You Get So Alone at Times That It Just Makes Sense - Charles Bukowski [17]
a short bit (mostly he would talk and I would
listen; after all, he was our mentor, our
god):
Ask the Dust
Wait Until Spring, Bandini
Dago Red
all the others.
to end up in Hollywood writing
movie scripts
that’s what killed
him.
“the worst thing,” he told me,
“is bitterness, people end up so
bitter.”
he wasn’t bitter, although he had
every right to
be…
at the funeral I
met several of his script-writing
buddies.
“let’s write something about
John,” one of them
suggested.
“I don’t think I can,” I
told them.
and, of course, they never
did.
the wine of forever
re-reading some of Fante’s
The Wine of Youth
in bed
this mid-afternoon
my big cat
BEAKER
asleep beside
me.
the writing of some
men
is like a vast bridge
that carries you
over
the many things
that claw and tear.
Fante’s pure and magic
emotions
hang on the simple
clean
line.
that this man died
one of the slowest and
most horrible deaths
that I ever witnessed or
heard
about…
the gods play no
favorites.
I put the book down
beside me.
book on one side,
cat on the
other…
John, meeting you,
even the way it
was was the event of my
life. I can’t say
I would have died for
you, I couldn’t have handled
it that well.
but it was good to see you
again
this
afternoon.
true
one of Lorca’s best lines
is,
“agony, always
agony…”
think of this when you
kill a
cockroach or
pick up a razor to
shave
or awaken in the morning
to
face the
sun.
Glenn Miller
long ago
across from the campus
in the malt shop
the juke box going
the young girls perfectly in tune
dancing with the football players
and the college bright boys
Glenn Miller was the big thing then
and everybody stepped
almost everybody
I sat with a couple of disciples
we were supposed to be outlaws
the explorers of Truth
but I liked the music
and the laziness of waiting
as the world rushed toward war
as Hitler speechified
the girls whirled
graceful
showing leg
that last bright sunshine
we warmed ourselves in it
shutting away everything else
while the universe opened its mouth
in an attempt to
swallow us all.
Emily Bukowski
my grandmother always attended the sunrise
Easter service
and the Rose Bowl
parade.
she also liked to go to the
beach, sit on those benches
facing the sea.
she thought movies were
sinful.
she ate enormous platefuls of
food.
she prayed for me
constantly.
“poor boy: the devil is inside
of you.”
she said the devil was
inside her husband
too.
though not divorced
they lived
separately
and had not seen each
other
for 15 years.
she said that hospitals were
nonsense
she never used them
or
the doctors.
at 87
she died one evening
while feeding her
canary.
she liked to
drop the seed
into the cage
while making these
little
bird sounds.
she wasn’t very
interesting
but few people
are.
some suggestions
in addition to the envy and the rancor of some of
my peers
there is the other thing, it comes by telephone and
letter: “you are the world’s greatest living
writer.”
this doesn’t please me either because somehow
I believe that to be the world’s greatest living
writer
there must be something
terribly wrong with you.
I don’t even want to be the world’s greatest
dead writer.
just being dead would be fair
enough.
also, the word “writer” is a very tiresome
word.
just think how much more pleasing it would be
to hear:
you are the world’s greatest pool
player
or
you are the world’s greatest
fucker
or
you are the world’s greatest
horseplayer.
now
that
would really make
a man feel
good.
invasion
I didn’t know that
there was anything
in the closet
although some nights
my sleep would be
interrupted by strange
rumblings
but
I always thought
these to be
minor
quakes.
the closet was
the one
down the hall
and
was seldom
used.
the curious thing
for me
was that
the cats
(I had 4 of
them)
appeared to be
leaving
large
droppings
about
(and
they were
house-broken).
then
the cats
vanished
one