Written by
Charles Bukowski |
ah, christ, what a CREW:
more
poetry, always more
P O E T R Y .
if it doesn't come, coax it out with a
laxative.
get your name in LIGHTS,
get it up there in
8 1/2 x 11 mimeo.
keep it coming like a miracle.
ah christ, writers are the most sickening
of all the louts!
yellow-toothed, slump-shouldered,
gutless, flea-bitten and
obvious .
.
.
in tinker-toy rooms
with their flabby hearts
they tell us
what's wrong with the world-
as if we didn't know that a cop's club
can crack the head
and that war is a dirtier game than
marriage .
.
.
or down in a basement bar
hiding from a wife who doesn't appreciate him
and children he doesn't
want
he tells us that his heart is drowning in
vomit.
hell, all our hearts are drowning in vomit,
in pork salt, in bad verse, in soggy
love.
but he thinks he's alone and
he thinks he's special and he thinks he's Rimbaud
and he thinks he's
Pound.
and death! how about death? did you know
that we all have to die? even Keats died, even
Milton!
and D.
Thomas-THEY KILLED HIM, of course.
Thomas didn't want all those free drinks
all that free pussy-
they .
.
.
FORCED IT ON HIM
when they should have left him alone so he could
write write WRITE!
poets.
and there's another
type.
I've met them at their country
places (don't ask me what I was doing there because
I don't know).
they were born with money and
they don't have to dirty their hands in
slaughterhouses or washing
dishes in grease joints or
driving cabs or pimping or selling pot.
this gives them time to understand
Life.
they walk in with their cocktail glass
held about heart high
and when they drink they just
sip.
you are drinking green beer which you
brought with you
because you have found out through the years
that rich bastards are tight-
they use 5 cent stamps instead of airmail
they promise to have all sorts of goodies ready
upon your arrival
from gallons of whisky to
50 cent cigars.
but it's never
there.
and they HIDE their women from you-
their wives, x-wives, daughters, maids, so forth,
because they've read your poems and
figure all you want to do is **** everybody and
everything.
which once might have been
true but is no longer quite
true.
and-
he WRITES TOO.
POETRY, of
course.
everybody
writes
poetry.
he has plenty of time and a
postoffice box in town
and he drives there 3 or 4 times a day
looking and hoping for accepted
poems.
he thinks that poverty is a weakness of the
soul.
he thinks your mind is ill because you are
drunk all the time and have to work in a
factory 10 or 12 hours a
night.
he brings his wife in, a beauty, stolen from a
poorer rich
man.
he lets you gaze for 30 seconds
then hustles her
out.
she has been crying for some
reason.
you've got 3 or 4 days to linger in the
guesthouse he says,
"come on over to dinner
sometime.
"
but he doesn't say when or
where.
and then you find out that you are not even
IN HIS HOUSE.
you are in
ONE of his houses but
his house is somewhere
else-
you don't know
where.
he even has x-wives in some of his
houses.
his main concern is to keep his x-wives away from
you.
he doesn't want to give up a
damn thing.
and you can't blame him:
his x-wives are all young, stolen, kept,
talented, well-dressed, schooled, with
varying French-German accents.
and!: they
WRITE POETRY TOO.
or
PAINT.
or
****.
but his big problem is to get down to that mail
box in town to get back his
rejected poems
and to keep his eye on all the other mail boxes
in all his other
houses.
meanwhile, the starving Indians
sell beads and baskets in the streets of the small desert
town.
the Indians are not allowed in his houses
not so much because they are a ****-threat
but because they are
dirty and
ignorant.
dirty? I look down at my shirt
with the beerstain on the front.
ignorant? I light a 6 cent cigar and
forget about
it.
he or they or somebody was supposed to meet me at
the
train station.
of course, they weren't
there.
"We'll be there to meet the great
Poet!"
well, I looked around and didn't see any
great poet.
besides it was 7 a.
m.
and
40 degrees.
those things
happen.
the trouble was there were no
bars open.
nothing open.
not even a
jail.
he's a poet.
he's also a doctor, a head-shrinker.
no blood involved that
way.
he won't tell me whether I am crazy or
not-I don't have the
money.
he walks out with his cocktail glass
disappears for 2 hours, 3 hours,
then suddenly comes walking back in
unannounced
with the same cocktail glass
to make sure I haven't gotten hold of
something more precious than
Life itself.
my cheap green beer is killing
me.
he shows heart (hurrah) and
gives me a little pill that stops my
gagging.
but nothing decent to
drink.
he'd bought a small 6 pack
for my arrival but that was gone in an
hour and 15
minutes.
