Storm for the Living and the Dead Read online

  and the priest

  and the 3 teeth of the last nun

  and fuck the bathtub

  and fuck the faucets

  and fuck my beerbottle

  (but be careful)

  fuck the spiral

  and the smog

  and the pavements

  and the calendars

  and the poets and the bishops and the kings and

  the presidents and the mayors and the councilmen

  and the firemen and the policemen

  and the magazines and the newspapers and the brown

  paper bags

  and the stinking sea

  and the rising prices and the unemployed

  and rope ladders

  and gall bladders

  and sniffy doctors and orderlies and nice

  nurses

  and fuck the entire thing,

  you know.

  do your job.

  take it out

  and begin.

  2 immortal poems

  about 2 immortal poems a night

  are about all I’ll allow myself

  to write.

  it’s fair—there isn’t much

  competition.

  besides, it’s more enjoyable

  getting drunk

  than lasting

  forever.

  that’s why more people

  buy liquor than

  Shakespeare . . .

  who wouldn’t rather learn to

  escape through the neck of a

  bottle

  or a neatly-rolled

  Zig-Zag

  than a book?

  2 immortal poems a night are

  enough . . .

  when I hear those high heels

  clicking up my doorway

  steps . . .

  I know that life is not made of paper

  and immortality

  but what we are

  now; and as

  her body, her eyes, her soul

  enter the

  room

  the typewriter sits like a spoiled and

  wasted, most well-fed

  dog . . .

  we embrace

  within the tiny flash

  of our

  lives

  as the typewriter

  yowls

  silently.

  T.H.I.A.L.H.

  in dwarf-like piety the guns mount toward home,

  and the coffee cans desire 18th-century verse;

  the tabloid is grim with comic strips and

  baseball box scores—

  as the Egyptians spit on dogs and the geek

  swallows lightbulbs at The Metropolitan Museum of

  Art; it’s haversack and ballyhoo,

  the punctuation is regular

  the flax is battleship sick

  and Captain Claypool vomits midnights out

  cleanly;

  the destination is the shoebox and the prize is

  century-old

  taffy, and nobody says

  that the purple and green animals

  out back by the garbage cans will

  control which way the steam will

  blow;

  pictures of Dempsey and Tunney

  crawl across the brain like

  snails; and ether is the smell of your dead

  psyche;

  then, this must be it:

  taking your shoes off

  across sick evenings

  allows ventures that would rip the skull like a

  lion’s tooth, and Mrs. Carson McCullers is

  long dead now

  of

  drink and

  greatness, and the heart still sails like a

  boomerang.

  the lesbian

  (dedicated to all of them)

  I was sitting on my couch one night,

  as per custom, in shorts and undershirt,

  drinking beer and not thinking about too much

  when there was a knock on the door—

  “woo hooo! woo hooo!”

  now what the hell? I thought.

  “woo hooo! wooo hooo!”

  “what is it?” I asked.

  “I got a slim one! I got a slim one for you!”

  a slim one?

  it sounded like a woman’s voice.

  “wait a minute,” I asked.

  I went into the bedroom, put on a ripped shirt and

  my dirty chino trousers. then I came out and opened the

  door.

  it was the lesbian from the place in back.

  “I bought a slim one for you,” she said.

  “oh yeah?”

  she was in a tight sweater and shorts,

  she turned in the moonlight.

  “see? I lost 20 pounds! you like it?”

  “come on in,” I said.

  she sat in the chair across from me and

  crossed her legs.

  “don’t tell the landlady I came by.”

  “don’t worry,” I said.

  and she crossed her legs the other way. they had

  these big purple bruises all over them. I wondered who

  had put them there.

  she talked and asked questions, talked and asked questions—

  who was that woman who came by with the little girl? my little girl,

  was it

  my little girl? yes, but they didn’t live here. my, that’s nice.

  her father supported her, her father gave her lots of money, her

  father was a

  nice man. was that my painting on the wall? yes, it was. she knew

  something about

  Art—she said. did I have a girlfriend? what did I do when I wasn’t

  sleeping?

  she talked and asked questions, talked and asked questions. I was

  bored,

  completely out of it.

  when I had been a young man

  I had thought I could alter nature,

  but one lesbian had been simply wood—

  wood with a knothole—

  and the other

  (I tried it twice)

  had almost killed me,

  chasing me down three flights of steps and

  halfway down

  Bunker Hill.

  the one across from me stood up

  walked over, then stuck her breasts in my

  face—

  “you don’t want any, do you?”

