You Get So Alone at Times That It Just Makes Sense - Charles Bukowski [26]
I meet the famous poet
this poet had long been famous
and after some decades of
obscurity I
got lucky
and this poet appeared
interested
and asked me to his
beach apartment.
he was homosexual and I was
straight, and worse, a
lush.
I came by, looked
about and
declaimed (as if I didn’t
know), “hey, where the
fuck are the
babes?”
he just smiled and stroked
his mustache.
he had little lettuces and
delicate cheeses and
other dainties
in his refrigerator.
“where you keep your fucking
beer, man?” I
asked.
it didn’t matter, I had
brought my own
bottles and I began upon
them.
he began to look
alarmed: “I’ve heard about
your brutality, please
desist from
that!”
I flopped down on his
couch, belched,
laughed: “ah, shit, baby, I’m
not gonna hurt ya! ha, ha,
ha!”
“you are a fine writer,” he
said, “but as a person you are
utterly
despicable!”
“that’s what I like about me
best, baby!” I
continued to pour them
down.
at once
he seemed to vanish behind
some sliding wooden
doors.
“hey, baby, come on
out! I ain’t gonna do no
bad! we can sit around and
talk that dumb literary
bullshit all night
long! I won’t
brutalize you,
shit, I
promise!”
“I don’t trust you,”
came the little
voice.
well, there was nothing to
do
but slug it down, I was
too drunk to drive
home.
when I awakened in the
morning he was standing over
me
smiling.
“uh,” I said,
“hi…”
“did you mean what you
said last night?” he
asked.
“uh, what wuz
ut?”
“I slid the doors back and
stood there and you saw
me and you said that
I looked like I was riding the
prow of some great sea
ship…you said that
I looked like a
Norseman! is
that true?”
“oh, yeah, yeah, you
did…”
he fixed me some hot tea
with toast
and I got that
down.
“well,” I said, “good to
have met
you…”
“I’m sure,” he
answered.
the door closed behind
me
and I found the elevator
down
and
after some wandering about the
beach front
I found my car, got
in, drove off
on what appeared to be
favorable terms
between the famous poet and
myself
but
it wasn’t
so:
he started writing un-
believably hateful stuff
about
me
and I
got my shots in at
him.
the whole matter
was just about
like
most other writers
meeting
and
anyhow
that part about
calling him a
Norseman
wasn’t true at
all: I called him
a
Viking
and it also
isn’t true
that without his
aid
I never would have
appeared in the
Penguin Collection of
Modern Poets
along with him
and who
was it?
yeah:
Lamantia.
seize the day
foul fellow he was always wiping his nose on his
sleeve and also farting at regular
intervals, he was
uncombed
uncouth
unwanted.
his every third word was a crass
entrail
and he grinned through broken yellow
teeth
his breath stinking above the
wind
he continually dug into his crotch
left-
handed
and he always had a
dirty joke
at the ready,
a dunce of the lowest
order
a most most
avoided
man
until
he won the state
lottery.
now
you should see
him: always a young laughing lady on
each arm
he eats at the finest
places
the waiters fighting to get him
at their
table
he belches and farts away the
night
spilling his wineglass
picking up his steak with his
fingers
while
his ladies call him
“original” and “the funniest
man I ever met.”
and what they do to him
in bed
is a damned
shame.
what we have to keep
remembering, though, is that
50% of the state lottery is given to the
Educational System and
that’s important
when you realize that
only one person in
nine
can properly spell
“emulously.”
the shrinking island
I’m working on it as
the dawn bends toward me…
I almost had it at 3:34 a.m. but it
slipped away from me
with the wizardry of a
silverfish…
now
as the half-light moves toward me
like motherfucking death
I give up the battle
rise
move toward the bathroom
bang
into a wall
give a pitiful mewking
laugh…
flick on the light and
begin to piss, yes, in
the proper place
and
after flushing
think: another night
gone.
well, we gave