Screams From the Balcony (37 page)

[To Douglas Blazek]

June 25, 1966

[* * *] strange woman came to my door the other night, one a.m. “yeah?” I said. she wanted to know if I were Charles Bukowski. I let her in. weeping face. good legs. I was sober, sitting there looking at the walls. soft pecker. I explained that I was ill, told her to look at my paintings on the walls. she looked and didn’t say anything. Blaz, I will no longer fuck on demand or because it’s there or because something has to be proved. that’s called old age. I signed something and sent her on her way. now Hemingway would have had her all up and down the springs, flexing his soul muscles. I was glad when she left and fixed myself a glass of tea (see T. S. Eliot) and then got down on my nubs and prayed for a good night’s sleep. lately I can only get an hour, an hour and a half’s sleep a day or night. if I get 3 I feel pretty good. keep leaping up imagining burglars, my brain going, going. or that somebody is planning to kill me. (that’s an old one.) meanwhile Webb writes that I have been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. Webb said they asked for a bio and photo. altho what a bio and photo have to do with a man’s work, I dunno. [* * *] happened to mention to Want-ling, and he and wife made a big thing of it, made me feel rather foolish. I liked better Frances’ reaction. she came over with the kid and demanded 19 weeks child support in advance, she wanted to go to mountains or camp or somewhere with kid.

“god damn it,” I told her, “don’t you realize that I am dying? don’t you realize that I am not working? I’m not a money tree, I am
SICK SICK SICK SICK
!”

“well, that’s not Marina’s fault, that’s not
my
fault. I wanna go to camp, I wanna get outa the smog, I wanna get my baby outa the smog!”

that’s when I thought it would be amusing to tell her. “I’ve been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize,” I told her.

“yeah, the Foolitzer Prize,” she said.

that’s what I like about these women. we can’t fool them. they
know
us. [* * *]

[To Ann Menebroker]

Sunday in July, 1966

[* * *] the oddity…of continuing to write poetry as one
really
gets older—I’ll be 46 in August, there is somehow a sense of shame as if one didn’t belong, but I think this is an ingrained Americanism—that age is a crime and that poetry is for the young. my age is a miracle and poetry is for me, or, what I write, whatever that is, is for me. it’s a clarification of issues and also some screaming and also some things which we don’t know. it’s Romantic, unromantic, useless and important. it’s a way to go. I don’t think that I can quit. I believe I will be writing little lines on my drooling bib in my senile crib. the pleasure of my madness. [* * *]

[To William and Ruth Want-ling]

August 6, 1966

[* * *] Webb speaks of another book in late ’67 or early ’68, even tho I have told him I am feeling very bad. it is so strange people ignore me when I say this. Frances ignores it. everybody. it is not the sympathy bit I want; I just want a few people to know that I can’t function so well anymore—the old warrior’s got a flat tire. or maybe Webb speaks of the book to keep me going? I wouldn’t want a book that way. I want my poems to leap through walls. not that the poems are important but if I am playing with poems I don’t want wet sunflower seeds. well, shit, that’s enough singing of the blues. [* * *]

[To Ann Menebroker]