  “uuh uuh.”

  she pointed over to a potty chair in the corner—

  “you still use that?”

  “ah yes. it pinches my cheeks a bit but it brings back

  memories . . .”

  “good night!” she ran to the door, opened it, slammed

  it.

  “good night,” I

  said, and then finished my bottle of beer, thinking,

  I wonder what’s wrong with

  her tonight?

  *

  then there was a man with little tiny legs running back

  there. he had this long body, and these little tiny legs

  began where an ordinary man’s knees would be

  and he ran along with these little tiny legs

  packing baskets of food to the lesbian in back there.

  my my, there’s something wrong with that poor little fellow,

  I thought.

  the landlord ran him out of there one morning at 5 A.M.

  “hey! what the hell you doing up there? get the hell out of

  here!”

  “I brought her food! I brought her food!”

  “get the hell out of here!”

  the landlord chased him up the driveway. “you’re up there every

  damn

  morning at 3 A.M. I’m getting sick of it! don’t you ever sleep?

  what the hell’s wrong with your legs?”

  “I sleep! I sleep! I work nights!”

  they came running past my window.

 
“you work nights? what the hell’s the matter with you? why don’t

  you get a job

  working days?”

  little legs just kept running. he made a quick turn around a hedge

  and was up the

  street. the landlord screamed after him:

  “you damn fool! don’t you know she’s a dyke? what the hell you

  gonna do with a

  dyke?”

  there was no answer, of

  course.

  *

  then the fellow in the next court, a chap a bit on the subnormal

  side inherited 20 thousand

  dollars. next thing I knew, I heard the lesbian’s voice

  in there. the walls were quite thin.

  god, she got down on her knees and scrubbed all the

  floors. and kept running out the back door with the

  trash. he musta had a year’s worth of trash in

  there. each time she ran out the back, the screen door would

  slam—bam! bam! bam! it must have slammed 70 times in an

  hour and a half. she was showing him.

  my bedroom was next to theirs. at night I’d hear him mount

  her. there wasn’t much action. quite dead. only one body in

  motion. your guess.

  a few days later the lesbian started to take over—

  coming in from the kitchen—

  “oh no, buster! get up! get up! you can’t go to bed this time

  of day! I’m not going to make your bed twice!”

  then a week later it was over. I didn’t hear her voice anymore.

  she was again in her place in the back.

  I was standing on my porch one day thinking about it—

  poor thing. why doesn’t she get a girlfriend? I’m not prejudiced, I

  don’t hold anything against lesbians, no sir! Look at Sappho. I

  didn’t

  hold anything against Sappho

  either.

  then I looked up and here she came down the

  driveway, it was too late to run into my

  place. I stood quietly, trying to be part of the porch.

  she came by in her white shorts and neck bent like a vulture and

  then she saw me and made this incredible sound:

  “YAWK!”

  “good morning,” I said.

  “YAWK!” she went again.

  god damn, I thought, she thinks I’m a bird. I walked quickly into

  my place and

  closed the door, looked through the

  curtains. she was out there breathing

  heavily. then she began to flail her arms up and down, going

  “YAWK! YAWK! YAWK!”

  she’s gone nuts, I

  thought.

  then slowly slowly she began to rise into the

  air.

  oh no, I thought.

  she was about 3 feet above the hedge,

  flailing the air—her breasts bouncing sadly,

  her giant legs kicking

  looking for notches in the

  air. then she rose, higher and

  higher. she was above the apartment houses, rising up

  into the Los Angeles smog. then she was over Sunset Boulevard

  high above the Crocker-Citizens Bank, and

  then I saw another object come flying from the

  south. it seemed to be all body with just these little short legs

  at the back. then they flew toward

  each other. when I saw them embrace in mid-air

  I turned away, walked into the kitchen and

  pulled down all the

  shades.

  and waited for the end of the

  world.