"I'll buy you barrels of beer," he had
said.
I used his phone (one of his phones)
to get deliveries of beer and
cheap whisky.
the town was ten miles away,
downhill.
I peeled my poor dollars from my poor
roll.
and the boy needed a tip, of
course.
the way it was shaping up I could see that I was
hardly Dylan Thomas yet, not even
Robert Creeley.
certainly Creeley wouldn't have
had beerstains on his
shirt.
anyhow, when I finally got hold of one of his
x-wives I was too drunk to
make it.
scared too.
sure, I imagined him peering
through the window-
he didn't want to give up a damn thing-
and
leveling the luger while I was
working
while "The March to the Gallows" was playing over
the Muzak
and shooting me in the ass first and
my poor brain
later.
"an intruder," I could hear him telling them,
"ravishing one of my helpless x-wives.
"
I see him published in some of the magazines
now.
not very good stuff.
a poem about me
too: the Polack.
the Polack whines too much.
the Polack whines about his
country, other countries, all countries, the Polack
works overtime in a factory like a fool, among other
fools with "pre-drained spirits.
"
the Polack drinks seas of green beer
full of acid.
the Polack has an ulcerated
hemorrhoid.
the Polack picks on fags
"fragile fags.
" the Polack hates his
wife, hates his daughter.
his daughter will become
an alcoholic, a prostitute.
the Polack has an
"obese burned out wife.
" the Polack has a
spastic gut.
the Polack has a
"rectal brain.
"
thank you, Doctor (and poet).
any charge for
this? I know I still owe you for the
pill.
Your poem is not too good
but at least I got your starch up.
most of your stuff is about as lively as a
wet and deflated
beachball.
but it is your round, you've won a round.
going to invite me out this
Summer? I might scrape up
trainfare.
got an Indian friend who'd like to meet
you and yours.
he swears he's got the biggest
pecker in the state of California.
and guess what?
he writes
POETRY
too!
|
Written by
Andrew Hudgins |
Our Father who art in heaven, I am drunk.
Again.
Red wine.
For which I offer thanks.
I ought to start with praise, but praise
comes hard to me.
I stutter.
Did I tell you
about the woman, whom I taught, in bed,
this prayer? It starts with praise; the simple form
keeps things in order.
I hear from her sometimes.
Do you? And after love, when I was hungry,
I said, Make me something to eat.
She yelled,
Poof! You're a casserole! - and laughed so hard
she fell out of bed.
Take care of her.
Next, confession - the dreary part.
At night
deer drift from the dark woods and eat my garden.
They're like enormous rats on stilts except,
of course, they're beautiful.
But why? What makes
them beautiful? I haven't shot one yet.
I might.
When I was twelve I'd ride my bike
out to the dump and shoot the rats.
It's hard
to kill your rats, our Father.
You have to use
a hollow point and hit them solidly.
A leg is not enough.
The rat won't pause.
Yeep! Yeep! it screams, and scrabbles, three-legged, back
into the trash, and I would feel a little bad
to kill something that wants to live
more savagely than I do, even if
it's just a rat.
My garden's vanishing.
Perhaps I'll plant more beans, though that
might mean more beautiful and hungry deer.
Who knows?
I'm sorry for the times I've driven
home past a black, enormous, twilight ridge.
Crested with mist it looked like a giant wave
about to break and sweep across the valley,
and in my loneliness and fear I've thought,
O let it come and wash the whole world clean.
Forgive me.
This is my favorite sin: despair-
whose love I celebrate with wine and prayer.
Our Father, thank you for all the birds and trees,
that nature stuff.
I'm grateful for good health,
food, air, some laughs, and all the other things I've never had to do
without.
I have confused myself.
I'm glad
there's not a rattrap large enough for deer.
While at the zoo last week, I sat and wept
when I saw one elephant insert his trunk
into another's ass, pull out a lump,
and whip it back and forth impatiently
to free the goodies hidden in the lump.
I could have let it mean most anything,
but I was stunned again at just how little
we ask for in our lives.
Don't look! Don't look!
Two young nuns tried to herd their giggling
schoolkids away.
Line up, they called, Let's go
and watch the monkeys in the monkey house.
I laughed and got a dirty look.
