Come on In! - Charles Bukowski [19]
you aren’t as old as I am
and I can remember reading
magazines where at the end of a poem
it said:
Paris, 1928.
that seemed to make a
difference, and so, those who could afford to
(and some who couldn’t)
went to
PARIS
and wrote.
I am also old enough so that I remember when poems
made many references to the Greek and Roman
gods.
if you didn’t know your gods you weren’t a very good
writer.
also, if you couldn’t slip in a line of
Spanish, French or
Italian,
you certainly weren’t a very good
writer.
5 or 6 decades ago,
maybe 7,
some poets started using
“i” for “I”
or
“&” for “and.”
many still use a small
“i” and many more continue to use the
“&”
feeling that this is
poetically quite effective and
up-to-date.
also, the oldest notion still in vogue is
that if you can’t understand a poem then
it almost certainly is a
good one.
poetry is still moving slowly forward, I guess,
and when your average garage mechanics
start bringing books of poesy to read
on their lunch breaks
then we’ll know for sure we’re moving in
the right
direction.
&
of this
i
am sure.
the end of an era
he lived in the Village
in New York
in the old days
and only after he died
did he get a write-up
in a snob magazine,
a magazine which had
never printed his
poems.
he came from the days
when poets called
themselves
Bohemians.
he wore a beret and a
scarf
and hung around the
cafés,
bummed drinks,
sometimes got a
night’s lodging from the
rich
(just for
laughs)
but mostly
he slept in the alleys
at night.
the whores knew him
well
and gave him
little
hand-outs.
he was a communist
or a
socialist
depending upon what
he was
reading
at that
moment.
it was 1939
and he had a
burning hatred
in his heart
for the
Nazis.
when he
recited his poems
in the street
he always
ended up
frothing about the
Nazis.
he passed out
little stapled
pages
of his
poems
and
he wrote
with a
simple
intensity.
he was good
but not
great.
and even the good poems
were not
that
good.
anyhow
he was an
attraction;
the tourists always
asked for
him.
he was always
in love
with some
new whore.
he had a
real
soul
and the usual
real
needs.
he stank
and wore cast-off clothes
and he screamed
when he spoke
but
at least
he wasn’t anybody
but
himself.
the Village was
his
Paris.
but unlike
Henry Miller
who made
failure
glorious
and finally
lucrative
he didn’t know
quite how
to accomplish
that.
instead of being
a
genius-freak
he was just
a
freak-freak.
but most of
the writers and
painters
who also had failed
loved him
because he
symbolized
for them
the possibility
of being
recognized.
they too wore
scarves and
berets
and did more
complaining than
creating.
but then they
lost him.
he was found
one morning
in an
alley
wrapped around
his latest
whore.
both of them
had their
throats
cut
wide.
and
on the wall
above them
in their
blood
were scrawled
the words:
“COMMIE PIG!”
another freak
had found
him?
a
freak- Nazi?
or maybe
just a
freak-freak?
but his
murder
finally created
the fame
he had always
wanted,
though it was
to be but
temporary.
he was to
have a
final
fling
in this
his
crazy
life and
death.
he had left
an envelope
with a prominent
Matron of the
Arts,
marked:
TO BE OPENED
ONLY IN THE EVENT
OF
MY DEATH.
all during his
stay in the
Village
he had spoken
about a mysterious
WORK IN
PROGRESS.
he had claimed
he’d written a
GIGANTIC WORK,
more pages than
a couple of
telephone
books.
it would
dwarf Pound’s
Cantos
and put a
headlock
on the
Bible.
the instructions
were
specific:
the WORK was
in an iron
chest
buried
in a graveyard
30 yards
south and west
of a certain tree
(indicated on a
hand-drawn
map)
the tree
where he claimed
Whitman once
rested
while he wrote
“I Celebrate Myself.”
the ground
all about was
soon
dug up and
searched.
nothing was
found.
some Romantics
claimed it was
still
there
somewhere.