Love Is a Dog From Hell Read online

  LOVE IS A DOG FROM HELL

  CHARLES BUKOWSKI

  Poems 1974-1977

  to Carl Weissner

  table of contents

  ONE

  Sandra

  you

  the 6 foot goddess

  I’ve seen too many glazed-eyed bums

  sexpot

  sweet music

  numb your ass and your brain and your heart—

  one of the hottest

  ashes

  fuck

  me

  another bed

  trapped

  tonight

  the escape

  the drill

  texan

  the spider

  the end of a short affair

  moaning and groaning

  an almost made up poem

  blue cheese and chili peppers

  problems about the other woman

  T.M.

  Bee’s 5th

  103 degrees

  pacific telephone

  225 pounds

  turnabout

  one for old snaggle-tooth

  communion

  trying to get even:

  Chicago

  quiet clean girls in gingham dresses…

  we will taste the islands and the sea

  TWO

  this poet

  winter

  what they want

  Iron Mike

  guru

  the professors

  for Al—

  how to be a great writer

  the price

  alone with everybody

  the 2nd novel

  Chopin Bukowski

  gloomy lady

  cockroach

  who in the hell is Tom Jones?

  defeat

  traffic signals

  462-0614

  photographs

  social

  one to the breastplate

  the worst and the best

  coupons

  luck

  dog

  trench warfare

  the night I fucked my alarm clock

  when I think of myself dead

  Christmas eve, alone

  there once was a woman who put her head into an oven

  beds, toilets, you and me—

  this then—

  imagination and reality

  stolen

  the meek have inherited

  the insane always loved me

  Big Max

  trapped

  it’s the way you play the game

  on the continent

  12:18 a.m.

  yellow cab

  how come you’re not unlisted?

  weather report

  clean old man

  something

  a plate glass window

  junkies

  99 to one

  the crunch

  a horse with greenblue eyes

  THREE

  Scarlet

  red up and down

  like a flower in the rain

  light brown

  huge ear rings

  she came out of the bathroom

  a killer

  longshot

  the promise

  waving and waving goodbye

  liberty

  don’t touch the girls

  dark shades

  prayer in bad weather

  melancholia

  a stethoscope case

  eat your heart out

  the retreat

  I made a mistake

  FOUR

  girls in pantyhose

  up your yellow river

  artists:

  I have shit stains in my underwear too

  Hawley’s leaving town

  an unkind poem

  the bee

  the most

  ah…

  the girl on the bus stop bench

  I’m getting back to where I was

  a lovely couple

  the strangest sight you ever did see—

  in a neighborhood of murder

  private first class

  love is a dog from hell

  my groupie

  now, if you were teaching creative writing

  the good life

  the Greek

  my comrades

  soul

  a change of habit

  $$$$$$

  sitting in a sandwich joint

  doom and siesta time

  as crazy as I ever was

  sex

  dead now

  twins

  the place didn’t look bad

  the little girls

  rain or shine

  cold plums

  girls coming home

  some picnic

  bedpans

  the good loser

  an art

  the girls at the green hotel

  a good one

  shit time

  madness

  a 56 year old poem

  the beautiful young girl walking past the graveyard—

  beer

  artist

  my old man

  fear

  little tigers everywhere

  after the reading:

  about cranes

  a gold pocket watch

  beach trip

  one for the shoeshine man

  About the Author

  Other books by Charles Bukowski

  Cover

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  one more creature

  dizzy with love

  Sandra

  is the slim tall

  ear-ringed

  bedroom damsel

  dressed in a long

  gown

  she’s always high

  in heels

  spirit

  pills

  booze

  Sandra leans out of

  her chair

  leans

  toward

  Glendale

  I wait for her head

  to hit the closet

  doorknob

  as she attempts to

  light

  a new cigarette on an

  almost burnt-out

  one

  at 32 she likes

  young neat

  unscratched boys

  with faces like the bottoms

  of new saucers

  she has proclaimed as much

  to me

  has brought her prizes

  over for me to view:

  silent blonde zeros of young

  flesh

  who

  a) sit

  b) stand

  c) talk

  at her command

  sometimes she brings one

  sometimes two

  sometimes three

  for me to

  view

  Sandra looks very good in

  long gowns

  Sandra could probably break

  a man’s heart

  I hope she finds

  one.