Dear Lord,
we lurch from metaphor to metaphor,
which is -let it be so- a form of praying.
I'm usually asleep by now -the time
for supplication.
Requests.
As if I'd stayed
up late and called the radio and asked
they play a sentimental song.
Embarrassed.
I want a lot of money and a woman.
And, also, I want vanishing cream.
You know-
a character like Popeye rubs it on
and disappears.
Although you see right through him,
he's there.
He chuckles, stumbles into things,
and smoke that's clearly visible escapes
from his invisible pipe.
It make me think,
sometimes, of you.
What makes me think of me
is the poor jerk who wanders out on air
and then looks down.
Below his feet, he sees
eternity, and suddenly his shoes
no longer work on nothingness, and down
he goes.
As I fall past, remember me.
|
Written by
Paul Laurence Dunbar |
Dey 's a so't o' threatenin' feelin' in de blowin' of de breeze,
An' I 's feelin' kin' o' squeamish in de night;
I 's a-walkin' 'roun' a-lookin' at de diffunt style o' trees,
An' a-measurin' dey thickness an' dey height.
Fu' dey 's somep'n mighty 'spicious in de looks de da'kies give,
Ez dey pass me an' my fambly on de groun,'
So it 'curs to me dat lakly, ef I caihs to try an' live,
It concehns me fu' to 'mence to look erroun'.
Dey's a cu'ious kin' o' shivah runnin' up an' down my back,
An' I feel my feddahs rufflin' all de day,
An' my laigs commence to trimble evah blessid step I mek;
W'en I sees a ax, I tu'ns my head away.
Folks is go'gin' me wid goodies, an' dey 's treatin' me wid caih,
An' I 's fat in spite of all dat I kin do.
I 's mistrus'ful of de kin'ness dat's erroun' me evahwhaih,
Fu' it 's jes' too good, an' frequent, to be true.
Snow 's a-fallin' on de medders, all erroun' me now is white,
But I 's still kep' on a-roostin' on de fence;
[Pg 172]Isham comes an' feels my breas'bone, an' he hefted me las' night,
An' he 's gone erroun' a-grinnin' evah sence.
'T ain't de snow dat meks me shivah; 't ain't de col' dat meks me shake;
'T ain't de wintah-time itse'f dat's 'fectin' me;
But I t'ink de time is comin', an' I 'd bettah mek a break,
Fu' to set wid Mistah Possum in his tree.
Wen you hyeah de da'kies singin', an' de quahtahs all is gay,
'T ain't de time fu' birds lak me to be 'erroun';
Wen de hick'ry chip is flyin', an' de log 's been ca'ied erway,
Den hit's dang'ous to be roostin' nigh he groun'.
Grin on, Isham! Sing on, da'kies! But I flop my wings an' go
Fu' de sheltah of de ve'y highest tree,
Fu' dey 's too much close ertention—an' dey's too much fallin' snow—
An' it's too nigh Chris'mus mo'nin' now fu' me.
|
Written by
Eugene Field |
In an ocean, 'way out yonder,
(As all sapient people know)
Is the land of Wonder-Wander,
Whither children love to go;
It's their playing, romping, swinging,
That give great joy to me
While the Dinkey-Bird goes singing
In the amfalula tree!
There the gum-drops grow like cherries,
And taffy's thick as peas--
Caramels you pick like berries
When, and where, and how you please;
Big red sugar-plums are clinging
To the cliffs beside that sea
Where the Dinkey-Bird is singing
In the amfalula tree!
So when children shout and scamper
And make merry all the day,
When there's naught to put a damper
To the ardor of their play;
When I hear their laughter ringing,
Then I'm sure as sure can be
That the Dinkey-Bird is singing
In the amfalula tree!
For the Dinkey-Bird's bravuras
And staccatos are so sweet--
His roulades, appoggiaturas,
And robustos so complete,
That the youth of every nation--
Be they near or far away--
Have especial delectation
In that gladsome roundelay.
Their eyes grow bright and brighter,
Their lungs begin to crow,
Their hearts get light and lighter,
And their cheeks are all aglow;
For an echo cometh bringing
The news to all and me,
That the Dinkey-Bird is singing
In the amfalula tree.
I'm sure you like to go there
To see your feathered friend--
And so many goodies grow there
You would like to comprehend!
Speed, little dreams, your winging
To that land across the sea
Where the Dinkey-Bird is singing
In the amfalula tree!
|