and, going back to my seat
as I was
walking down the aisle she was
coming up and we saw one another
and without thinking
I held my hand up,
gently, in that familiar
gesture
she’d seen so often
in front of the bank.
she looked at me with
unblinking blue eyes and said,
“fuck you!”
as we passed on the stairs.
she was right, of course, it’s
a matter of survival—General Motors does
it, you do it, the cat does it, so
does the bird, nations do it,
families do it, I do it,
the boxer sometimes does it,
it’s done when you
buy a loaf of bread, it’s done sometimes
out of madness and fear, it’s
done in the doctor’s office and
in the back alley,
it’s done everywhere
all the time
over and over again:
we all want to survive.
it is the inevitable way
the familiar way
the way things
work.
I went back to my seat to
ponder all that but I
couldn’t come up with anything useful at
all …
as the horses broke from the
gate
hustled by the crouching jocks
in their silks—
orange, blue, yellow, shocking pink,
green, chartreuse, a
stampeding rainbow of controlled
fury,
the sun shot through the
screaming
and I suddenly knew that
we are all caught forever in the
self-same trap
and I instantly forgave that old
girl
for belonging.
THE BIRDS
the acute and terrible air hangs with murder
as summer birds mingle in the branches
and warble
and mystify the clamour of the mind;
an old parrot
who never talks,
sits thinking in a Chinese laundry,
disgruntled
forsaken
celibate;
there is red on his wing
where there should be green,
and between us
the recognition of
an immense and wasted life.
… my 2nd wife left me
because I set our birds free:
one yellow, with crippled wing
quickly going down and to the left,
cat-meat,
cackling like an organ;
and the other,
mean green,
of empty thimble head,
popping up like a rocket
high into the hollow sky,
disappearing like sour love
and yesterday’s desire
and leaving me
forever.
and when my wife
returned that night
with her bags and plans,
her tricks and shining greeds,
she found me
glittering over a yellow feather
seeking out the music
which she,
oddly,
failed to
hear.
GAME DAY
this lady was always after me about this or
that:
“what are those scratches on your back?”
“baby, I dunno, you must have put them
there.”
“you’ve been with some whore!”
“what’s that bite mark on your neck?
she must have been a hot number!”
“huh? baby, I don’t see anything.”
“there! there! on the left side of your
neck!
you musta really turned her on!”
“what’s this phone number written inside this matchbook?”
“what phone number?”
“this phone number! it’s a woman’s hand-writing!”
“damned if I know where that came from.”
“I’m going to call that number, that’s what I’ll do!”
“go ahead.”
“no, I’m going to tear it up, I’m going to tear
up that whore’s number!”
“you made love to that neighbor woman in our bed
while I was at work!”
“what?”
“another neighbor told me! I was told she came
right into this house!”
“oh, that. she came by to borrow a cup of
sugar.”
“a cup of sugar, my ass! you screwed her
right in this house, right in our bed with the
dog watching!”
“she just wanted a cup of sugar, she wasn’t
here but two minutes!”
“a quicky! you gave her a quicky!”
later I found out she had screwed a guy in
the back of his delivery truck
and she had screwed an appliance salesman
in the crapper in the mens’ room,
in a stall for the handicapped.
and there was something or other with a
meter reader, a blow job, I think.
she had completely outfoxed me with her
smoke screen of accusations
while she had been unfaithful on almost a
full-time basis.
and when confronted, her answer
was a “SO WHAT?”
I moved her out.
we flipped for the dog and she won.
/> and the next time the neighbor lady
came by to borrow a cup of sugar
she stayed longer than a minute or
two.
GAS
my grandmother had a serious gas
problem.
we only saw her on Sunday.
she’d sit down to dinner
and she’d have gas.
she was very heavy,
80 years old.
wore this large glass brooch,
that’s what you noticed most
in addition to the gas.
she’d let it go just as food was being served.
she’d let it go loud in bursts
spaced about a minute apart.
she’d let it go
4 or 5 times
as we reached for the potatoes
poured the gravy
cut into the meat.
nobody ever said anything,
especially me.
I was 6 years old.
Only my grandmother spoke.
after 4 or 5 blasts
she would say in an offhand way,
“I will bury you all!”
I didn’t much like that:
first farting
then saying that.
it happened every Sunday.
she was my father’s mother.
every Sunday it was death and gas
and mashed potatoes and gravy
and that big glass brooch.
those Sunday dinners would
always end with apple pie and
ice cream
and a big argument
about something or other,
my grandmother finally running out the door
and taking the red train back to
Pasadena
the place stinking for an hour
and my father walking about
fanning a newspaper in the air and
saying, “it’s all that damned sauerkraut
she eats!”
MYSTERY LEG
first of all, I had a hard time, a very hard time
locating the parking lot for the building.
it wasn’t off the main boulevard where
the cars all driven by merciless killers
were doing 55 mph in a 25 mph zone.
the man riding my bumper so
close I could see his snarling face
in my rearview mirror caused me
to miss the narrow alley that would have
allowed me to circle the west
end of the building in search of parking.
I went to the next street, took a right, then
took another right, spotted the building, a blue
heartless-looking structure, then took
another right and finally saw it, a tiny
sign: parking.
I drove in.
the guard had the wooden red and white
barrier down.
he stuck his head out a little window.
“yeah?” he asked.
he looked like a retired hit man.
“to see Dr. Manx,” I said.
he looked at me disdainfully, then said,
“go ahead!”
the red and white barrier lifted.