New Poems Book Three Read online

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Title Page

  PART 1

  GERMAN

  THE OLD GIRL

  THE BIRDS

  GAME DAY

  GAS

  MYSTERY LEG

  BE COOL, FOOL

  AN UNLITERARY AFTERNOON

  POOP

  THE END OF AN ERA

  THE 60’S

  THE WOULD-BE HORSEPLAYER

  THE NIGHT RICHARD NIXON SHOOK MY HAND

  THROWING AWAY THE ALARM CLOCK

  PRETENDERS

  $1.25 A GALLON

  FLOSS-JOB

  A FRIENDLY PLACE

  THE OLD COUPLE

  WHAT?

  BORN AGAIN

  CARD GIRLS

  IT’S NEVER BEEN SO GOOD

  GOADING THE MUSE

  THE WAVERING LINE

  THE ROAD TO HELL

  CRUCIFIXION

  BARFLY

  PART 2

  THOUGHTS WHILE EATING A SANDWICH

  NOTHING’S FREE

  WHAT BOTHERS THEM MOST

  INTO THE WASTEBASKET

  IT’S OVER AND DONE

  NICE GUY

  FEET TO THE FIRE

  THE POETRY GAME

  THE FIX IS IN

  PHOTOS

  TONIGHT

  A VISITOR COMPLAINS

  BESIEGED

  THE NOVICE

  CLEOPATRA NOW

  PLEASE

  THE BAROMETER

  ENEMY OF THE KING, 1935

  NIGHTS OF VANILLA MICE

  LARK IN THE DARK

  LONELY HEARTS

  B AS IN BULLSHIT

  A RIOT IN THE STREETS

  INTERLUDE

  D.N.F.

  READING LITTLE POEMS IN LITTLE MAGAZINES

  HOW TO GET AWAY?

  THE DIFFICULTY OF BREATHING

  HELP WANTED AND RECEIVED

  HEART IN THE CAGE

  PLACES TO DIE AND PLACES TO HIDE

  POEM FOR THE YOUNG AND TOUGH

  OW

  MY DOOM SMILES AT ME—

  HEY, KAFKA!

  A STRANGE VISIT

  1970 BLUES

  SNOW WHITE

  SOUR GRAPES

  FENCING WITH THE SHADOWS

  A HELL OF A DUET

  THE DOGS

  PART 3

  COLD SUMMER

  CRIME DOES PAY

  THROWING MY WEIGHT AROUND

  THEY ROLLED THE BED OUT OF THERE

  CRAWL

  NOTHING HERE

  MY LAST WINTER

  FIRST POEM BACK

  A SUMMATION

  WALKING PAPERS

  ALONE IN THIS ROOM

  FAREWELL, FAREWELL

  ABOUT THE MAIL LATELY

  LIFE ON THE HALF SHELL

  THE HARDEST

  A TERRIBLE NEED

  BODY SLAM

  THE GODS ARE GOOD

  THE SOUND OF TYPEWRITERS

  A FIGHT

  SUNBEAM

  APPARITIONS

  SPEED

  IT’S DIFFICULT TO SEE YOUR OWN DEATH APPROACHING

  MADE IN THE SHADE (HAPPY NEW YEAR)

  ONE FOR WOLFGANG

  NIGHT UNTO NIGHT

  NOTES ON SOME POETRY

  THE BUZZ

  A SIMPLE KINDNESS

  GOOD TRY, ALL

  PROPER CREDENTIALS ARE NEEDED TO JOIN

  SILLY DAMNED THING ANYHOW

  MOTH TO THE FLAME

  7 COME 11

  PUT OUT THE LIGHT

  FOXHOLES

  CALM ELATION, 1993

  PART 4

  I HAVE THIS NEW ROOM

  WRITING

  HUMAN NATURE

  NOTATIONS

  DEMOCRACY

  KRAZNICK

  HUNGARIA, SYMPHONIA POEM #9 BY FRANZ LISZT

  CLUB HELL, 1942

  UNLOADING THE GOODS

  SARATOGA HOT WALKER

  THE SIXTIES?

  EXPERIENCE

  FAME AT LAST

  PARTY OF NINE

  HE SHOWED ME HIS BACK

  THE UNFOLDING

  DRUNK BEFORE NOON

  THUMBS UP, THUMBS DOWN

  THEY ARE AFTER ME

  FEELING FAIRLY GOOD TONIGHT

  THERE’S A POET ON EVERY BAR STOOL

  VALET

  PRESCIENCE

  10:45 A.M.

