Screams From the Balcony (27 page)

 

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 Kenyon 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…[***]

Blaz fucked-up again—this time not strike but something worse, I can’t tell you; maybe he will, and it’s really none of my horse, but I keep thinking that he is the Great Romantic Caught in the Spider Dream, and worse yet the kid has got to begun believing that I am some source of wisdom or Life-long Kool, you know, and I think he expected me to o.k. his latest, but Christ, I can’t walk a straight line most of the time myself, and if I had to straight-talk him I’d say 2 things at the same time:

life.

if you take a without b you don’t make it and whatever you take will kill you because you are as phoney as that which you wish to overthrow. the weakest men take that which seems immediately better; the strongest men hurt themselves (if hurt has to be), and wait. I’d never say this if I were sober, of course, but I’m seldom sober, of course. [* * *]

[To Jim Roman]

July 23, 1965

I really believe that
Cold Dogs
will be issued [* * *]

No, I didn’t see Jonathan Williams when he hit town. I have a reputation as a vicious and nasty drunk (not entirely unfounded) and somebody gave him the word prob. when he asked. That’s all right. [* * *]

oh yes, Stuart hung with 3100 copies of
Crucifix
but he’ll unload and at $7.50 too. now I am fairly high on beer, typing this in the kitchen while the woman and the ten month old girl sit in the front room listening to Russian poetry on the
FM
radio. I can’t listen because almost all poetry is bad for me; it irritates; me makes me twitch and have spasms. I don’t understand it, I feel as if I were being reamed in a pig pen. [* * *]

p.s. Finally reading Celine and it’s about time. A master, no doubt of it.

[To Jon and Louise Webb]

July 26, 1965

[* * *] Did Corrington show before you left town? if so, I think we gotta give him points. I think I have g.d. been too hard on too many people. to hell with
KNOCK CORRINGTON
. to hell with
KNOCK SHERMAN
. this is small and I am sick of myself. I can disagree with some of their principles and ways and manueverings, but, hell, no man knows when he is right and when he starts thinking he is always right and that the universe is his apple, then he might as well either start a whorehouse or become a preacher. he’s got rocks. [* * *] I am still growing up and I’m very much afraid that when I reach full size that I will be dead.

Marina keeps yanking at me and I lift her up and she sits here in her yellow pajamas

 

banging at the typewriter

grabbing for my cigar and beer

tiny hand sea-blue eyes

she thinks me a monster of heroic proportions,

my god such a sweet
DOLL
!!!

she breaks me and breaks me up again and again

as I peer at her out of my

evil face.

 

the faucet drips. and on and on I write, it’s so easy when drunk. the poems are flowing again, poems, poems, and good or bad they may be, I am now easier to live with, I’d suppose. those 2 books, they almost froze me. It’s like somebody wrote me, “Well, you might as well kill yourself now and go out clean.” I know what he means. but what about Marina? I think she likes me very much, she does seem to, so suppose I left now? a dirty trick I’d think. you should see her eyes. what eyes what eyes what eyes!!! [* * *]

look here, if Henry Miller liked
Crucifix
that’s good enough for me, that’s the best critic there is—a man who has lived that hard that long just can’t learn to lie and also has no need to. Christ, Jon and Lou, isn’t life
really
strange??? that a man like Henry Miller would be speaking about all of us? we are truly lucky, we are in touch with the gods, and I am happy for us all. god damn, that was a
good
phone call, you
LIFTED ME RIGHT UP WITH YOUR HAPPINESS
and that is why I keep drinking and write on and on. Frances has fixed me something to eat but I keep saying no no, I am busy, to hell with food! oh shit, everything is so strange; it’s so good to know the good people, but do you know what else??? we must be wary, we must be careful, we must follow our own guts…or else the poems will quit, we will quit and we will forget where we are. look, the world is still, I think (so far), a very horrible place filled with horrible people (am I snitching?) (I keep opening beers and drinking them and lighting cigars like a madman), look, look, it’s only next poem or the way we walk or the way we act or respond to the next situation. all we’ve done beforehand
DOESN’T COUNT IF WE WASTE IT
! and this is what gets me: so many writers, artists, people, begun well who turn to shit when in the beginning they knew what
SHIT
was. but all it takes is a letter from the editor of
The New Yorker
. and they sell. thank god I still had the nerve to tell an editor of some big publishing house, last year or so, that I simply did not feel like writing a novel upon his request. I keep thinking of Corrington (I’m snitching again), and thinking of death. look, I am crazy with everything, I am confused but it seems to be quite simple to me—the line is drawn, either you’re on this side of the line or that. they say any man can be bought. I deny this. they say that any man, any man has his price. I don’t have a price. it may be the biggest laugh of the century. they may buy me with a lollipop. poverty is bad enough but poverty that you drag others into beside yourself is what makes them win, what makes you sell out. yet I believe that this beautiful little girl with the beautiful eyes would become less instead of more beautiful if I sold out. that’s the way it works. backwards. it really takes more than 2,000 years of Christianity or anti-Christianity for a man even to get a half decent bearing. and 65 or 75 years of life are not enough. hardly a beginning. I began at 35 which leaves me nothing, and the way I drink and have lived, certainly less than half, perhaps. not even another lousy Summer or 2. well, I have talked long enough. [* * *]

[To Ruth Want-ling]

August 10, 1965

[* * *] the heat has me goofy too. and I get these pains in my neck and back and chest, I feel like screaming, “oh Christ, let’s start the bloody Crucifixion!” I don’t know what I’ve got. but last night I sat there working with a black foreman glaring at a spot at the back of my neck and the human race went down like lumps of gravy mixed with dung and spittle. I played a little game last night—each person I saw I asked myself,
IF YOU HAD THE POWER TO ORDER THE DEATH OF THIS PERSON, WOULD YOU DO SO
?

and as they walked by, man and woman, I’d say to myself:

that one, sure!

and that one,
MOST SURELY
!

and look at that pig, that gross manure, runs through with conceit! death to that!

and look, that one thinks it’s pretty! ugg.

and that one must go and that one, and that, and look at
THAT ONE
—a sore in the eye of the sun, kill him!

anyhow, nobody got by. it was very sad. no nobility. no grace of walk. not a flower. not a leaf. not even a water spaniel. just bugs, pigs, worms, ant-eaters, gorillas, monkeys, pageboys, so on so. on.

I hope it’s a better night tonight, I hope that I see somebody whether the pains stop or not.

you go easy now. not much sense to anything, of course. your husband writing better as the years prop him up, but hope he does not get too well-known. this usually flips them over the side and does them in. [* * *]