Bukowski Archives

I know Saturday's are usually my Bukowski days, but this one is just too good to wait. Enjoy your weekend everyone.

he came to the door one night wet thin beaten and
terrorized
a white cross-eyed tailless cat
I took him in and fed him and he stayed
grew to trust me until a friend drove up the driveway
and ran him over
I took what was left to a vet who said, "not much
chance...give him these pills...his backbone
is crushed but it was crushed before and somehow
mended, if he lives he'll never walk, look at
these x-rays, he's been shot, look here, the pellets
are still there...also, he once had a tail, somebody
cut it off..."

I took the cat back, it was a hot summer, one of the
hottest in decades, I put him on the bathroom
floor, gave him water and pills, he wouldn't eat, he
wouldn't touch the water, I dipped my finger into it
and wet his mouth and I talked to him, I didn't go any-
where, I put in alot of bathroom time and talked to
him and gently touched him and he looked back at
me with those pale blue crossed eyes and as the days went
by he made his first move
dragging himself forward by his front legs
(the rear ones wouldn't work)
he made it to the litter box
crawled over and in,
it was like the trumpet of possible victory
blowing in that bathroom and into the city, I
related to that cat-I'd had it bad, not that
bad but bad enough...

one morning he got up, stoodup, fell back down and just looked at me.

"you can make it" I said to him.

he kept trying, getting up and falling down, finally
he walked a few steps, he was like a drunk, the
rear legs just didn't want to do it and he fell again, rested,
then got up.

you know the rest: now he's better than ever, cross-eyed,
almost toothless, but the grace is back, and that look in
his eyes never left...

and now sometimes I'm interviewed, they want to hear about
life and literature and I get drunk and hold up my cross-eyed,
shot, runover de-tailed cat and I say, "look, look
at this!"

but they don't understand, they say something like, "you
say you've been influenced by Celine?"

"no," I hold the cat up, "by what happens, by
things like this, by this, by this!"

I shake the cat, hold him up in
the smoky and drunken light, he's relaxed, he knows...

it's then the interviews end
although I am proud sometimes when I see the pictures
later and there I am and there is the cat and we are photo-
graphed together.

he too knows it's bullshit but that somehow it helps.

-- Written by Charles Bukowski
taken from the book War All The Time

10/15/91 12:55 AM

There is nothing that teaches you more than regrouping after failure and moving on. Yet most people are stricken with fear. The fear failure so much that they fail. They are too conditioned, too used to being told what to do. It begins with the family, runs through school and goes into the business world.

There is a door open into the night and I am sitting here freezing but I won't get up and close the door because these words are running away with me and I like that too much to stop. But damn it, I will. I will get up and close the door and take a piss.

There I did it. Both of these things. I even put on a sweater. Old writer puts on sweater, sits down, leers into the computer screen and writes about life. How holy can we get?

- Taken from the book The Captain Is Out to Lunch & the Sailors Have Taken over the Ship

Half day today leading to a long weekend. Saturday I'm driving home to get the rest of my stuff (i.e. winter clothes + CD's) in my parents garage. I'll be back Tuesday, have a great holiday weekend everyone. Until I leave you with this:

Below is an excerpt from a Bukowski book I'm reading. It's amazing how topical it is.

10/3/91 11:56 PM

Bush might get reelected because he won an easy war. But he didn't do crap for the economy. You never even know if your bank will open in the morning. I don't mean to sing the blues. But you know, in the 1930's at least everybody knew where they were. Now, it's a game of mirrors. And nobody is quite sure what is holding it together. Or who they are really working for. If they are working.

That was taken from the book The Captain Is Out to Lunch & the Sailors Have Taken over the Ship which is basically Bukowski writing his way through an incredible time in his life. He was 71 in 1991 and just got his first computer, a Macinatosh IIsi and when he's not marveling at his new toy, he spends his time reminiscing on his life (he didn't start writing poetry until he was 51) as he approaches death. he knows the end is near, but in a way he is looking forward to it. The writing is incredibly clear and concise. It's an amazing peek into a 71 year old's mind. This book is a must read if you can find a copy for cheap. I don't think there's a need to pay the $75 Amazon is asking for. Check eBay.