  THE HORSES OF MEXICO

  A BIG NIGHT

  A MUSICAL DIFFERENCE

  YOU TELL ME WHAT IT MEANS

  DEAR READER:

  NOT MUCH SINGING

  THE SHADOWS

  A PAUSE BEFORE THE COUNTER ATTACK

  PICTURE THIS

  9 BAD BOYS

  ONE MORE DAY

  Copyright

  About the Book

  Charles Bukowski was one of America’s best-known writers and one of its most influential and imitated poets. Although he published over 45 books of poetry, hundreds of his poems were kept by him and his publisher for postumous publication. This is the third collection of these unique poems, which Bukowski considered to be among his best work.

  Bukowski’s Beat Generation writing reflects his slum upbringing, his succession of menial jobs and his experience of low life urban America. He died in 1994 and is widely acknowledged as one of the most distinctive writers of the last fifty years.

  About the Author

  Born in 1920, Charles Bukowski became one of America’s best-known writers. During his lifetime he published more than forty-five books of poetry and prose including the novels Post Office (1971), Factotum (1975), Women (1979) and Pulp (1994) all available from Virgin Books.

  PART 1.

  I watch the old ladies

  in the supermarket,

  angry and alone.

  GERMAN

  being the German kid in the 20’s in Los Angeles

  was difficult.

  there was much anti-German feeling then,

  a carry-over from World War I.

  gangs of kids chased me through the neighborhood

  yelling, “Hienie! Hienie! Hienie!”

  they never caught me.

  I was like a cat.

  I knew all the paths through brush and alleys.

  I scaled 6-foot back fences in a flash and was off through

  backyards and around blocks

  and onto garage roofs and other hiding places.

  then too, they didn’t really want to catch me.

  they were afraid I might bayonet them

  or gouge out their eyes.

  this went on for about 18 months

  then all of a sudden it seemed to stop.

  I was more or less accepted (but never really)

  which was all right with me.

  those sons-of-bitches were Americans,

  they and their parents had been born here.

  they had names like Jones and Sullivan and

  Baker.

  they were pale and often fat with runny

  noses and big belt buckles.

  I decided never to become an American.

  my hero was Baron Manfred von Richthofen

  the German air ace;

  he’d shot down 80 of their best

  and there was nothing they could do about

  that now.

  their parents didn’t like my parents

  (I didn’t either) and

  I decided when I got big I’d go live in some place

  like Iceland,

  never open my door to anybody and live on my

  luck, live with a beautiful wife and a bunch of wild

  animals:

  which is, more or less, what

&nb
sp; happened.

  THE OLD GIRL

  she was very thin, gray, bent, and each day she

  waited at the door of the

  First Interstate Bank in San Pedro,

  and as the people came and went she

  approached them

  one by one

  and asked for money.

  about 75% of the time

  I respond to those who ask but with

  the other 25% I am instinctively put off

  and just don’t have the will to

  give.

  the frail old woman at the bank put me off, she had

  put me off for some time and we had a silent

  understanding: I would lift my hand in a

  gesture of protest and she would turn quickly

  away, this had happened so often

  that now she remembers and doesn’t

  approach me.

  one noon I sat in my car and watched

  her

  and after 20 attempts she scored

  17 times.

  I drove off as she was approaching yet another

  soft touch, and even so I

  suddenly felt real guilt for my unfeeling habit of

  refusing the old

  girl.

  later in the clubhouse at Hollywood

  park

  between the 6th and 7th races

  I saw her again as she was going up the

  aisle

  frail and bent, a large wad of

  paper money clutched tight in a bony hand

  clearly on her way to

  bet the next race.

  of course, she had every right to

  be there,

  to place her bets with the rest of us,

  she only wanted and needed

  what most people want and need:

  a chance.

  I watched as she

  reached the top of the aisle and

  I saw her stop and speak to a young man

  who smiled and then

  handed her a

  bill.

  not to be distracted I

  rose and went to the betting window

  to place my own

  wager.

  and, going back to my seat

  as I was

  walking down the aisle she was

  coming up and we saw one another

  and without thinking

  I held my hand up,

  gently, in that familiar

  gesture

  she’d seen so often

  in front of the bank.

  she looked at me with

  unblinking blue eyes and said,

  “fuck you!”

  as we passed on the stairs.

  she was right, of course, it’s

  a matter of survival—General Motors does

  it, you do it, the cat does it, so

  does the bird, nations do it,

  families do it, I do it,

  the boxer sometimes does it,

  it’s done when you

  buy a loaf of bread, it’s done sometimes

  out of madness and fear, it’s

  done in the doctor’s office and

  in the back alley,

  it’s done everywhere

  all the time

  over and over again:

  we all want to survive.

  it is the inevitable way

  the familiar way

  the way things

  work.

  I went back to my seat to

  ponder all that but I

  couldn’t come up with anything useful at

  all …

  as the horses broke from the

  gate

  hustled by the crouching jocks

  in their silks—

  orange, blue, yellow, shocking pink,

  green, chartreuse, a

  stampeding rainbow of controlled

  fury,

  the sun shot through the

  screaming

  and I suddenly knew that

  we are all caught forever in the

  self-same trap

  and I instantly forgave that old

  girl

  for belonging.