August 13, 1966

yes, I’d say get a book together, out, never believe you write as badly as some of them would like you to think or never believe you write as well as some of those would like you to think, it’s hash gabble, but the gathering is good for your health, the climate of your being. be there. and don’t worry that maybe Pound has written better or Eliot (T. S.), or that your mother won’t like them or that maybe Bukowski will or maybe Bukowski won’t. to hell with Bukowski. so much of our world is comparison, competition, victory, defeat, scratching, climbing, burying, denying—champions, madmen, fools and apple pie. I am tired of their game. to an extent I am caught in their machine but I needn’t swallow
all
the nuts, grease and oil. I wrote a poem in
Ole
about a poetry-writing doctor and this doctor read the poem (it was anti-him as the human being he posed) and wrote back telling me that I had “slipped,” that he and his wife were very concerned about my “decline” as an artist. I didn’t answer. but actually, it is my
FREEDOM TO DECLINE
, to
SLIP
. I don’t want to go on and on packing the dear old
ARTIST
-load anymore than I want to pack any other kind of load. we’re all racing for the Moon of being Top Man.
WHERE DO WE DIFFER AS WRITERS FROM USED CAR SALESMEN
? this is why I hate to be called a “writer,” and “artist.” call me some other dirty name. think of some of this when you think about getting out a book. don’t worry about some other “finer” writer. think about getting a book out like taking a drink for yourself or scratching your toes. all that I am telling you here is
THAT YOU DESERVE A BOOK FOR YOURSELF
just like Pound deserves a book for himself or Bukowski deserves a hot bath on an August night of almost no moon. what I am trying to say here is perhaps not very clear—I have slipped, you see. there’s a young man on the bench ready to take over my center field spot—bright eyes, strong arm, a way to go. I hope he enjoys the madness of the days.

well, enough speech-making. listening to something on the radio a bit dull and classical but with just enough bite to help me endure my landlord who rolls past this window mowing his lawn, bug bellied in no wind, hung to his proper string as the young girls walk by, and when a good one walks by, flowing like the magic of stuff stuck somewhere in me, old 46 gets up and walks to the window and looks out, sucking on his cigar, big green tears cascading down his face as he realizes all the years shot through the head, assassinated forever, wasted sure, drank senseless, hobbled and slugged in factories, bad dreams, 2nd rate jails, mouse and ghost-infested rooms across an America without a meaning. boy o boy.

sometimes when I don’t write, please understand that something is happening—flat tires, overtime, illness, accident on freeway, bad horses or just the common white seethe of deadness taking hold inside. I am not hard; I would like to be harder—the days have too many teeth. I think you understand. if you’ve read my book
Confessions of a Man Insane Enough to Live with Beasts
you might prob. think me quite the cruel dog, but that is just the side I let them see—a cement thing with eyes poked in and mouth talking out the side. in this great land we have been taught not to be seen crying in the streets. we tabulate the works into a pillow at night in a room we think does not know.

[To William Want-ling]

August 21, 1966

[* * *] But, actually, I don’t know if I wd. like you with college education. You know what college ed. generally means?—security and
their
way of thinking. they run you thru the hoops and set you free—you think. there’s something clean about washing cars. the kids—I know. layoffs, I know. no work, I know.

The game works in all different directions.

The trick is to work it enough in
their
directions to let you live, but enough in your direction to stay alive. the chicken-shits call it “compromise”—they mean give a mile to take a mile; I mean give an inch to take 400 miles. there’s a difference. of course, the danger with my unbalanced education is that you sometimes end up standing on the razor blade. chop! [* * *]

 

Vagabond
no. 2 with the Bukowski material was published by John Bennett in Munich in 1966
. Klactoveedsedsteen
(named after a composition of Charlie Parker’s) was published in Heidelberg and edited by Carl Weissner, who was to become a frequent correspondent and eventually Bukowski’s literary agent in Germany
.

 

[To Ann Menebroker]

September [10], 1966

good to get call, seriously, tho I didn’t know what to say, got lift. like old times, what, old girl? damn, how we carry on! I guess we often get the deep blues, both of us, and wonder what it all means—the people, the buildings, the day by day death things, the waste of time, of ourselves.

