Read What Matters Most is How Well You Walk Through the Fire Online
Authors: Charles Bukowski
lost my ass at the races
now sitting with the flu
listening to Wagner on the radio
I've got this small heater humming.
I'm not dead yet
yet not dead
I want to see more kneecaps under
tight nylon hose.
I'm re-grouping,
I'm dreaming up the counter-attack.
lost my ass at the races
the Sierra Madre smiling at me
lost my ass at the races
walked through a wall of defeat.
I saw a dead cat this morning
both front legs sheared off
he was lying by the garbage can
as I walked by.
this is the hardest game
defeat grows like flowers
the whores sit in chairs before their doorways
Attila the Hun sleeps in a rubber mask at night.
Wagner died, Rimbaud quit writing, Christ spit it out.
I lost my ass at the races today
and was reminded of history
of waste and of error
and of strangled dreams.
we want it too easy
and this is the hardest game.
the small heater hums
as I smoke
looking at the walls.
listening to Richard Strauss
is most pleasant
when you are blindfolded and up
against the wall again
facing old Spanish muskets and the
heat and the dust, the
blue head of death.
listening to Richard Strauss
reveals flashes of orange, grey and white
light,
lemonade, and cats crouched in the shade
in polarized
afternoons.
things get bad for all of
us, almost continually,
and what we do under the constant
stress
reveals
who/what we are.
Richard Strauss
is a colorful rush of craft and feeling,
he's like a loaf of french bread
cut the long way
and then loaded with all the ingredients.
it's just
right.
I leave my door open and the cats of the
neighborhood all come in. they walk over to me
and across the top of my couch
and into the bathroom, and one of them goes to
sleep on my
bed. one other sits by me and we listen
to Richard Strauss.
we're in trouble but we don't
know what to do.
again and again
young men write me
the same letter:
“I can't write, but I
want to write. I
read your stuff
and I want to
write just like you.
can you
please tell me something
that will help?”
all around me the
hills are on fire,
floodwaters run
through here
swarming with
rats.
the streets roar
and yawn to
swallow me.
I'm choking
and can't breathe.
they want to write?
like me?
what do they mean?
what's writing?
I only want to go to
bed
close my eyes
and sleep
forever.
born next to cold dogs and
railroad tracks.
born to live with the
lost.
born among faces
uglier than anything
life could
devise.
born to see the 7
horse break its
leg
at 3:42 in the
afternoon.
born to lose another
womanâ
clothes gone from
closet,
hairpins
lotions
lipstick
rings
left
behind.
born to dance on
one leg.
born to sit around
and watch flies
frogs
and roaches.
born to sever fingers
on the edge of
tuna cans.
born to walk about
with guts
shot out
from front to
back.
born again
and
again and
again.
she passed from one important man
to another,
from bed to bed
from man to man
all of them
society's important men:
politicians, athletes, artists,
lawyers, doctors, entertainers,
producers, financiers,
and they all gave her one thing
or another:
gifts, money, publication,
publicity and/or
the good life.
but when she suddenly died
at 32
the only ones at her funeral
were
an aunt from Virginia
her bookie
her dope dealer
a bartender
an alcoholic neighbor
and several hired hands at the
graveyard.
but she held
2 final aces
and had the last laugh:
she'd never worked an
8 hour day
and they buried her
with all the gold
in her teeth.
speaking about going crazy
I have been thinking about
mermaids lately.
but I can't place them
properly in my
mind.
one problem that bothers
me
is where are their sexual
organs located?
do they use toilet paper?
and can they stand
on their flipper
while frying bacon and
eggs?
I think
I'd like a mermaid
to love.
sometimes in the supermarket
I see crabs and baby
octopi
and I think, well,
I could feed her that.
but how would I pack her
around at the racetrack?
I get my things and then
push my cart to the
checkout stand.
“how are you today?” she
asks.
“o.k.,” I say.
she has on a
market uniform
flat shoes
earrings
a little cap
pantyhose.
she rings up my
purchases. I know
where her sexual organs
are located as
I look out the
plate glass window
and wait.
just thinking about
writing this poem has
already almost made me
sick
but I'll try it one more
time.
it was in Salt Lake
City
and I had the
flu
and it was cold
and I was in my
shirtsleeves.
