Love Is a Dog From Hell_ Poems, 1974-1977 - Charles Bukowski [32]
and is gone
and I am left with
Ludwig.
dead now
I always wanted to ball
Henry Miller, she said,
but by the time I got there
it was too late.
damn it, I said, you girls
always arrive too late.
I’ve already masturbated
twice today.
that wasn’t his problem,
she said. by the way,
how come you flog-off
so much?
it’s the space, I said,
all that space between
poems and stories, it’s
intolerable.
you should wait, she said,
you’re impatient.
what do you think of Celine?
I asked.
I wanted to ball him too.
dead now, I said.
dead now, she said.
care to hear a little
music? I asked.
might as well, she said.
I gave her Ives.
that’s all I had left
that night.
twins
hey, said my friend, I want you to meet
Hangdog Harry, he reminds me of you,
and I said, all right, and we went to
this cheap hotel.
old men sitting around watching
some program on the tv in the lobby
as we went up the stairway
to 209 and there was Hangdog
sitting in a straight strawback chair
bottle of wine at his feet
last year’s calendar on the wall,
“you guys sit down,” he said,
“that’s the problem:
man’s inhumanity to man.”
we watched him slowly roll a
Bull Durham cigarette.
“I’ve got a 17 inch neck and I’ll kill
anybody who fucks with me.”
he licked his cigarette
then spit on the rug.
“just like home here. feel free.”
“how you feeling, Hangdog?” asked
my friend.
“terrible. I’m in love with a whore,
haven’t seen her in 3 or 4 weeks.”
“what you think she’s doing, Hang?”
“well, right now about now I’d say
she’s sucking some turkeyneck.”
he picked up his wine bottle
took a tremendous drain.
“look,” my friend said to Hangdog,
“we’ve got to get going.”
“o.k., time and tide, they don’t
wait…”
he looked at me:
“whatcha say your name was?”
“Salomski.”
“pleased to meet cha, kid.”
“likewise.”
we went down the stairway
they were still in the lobby
looking at t.v.
“what did you think of him?”
my friend asked.
“shit,” I said, “he was really
all right. yes.”
the place didn’t look bad
she had huge thighs
and a very good laugh
she laughed at everything
and the curtains were yellow
and I finished
rolled off
and before she went to the bathroom
she reached under the bed and
threw me a rag.
it was hard
it was stiff with other men’s
sperm.
I wiped off on the sheet.
when she came out
she bent over
and I saw all that behind
as she put Mozart
on.
the little girls
up in northern California
he stood in the pulpit
and had been reading for some time
he had been reading poems about
nature and the goodness
of man.
he knew that everything was all
right and you couldn’t blame him:
he was a professor and had never
been in jail or in a whorehouse
had never had a used car die
in a traffic jam;
had never needed more than
3 drinks during his wildest
evening;
had never been rolled, flogged,
mugged,
had never been bitten by a dog
he got nice letters from Gary
Snyder, and his face was
kindly, unmarked and
tender.
his wife had never betrayed him,
nor had his luck.
he said, “I’m just going to read
3 more poems and then I’m going
to step down and let
Bukowski read.”
“oh no, William,” said all the
little girls in their pink and blue
and white and orange and lavender
dresses, “oh no, William,
read some more, read some
more!”
he read one more poem and then he said,
“this will be the last poem that
I will read.”
“oh no, William,” said all the little
girls in their red and green see-through
dresses, “oh no, William,” said
all the little girls in their tight blue
jeans with little hearts sewn on them,
“oh no, William,” said all the little girls,
“read more poems, read more poems!”
but he was good to his word.
he got the poem out and he climbed down and
vanished. as I got up to read
the little girls wiggled in
their seats and some of them hissed and
some of them made remarks to me
which I will use at some later date.
two or three weeks later
I got a letter from William
saying that he did enjoy my reading.
a true gentleman.
I was in bed