The book is basically a sporadic diary from August 1991 to September 1992. I'll try and post things from this book on the corresponding date and we can all see what Buk was thinking on these days just 13 years ago. Trust me, it'll be fun.

The post reading party was the same as always, professors and students, bland and dim. Professor Kragmartz got me in the breakfast nook, began asking questions as the groupies slithered about. No I told him, no, well, yes, parts of T.S.Eliot were good. We were too tough on Eliot. Pound, yes, well, we were finding out that Pound was not quite what we thought. No, I couldn't think of any outstanding contemporary American poets, sorry. Concrete poetry? Well, yes, concrete poetry was just like concrete anything else. What, Celine? An old crank with withered testicles. Only one good book, the first one. What? Yes, of course, it's enough. I mean, you haven't written one have you? Why do I pick on Creeley? I don't anymore. Creeley's built a body of work, that's more than most of his critics have done. Yes, I drink, doesn't everybody? How the hell you going to make it otherwise? Women? Oh yes, women, oh yes, of course. You can't write about fireplugs and empty India Ink bottles. Yes, I know the red wheelbarrow in the rain. Look Kragmartz, I don't want you to hog me entirely. I better move around.

- Taken from the book Hot Water Music

The Mockingbird

the mockingbird had been following the cat
all summer
mocking mocking mocking
teasing and cocksure;
the cat crawled under rockers on porches
tail flashing
and said something angry to the mockingbird
which I didn't understand.

yesterday the cat walked calmly up the driveway
with the mockingbird alive in it's mouth,
wings fanned, beautiful wings fanned and flopping,
feathers parted like a woman's legs,
and the bird was no longer mocking,
it was asking, it was praying
but the cat
striding down through the centuries
would not listen.

I saw it crawl under a yellow car
with the bird
to bargain it to another place

summer was over.

- Written by Charles Bukowski
taken from the book Mockingbird Wish Me Luck

$180 gone

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 dies, Rimbaud quit writing, Christ spit it out.

I lost my ass at the races today
and was reminded of history
of waste and 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.

- Charles Bukowski, from his book
What Matters Most Is How Well You Walk Through the Fire

Bach, I said, he had 20 children.
he played the horses during the day.
he fucked at night
and drank in the mornings.
he wrote music in between.

at least that's what I told her
when she asked me,
when do you do your writing?

artisitic slefishness

what's genius?
I don't know
but I do know that
the difference between a madman and a
professional is
that
a pro does as well as he can within what
he has set out to do
and a madman
does exceptionally well at what
he can't help
doing.

now I am looking
into this unshaded lightbulb
at 11:37 p.m. on a Monday night
thinking
tiny names
like
Van Gogh
Chatterson
Plath
Crane
Artaud

Chinaski

both selections written by Charles Bukowski and taken from his book
What Matters Most Is How Well You Walk Through the Fire

the dog jumps up on the bed
crawls over me.
"are you the Word?" I ask him
he doesn't answer.
"are you the Word?" I'm looking for the Word."
he has brown and solemn eyes.
"I'm waiting for the Word," I tell him,
"I'm walking around like a man
in a large hot
frying pan."
he wags his tail and tries to
lick my face.

"listen," she says from the bedroom,
"why don't you get out of bed
and stop talking to that dog?"

my parents didn't understand me
either.

- Charles Bukowski, from his book
what matters most is how well you walk through the fire

the lid to the great jar
opens
and out tumbles a
Christ Child.
I throw it to my cat
who bats it around in the
air
but soon tires of
the lack of
response.
it is near the end of
February in a so far
banal year.
not a damn good war
in sight anywhere.
I light an Italian cigar,
it's slim, tastes bitter.
I inhale the space between
continents
stretch my legs.
it's moments like
this - you can feel it
happening - that you grow
transformed
partly into something
else strange and
unimaginable -
so when death comes
it can only take
part of
you

I exhale a perfect
smoke ring
as a soprano sings to me
through the radio

each night counts for something
or else we'd all
go mad.

- Charles Bukowski, from his book
what matters most is how well you walk through the fire

That's the problem with drinking, I thought, as I poured myself a drink.

If something happens, you drink in an attempt to forget;

if something good happens, you drink in order to celebrate;

and if nothing happens, you drink to make something happen.

- Charles Bukowski 1978



Wise words from the master. Respect.