  you

  you’re a beast, she said

  your big white belly

  and those hairy feet.

  you never cut your nails

  and you have fat hands

  paws like a cat

  your bright red nose

  and the biggest balls

  I’ve ever seen.

  you shoot sperm like a

  whale shoots water out of the

  hole in its back.

  beast beast beast,

  she kissed me,

  what do you want for

  breakfast?

  the 6 foot goddess

  I’m big

  I suppose that’s why my women always
seem

  small

  but this 6 foot goddess

  who deals in real estate

  and art

  and flies from Texas

  to see me

  and I fly to Texas

  to see her—

  well, there’s plenty of her to

  grab hold of

  and I grab hold of it

  of her,

  I yank her head back by the hair,

  I’m real macho,

  I suck on her upper lip

  her cunt

  her soul

  I mount her and tell her,

  “I’m going to shoot white hot

  juice into you. I didn’t fly all the

  way to Galveston to play

  chess.”

  later we lay locked like human vines

  my left arm under her pillow

  my right arm over her side

  I grip both of her hands,

  and my chest

  belly

  balls

  cock

  tangle into her

  and through us

  in the dark

  pass rays

  back and forth

  back and forth

  until I fall away

  and we sleep.

  she’s wild

  but kind

  my 6 foot goddess

  makes me laugh

  the laughter of the mutilated

  who still need

  love,

  and her blessed eyes

  run deep into her head

  like mountain springs

  far in

  and

  cool and good.

  she has saved me

  from everything that is

  not here.

  I’ve seen too many glazed-eyed bums sitting under a bridge drinking cheap wine

  you sit on the couch

  with me

  tonight

  new woman.

  have you seen the

  animal-eater

  documentaries?

  they show death.

  and now I wonder

  which animal of

  us will eat the

  other first

  physically and

  last

  spiritually?

  we consume animals

  and then one of us

  consumes the other,

  my love.

  meanwhile

  I’d prefer you go

  first the first way

  since if past performance

  charts mean anything

  I’ll surely go

  first the last

  way.

  sexpot

  “you know,” she said, “you were at

  the bar so you didn’t see

  but I danced with this guy.

  we danced and we danced

  close.

  but I didn’t go home with him

  because he knew I was with

  you.”

  “thanks a bunch,” I

  said.

  she was always thinking of sex.

  she carried it around with her

  like something in a paper

  bag.

  such energy.

  she never forgot.

  she stared at every man available

  in morning cafes

  over bacon and eggs

  or later

  over a noon sandwich or

  a steak dinner.

  “I’ve modeled myself after

  Marilyn Monroe,” she told

  me.

  “she’s always running off

  to some local disco to dance

  with a baboon,” a friend once told

  me, “I’m amazed that you’ve

  stood for it as long as you have.”

  she’d vanish at racetracks

  then come back and say,

  “three men offered to buy me

  a drink.”

  or I’d lose her in the parking

  lot and I’d look up and she’d

  be walking along with a strange man.

  “well, he came from this direction

  and I came from that and we

  kind of walked together. I

  didn’t want to hurt his

  feelings.”

  she said that I was a very

  jealous man.

  one day she just

  fell down

  inside of her sexual organs

  and vanished.

  it was like an alarm clock

  dropping into the

  Grand Canyon.

  it banged and rattled and

  rang and rang

  but I could no longer

  see or hear it.

  I’m feeling much better

  now.

  I’ve taken up tap-dancing

  and I wear a black felt

  hat pulled down low

  over my right

  eye.

  sweet music

  it beats love because there aren’t any

  wounds: in the morning

  she turns on the radio, Brahms or Ives