I had given my
reading and was
ready to fly
back to L.A.
but I was with
2 girls who wanted
to make the bars
and we went into
this one place
and the girls wanted
to sit near the
front.
there was a
boy on the stage
a Japanese cowboy
and he could
holler.
I had to
make the men's room
and I ran in
there
and the urinal was
like a large shallow
bathtub
and it was
clogged and
full of urine
gently spilling across
the floor.
the entire floor
was wet
and I almost puked
into that flowing
tide of piss.
I came out and
got the girls
out of there.
that time
I didn't tip for
table service.
I'm still not
sure
which was worseâ
the men's room
or that Japanese
cowboy.
that's Mormon
territory and clearly
there's work to be
done.
wives' heads are
battered
against kitchen
walls
by unemployed
butchers.
pimps
send out their
dreary and doped
battalions
of tired
girls.
upstairs a man
pukes
his entire stomach
into a
wastebasket.
we all drink
too much
cheap wine
search for
cigarettes
look at our
mates
across
tabletops
and wonder why
they became
ugly
so soon.
we turn our
TV's on
searching for
baseball games
soaps
and
cop
shows
but it's only
the sound
we want
some minor
distraction.
nobody cares
about
endings
we know the
end.
some of us
weaken
some of us
become
sniffers of
Christ.
some don't.
to know anything is
to score
and to score
is
necessary
that's
baseball
and that's all
the rest
of it
too.
one goes from being a poet
to being an entertainer.
I read my stuff in Florida once
and the professor there
told me, “you realize you're
an entertainer now, don't
you?”
I began to
feel bad about that remark
because when the crowd
comes to be entertained by
you
then you become somehow
suspect.
and so, another time,
starting from Los Angeles
we took to the air and
the flight captain introduced
himself as
“Captain Goodwine,”
and thousands of miles
later I found myself transferred
to a small 2-engine
plane and we took off and
the stewardess put a drink
in my hand
took my money and then
hollered, “drink up,
we're landing!”
we landed
took off again and she put
another drink in my hand,
took my money and then
hollered, “drink up,
we're landing!”
the 3rd time I ordered
2 drinks
although we only landed
once more.
I read twice that night in Arkansas
and ended up in a home with
clean rugs, a serving bar, a fireplace
and professors who spoke about budgets
and Fulbright scholarships, and where
the wives of the professors
sat very quietly without speaking.
they were all waiting for me
the entertainer
who had flown in with Captain
Goodwine to
entertain them to make a move on
someone's wife to break the windows
to piss on the rug to play the
fool to make them feel superior
to make them feel hip and liberated.
if I would only stick a cigarette
up the cat's ass!
if I would only take the
willing co-ed
who was doing a term paper on
Chinaski!
but I got up and went to my
poet's bedroom
closed the door
took off my clothes
went to bed and
went to sleep
thereby
entertaining myself
the best way
I knew
how.
I awakened about 10:30 a.m.
Sunday morning
and I sat straight up in bed
and I said,
“o, Jesus Christ!”
and she said,
“what's the matter, Hank?”
and I said, “it's my car. do you
remember where we parked last night?”
and she said,
“no, I don't.”
and I said,
“well, I think there's something strange going on.”
and I got dressed and went out on the street.
I was worried.
I had no idea where the car was
and I walked up my street and down the next
street and I didn't see it.
I have love affairs with my cars
and the older they are and/or the longer I have them
the more I care.
this one was an ancient love.
âthen three blocks to the west I saw it:
parked dead center in the middle of a very narrow
street. nobody could enter the street or leave it.
my car sat there calmly like a forgotten drunk.
I walked over, got in, put the key in, and it
started.
there was no ticket.
I felt good.
I drove it to my street and parked it
carefully.
I walked back up the stairway and opened the
door.
“well, is your car all right?” she asked.
“yeah, I found it,” I said, “guess where it⦔
“
you worry too much about that god-damned car!
”
she snapped. “did you bring back any 7-Up, any beer?
I need something
now!
”
I undressed and got back into bed and
pushed my fat ass up against her fat
belly and never said another
word.