  THE BIRDS

  the acute and terrible air hangs with murder

  as summer birds mingle in the branches

  and warble

  and mystify the clamour of the mind;

  an old parrot

  who never talks,

  sits thinking in a Chinese laundry,

  disgruntled

  forsaken

  celibate;

  there is red on his wing

  where there should be green,

  and between us

  the recognition of

  an immense and wasted life.

  … my 2nd wife left me

  because I set our birds free:

  one yellow, with crippled wing

  quickly going down and to the left,

  cat-meat,

  cackling like an organ;

  and the other,

  mean green,

  of empty thimble head,

  popping up like a rocket

  high into the hollow sky,

  disappearing like sour love

  and yesterday’s desire

  and leaving me

  forever.

  and when my wife

  returned that night

  with her bags and plans,

  her tricks and shining greeds,

  she found me

  glittering over a yellow feather

  seeking out the music

  which she,

  oddly,

  failed to

  hear.

  GAME DAY

  this lady was always after me about this or

  that:

  “what are those scratches on your back?”

  “baby, I dunno, you must have put them

  there.”

  “you’ve been with some whore!”

  “what’s that bite mark on your neck?

  she must have been a hot number!”

  “huh? baby, I don’t see anything.”

  “there! there! on the left side of your

  neck!

  you musta really turned her on!”

  “what’s this phone number written inside this matchbook?”

  “what phone number?”

  “this phone number! it’s a woman’s hand-writing!”

  “damned if I know where that came from.”

  “I’m going to call that number, that’s what I’ll do!”

  “go ahead.”

  “no, I’m going to tear it up, I’m going to tear

  up that whore’s number!”

  “you made love to that neighbor woman in our bed

  while I was at work!”

  “what?”

  “another neighbor told me! I was told she came

  right into this house!”

  “oh, that. she came by to borrow a cup of

  sugar.”

  “a cup of sugar, my ass! you screwed her

  right in this house, right in our bed with the

  dog watching!”

  “she just wanted a cup of sugar, she wasn’t

  here but two minutes!”

  “a quicky! you gave her a quicky!”

  later I found out she had screwed a guy in

  the back of his delivery truck

  and she had screwed an appliance salesman

  in the crapper in the mens’ room,

  in a stall for the handicapped.

  and there was something or other with a

  meter reader, a blow job, I think.

  she had completely outfoxed me with her

  smoke screen of accusations

  while she had been unfaithful on almost a

  full-time basis.

  and when confronted, her answer

  was a “SO WHAT?”

  I moved her out.

  we flipped for the do
g and she won.

  and the next time the neighbor lady

  came by to borrow a cup of sugar

  she stayed longer than a minute or

  two.

  GAS

  my grandmother had a serious gas

  problem.

  we only saw her on Sunday.

  she’d sit down to dinner

  and she’d have gas.

  she was very heavy,

  80 years old.

  wore this large glass brooch,

  that’s what you noticed most

  in addition to the gas.

  she’d let it go just as food was being served.

  she’d let it go loud in bursts

  spaced about a minute apart.

  she’d let it go

  4 or 5 times

  as we reached for the potatoes

  poured the gravy

  cut into the meat.

  nobody ever said anything,

  especially me.

  I was 6 years old.

  Only my grandmother spoke.

  after 4 or 5 blasts

  she would say in an offhand way,

  “I will bury you all!”

  I didn’t much like that:

  first farting

  then saying that.

  it happened every Sunday.

  she was my father’s mother.

  every Sunday it was death and gas

  and mashed potatoes and gravy

  and that big glass brooch.

  those Sunday dinners would

  always end with apple pie and

  ice cream

  and a big argument

  about something or other,

  my grandmother finally running out the door

  and taking the red train back to

  Pasadena

  the place stinking for an hour

  and my father walking about

  fanning a newspaper in the air and

  saying, “it’s all that damned sauerkraut

  she eats!”

  MYSTERY LEG

  first of all, I had a hard time, a very hard time

  locating the parking lot for the building.

  it wasn’t off the main boulevard where

  the cars all driven by merciless killers

  were doing 55 mph in a 25 mph zone.

  the man riding my bumper so

  close I could see his snarling face

  in my rearview mirror caused me

  to miss the narrow alley that would have

  allowed me to circle the west

  end of the building in search of parking.

  I went to the next street, took a right, then

  took another right, spotted the building, a blue

  heartless-looking structure, then took

  another right and finally saw it, a tiny

  sign: parking.

  I drove in.

  the guard had the wooden red and white

  barrier down.

  he stuck his head out a little window.

  “yeah?” he asked.

  he looked like a retired hit man.

  “to see Dr. Manx,” I said.

  he looked at me disdainfully, then said,

  “go ahead!”