I’ve thought of phoning you at times but afraid your husband might answer and he’d think I was trying to break up your happy home, which I’m not.

very odd thing happened today. I got a letter from a street sweeper in Munich, Germany, and he showed a magazine (English-printed in Germany, the editor is a dishwasher) to a postcard seller on the street, an old man, and the old man read my long poem in the mag to a group of young people in the streets, translating from English to German as he went along, this is enough to chill hell out of me. I was originally born in Germany and once spoke the language as a child but now can no longer speak or understand it. and here was this old postcard seller reading one of my poems in
GERMAN
, in the streets of the land I was born in. who says we don’t return? who says that miracles never happen? unfortunately, the long poem is printed with a couple of pages reversed (
Vagabond 2
is the mag), but the message still seems to get through, so what the hell? you’ve got to write pretty strangely to have your poem printed in any order, but, since, in this one I was talking of the old mysteries of the soul plus the good fight, it read almost sensibly. good.

meanwhile, another German magazine
Klacto
has taken a couple of my poems. the editor of this one is also very poor. what are all these poor men doing? what crazy souls they possess! it is good to have your own courage but it is also good to take hope and courage from the ways of others. this I haven’t been able to do until lately. some very very strange people are arising, Ann. but mostly they are not arising in America. there is something about this land and its ways that kills almost everybody. there doesn’t seem room or reason for the truly living creature.

but little miracles keep chipping in to keep me going. an unexpected phone call in the middle of the afternoon from Sacramento; a seller of dirty postcards reading my poetry to children in a foreign land; the
Lamp
taking a couple of my poems after I had accused them of belonging to the “ladies sewing circle”—now my landlady shows at the door—“come on down and have a beer.” and so I will go on down there and drink with her and her old man the rest of the night. they like me and I am glad. I am glad to be liked. corny? I am glad to be liked by the non-literary people, and the literary ones too. I am glad you are Ann Menebroker. I am glad you phoned. perhaps someday we will meet and it will be very embarrassing and dull, and we won’t go to bed together, but no matter what you think or how odd you think I am, I will still be glad that you were, in many ways, a part of my life, and I especially remember you in the bad times of 3, 4 years ago when I was very close to suicide. it’s been a long sweep of years and I think we are all stronger and better for it. when, often, I do not write or snap or seem the aged crank, do forgive this, for there are still times when the knife still gets close, very close, and things fall apart and I am not fair to people. I think, however, that you know all these things. and since you do, this letter is long enough.

 

Notes from Underground
(San Francisco) was a continuation of John Bryan’s
Renaissance.
It ran for three issues from 1964 to 1969
.

 

[To William Want-ling]

Mid September 1966

[* * *]
Notes from Underground
now out, you’ll get your copy soon. I told Bryan yours was the best writing in there, und he agreed. glad you didn’t insist on changes. it reads as a raw, original and sheer-pure work. if the rest of your novel is up to this level, some of your worries are over. everything fit, the conversation and the action. well, balls—before you swell out to python-size, nice to have known you. ya still gonna drop me a card after you’re famous asshole? good.

actually, I am drying up on letters. it was a phase, maybe. big arguments along this row last night. I was not in it. everybody drunk around here, all these places. somebody in driveway couldn’t drive. ramming into things. another drunk screaming at him. real loud bingo game.
YA WANNA TRY ME? -THAT’S POSSIBLE TOO. I HAD AN ACCIDENT. -YEAH, WHO RAN INTO YOU??? NEVER MIND, WHAT YOU DOIN’ LIVIN’ IN A DUMP LIKE THAT? —I OWN THIS PLACE YOU LOUSY SHARECROPPER
! this kind of dialogue. I am listening in the kitchen, drunk, smiling, broke, stupid, enjoying the flare from an electric light overhead. realizing that I am not the only man in the world who is insane. [* * *]

[To Douglas Blazek]

September 19, 1966

raining, something by Rossini, coffee here, just took Maria and Frances to their place—all day Sunday recovering from about a week’s drunk, god o mighty, my timecard in hell looks like it’s speckled with henspots—same old blackouts, dizzy spells, balls balls balls what a game! anyhow, rec. all the
Assholes
, und tanks, babe, your usual lively production, glad to be part of the team, and now
Assholes
is lined up with the others in the wobbly bookshelf and I kind of feel like a christmas tinsel Hemingway. [* * *]