  my head rang like a bell

  and I began to weep.

  a poem to myself

  Charles Bukowski

  disputes the indisputable

  used to work in the Post Office

  scares people on the streets

  is a neurotic

  makes his shit up

  especially the stuff about sex

  Charles Bukowski

  is the King of the Hard-Mouthed Poets

  Charles Bukowski

  used to work for the Post Office

  Charles Bukowski

  writes tough and acts scared

  acts scared and writes tough

  makes his shit up

  especially the stuff about sex

  Charles Bukowski

  has $90,000 in the bank and is

  worried

  Charles Bukowski

  will make $20,000 a year for the

  next 4 years and

  is worried

  Charles Bukowski

  is a drunk

  Charles Bukowski

  loves his daughter

  Charles Bukowski

  used to work for the Post Office

  Charles Bukowski

  says he hates poetry readings

  Charles Bukowski

  gives poetry readings

  and bitches when the take is under

  $50

  Charles Bukowski

  got a good review in Der Spiegel

  Charles Bukowski

  was published in Penguin Poetry Series #13

  Charles Bukowski

  has just written his first novel

  has two old pair of shoes—one black, one

  brown

  Charles Bukowski

  was once married to a millionairess

  Charles Bukowski

  is known throughout the underground

  Charles Bukowski

  sleeps until noon and always awakens with a

  hangover

  Charles Bukowski

  has been praised by Genet and Henry Miller

  many rich and successful people wish they

  were

  Charles Bukowski

  Charles Bukowski

  drinks and talks with fascists, revolutionaries,

  cocksuckers, whores and madmen

  Charles Bukowski

  dislikes poetry

  looks like a fighter but gets beat-up every time

  he drinks scotch or wine

  Charles Bukowski

  was a clerk in the Post Office for eleven years

  Charles Bukowski

  was a carrier in the Post Office for 3 years

  wrote Notes of a Dirty Old Man

  which is in bookstores from the Panama

  Canal to

  Amsterdam

  Charles Bukowski

  gets drunk with college professors and tells

  them

  to suck shit;

  once drank a pint of whiskey straight down

  at a party

  for squares, and what was

  Charles Bukowski

  doing there?

  Charles Bukowski

  is in the archives at the University of Santa

  Barbara

  that’s what started all the riots at Isla Vista

  Charles Bukowski

  got it made—he can fuck a skunk in a

  cesspool

  and come up with a royal flush in a Texas

  tornado

  almost everybody wants to be

  Charles Bukowski

  to get drunk with

  Charles Bukowski

  all the raven-haired girls with tight pussies

  want to

  fuck

  Charles Bukowski

  even when he speaks of suicide

  Charles Bukowski

  smiles and sometimes laughs

  and when his publishers tell him

  we’ve hardly made the advance yet

  or we haven’t made our bi-yearly tabulation

  but you’ve got it made

  Charles Bukowski

  don’t worry

  and Penguin Books bills

  Charles Bukowski

  for 2 pounds owed after

  the first edition ha
s sold out, but don’t worry,

  we’re

  going into a second

  edition,

  and when the wino on the couch falls on his

  face

  and Charles Bukowski tries to lift him to the

  couch

  the wino punches him in the nose

  Charles Bukowski

  has even had a bibliography written about

  him

  or tabulated about him

  he can’t miss

  his piss doesn’t stink

  everything’s fine,

  he even gets drunk with his landlord and

  landlady, everybody likes him, think he’s

  just just just . . .

  Charles Bukowski’s

  shoulders slump

  he pecks at keys that won’t answer the call

  knowing he’s got it made

  knowing he’s great

  Charles Bukowski

  is growing broke

  is breaking

  in a period of acclaim

  in a period of professors and publishers and

  pussy

  nobody will understand that the last of his

  bankroll

  is burning faster than

  dog turds soaked and lit with F-310 gasoline

  and Marina needs new

  shoes.

  of course, he doesn’t understand the

  intangibles. but he

  does.

  Charles Bukowski

  doesn’t have it

  he leans across a typewriter

  drunk at 3:30 in the morning

  let somebody else carry the ball

  he’s bruised and his ass has been

  kicked

  it’s quits

  the night is showing