Love Is a Dog From Hell_ Poems, 1974-1977 - Charles Bukowski [11]
I have smoked 25 cigarettes tonight
and you know about the beer.
the phone has only rung once:
wrong number.
how to be a great writer
you’ve got to fuck a great many women
beautiful women
and write a few decent love poems.
and don’t worry about age
and/or freshly-arrived talents.
just drink more beer
more and more beer
and attend the racetrack at least once a
week
and win
if possible.
learning to win is hard—
any slob can be a good loser.
and don’t forget your Brahms
and your Bach and your
beer.
don’t overexercise.
sleep until noon.
avoid credit cards
or paying for anything on
time.
remember that there isn’t a piece of ass
in this world worth over $50
(in 1977).
and if you have the ability to love
love yourself first
but always be aware of the possibility of
total defeat
whether the reason for that defeat
seems right or wrong—
an early taste of death is not necessarily
a bad thing.
stay out of churches and bars and museums,
and like the spider be
patient—
time is everybody’s cross,
plus
exile
defeat
treachery
all that dross.
stay with the beer.
beer is continous blood.
a continuous lover.
get a large typewriter
and as the footsteps go up and down
outside your window
hit that thing
hit it hard
make it a heavyweight fight
make it the bull when he first charges in
and remember the old dogs
who fought so well:
Hemingway, Celine, Dostoevsky, Hamsun.
if you think they didn’t go crazy
in tiny rooms
just like you’re doing now
without women
without food
without hope
then you’re not ready.
drink more beer.
there’s time.
and if there’s not
that’s all right
too.
the price
drinking 15 dollar champagne—
Cordon Rouge—with the hookers.
one is named Georgia and she
doesn’t like pantyhose:
I keep helping her pull up
her long dark stockings.
the other is Pam-prettier
but not much soul, and
we smoke and talk and I
play with their legs and
stick my bare foot into
Georgia’s open purse.
it’s filled with
bottles of pills. I
take some of the pills.
“listen,” I say, “one of
you has soul, the other
looks. Can’t I combine
the 2 of you? take the soul
and stick it into the looks?”
“you want me,” says Pam, “it
will cost you a hundred.”
we drink some more and Georgia
falls to the floor and can’t
get up.
I tell Pam that I like her
earrings very much. Her
hair is long and a natural
red.
“I was only kidding about the
hundred,” she says.
“oh,” I say, “what will it cost
me?”
she lights her cigarette with
my lighter and looks at me
through the flame:
her eyes tell me.
“look,” I say, “I don’t think I
can ever pay that price again.”
she crosses her legs
inhales on her cigarette
as she exhales she smiles
and says, “sure you can.”
alone with everybody
the flesh covers the bone
and they put a mind
in there and
sometimes a soul,
and the women break
vases against the walls
and the men drink too
much
and nobody finds the
one
but they keep
looking
crawling in and out
of beds.
flesh covers
the bone and the
flesh searches
for more than
flesh.
there’s no chance
at all:
we are all trapped
by a singular
fate.
nobody ever finds
the one.
the city dumps fill
the junkyards fill
the madhouses fill
the hospitals fill
the graveyards fill
nothing else
fills.
the 2nd novel
they’d come around and
they’d ask
“you finished your
2nd novel yet?”
“no.”
“whatsamatta? whatsamatta
that you can’t
finish it?”
“hemorrhoids and
insomnia.”
“maybe you’ve lost
it?”
“lost what?”
“you know.”
now when they come
around I tell them,
“yeh. I finished
it. be out in Sept.”
“you finished it?”
“yeh.”
“well, listen, I gotta
go.”
even the cat
here in the courtyard
won’t come to my door
anymore.
it’s nice.
Chopin Bukowski
this is my piano.
the phone rings and people ask,
what are you doing? how about
getting drunk with us?
and I say,
I’m at my piano.
what?
I’m at my piano.
I hang up.
people need me. I fill
them. if they can’t see me
for a while they get desperate, they get
sick.