Screams From the Balcony Read online

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  Bukowski had three poems in El Corno Emplumado no. 7 (July 1963), published in Mexico City. He had previously appeared in no. 3.

  [To John William Corrington]

  July [22], 1963

  shd. change ribbon but I am too tired—Mutiny editors are correct: I am a bastard: would rather kiss the king’s ass than change a ribbon.

  Heard from Jon. His spirits seem high, which does me good, as I would hate him to bite into the book and get this bad taste in his mouth…. Got copy #7 of El Corno. They seem to be falling off from a good start. Of course, I can’t read Spanish or Mexican either, so it doesn’t help my broad-minded eye. I got to figure that what I can’t read isn’t any good. That’s how flies get fat. [* * *]

  [To Jon and Louise Webb]

  July [28], 1963

  [* * *] In case you decide to send a copy of the book to Jack Hirschman for review for L.A. Times, his address is 10543 Bradbury Rd., Los Angeles, Calif. I know, I broke all rules and went there for dinner once, drunk. He thinks Creeley is God and Robert Frost ¾s God but then he teaches at a University and therefore some of this is understandable. They see the underside softside of the wing. But he may have ordered the book anyway, and we may be in trouble, but I kind of like trouble sometimes—I mean, in my rather long foreword to Sherman’s book (out July 21st, I believe), along with other ramblings, I take to task Karl Shapiro for writing a misleading introduction to Jack Hirschman’s book. Names are not mentioned but, I guess, rather obvious. And at the dinner I told Jack that the introduction was bad but he told me that the book would have never been published without it, that there was only one good poem in there. Which might have been modesty but let’s not pick at bones. This is the trouble with getting involved with literary talk; soon you are covered with slime and haggle, and creation is forgotten, So far, I have often forgotten creation because of drink or gamble or plain forget, but so far, very little shit-paddle has stopped me and I hope I remain as lucky.

  When I took this woman home today she showed me a collection of the early poems of Ernie Hem. Out of the Little Review etc., but although most of them were not very good, they were not very bad either, and there was one poem in there…after the style of Ger. Stein and you can see how much this woman did affect him, which we all know but which we tend to forget after Hem and Stein are both gone and Hem more or less remains. However, these poems are encouraging to any young (or old) writer to show that something almost can come out of almost nothing. It is simply buttoning a button right and knowing how to open a door. It is easy as hell, really, it is so easy that almost nobody can do it. [* * *]

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  [To Jon and Louise Webb]

  August 6, 1963

  [* * *] Then there’s the bush down there, the same bush with orange blossoms forever, and the old man down there poking in his wooden mailbox. He must be a writer or a madman; he keeps looking in there as if some long-limbed thing sheathed in nylon is going to take him back to the full bright dream. I’m hungry. It’s good to be hungry when you can afford to eat. Right now, I can afford. I like crab. You can get a big crab down at one of the stores for around 80 cents and it takes you all day to eat him and you don’t feel very sorry for the crab. That makes it nice. Although they say they boil them alive? But they boil me every time I walk out the door. Swosh. sure. I’m lucky to have a rented door to walk out of. haven’t read a book in ten years or seen a movie in fifteen and don’t give a damn. Airplanes and sirens now. Do you think it is going to rain this Winter? I’ve got to throw out the cans again. There’s the mailman. Hot damn, look at the ol’ man run!! [* * *]

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  [To Ann Bauman]

  [August 14, 1963]

  [* * *] I was jailed for common drunk 6 a.m. Monday morning, bailed out 8 p.m. Monday night. went to court this afternoon (Wednesday). judge gave me choice 3 days vs. $30. I figure easier to lose money than mind.

  …I must be more careful. I am all right if I drink where I live. Good manager here, good people. But when I go out on the street, BANG.

  Anyhow, I am alive yet. Maybe.

  I do not even feel depressed. It is all so very odd. my god, what they’ll do to a man, over and over again, for nothing.

  I never understood society. I understand that it works somehow and that it functions as a reality and that its realities are necessary to keep us from worse realities. But all I sense are that there are plenty of police and jails and judges and laws and that what is meant to protect me is breaking me down. I know that I am not much good in the network and the miracle is that I have remained around this long.

  Now: off to work, if my terrible job is still there.

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  Bukowski contributed to the symposium on “Little Magazines in America” in Mainstream, June 1963. The editor was Walter Lowenfels.

  [To Jon and Louise Webb]

  August 22, 1963

  [* * *] Wrote to Mainstream and sent a buck, they sent money back, and then mailed 2 copies. Said had mailed twice before to WRONG ADDRESS. The whole picture there has been jumbled from the start. It always is when Lowenfels gets a finger in anywhere. First I was contacted by Larsen who said Stream had written me but he had misplaced the letter in a bottom drawer for a couple of months, but here it is Buk. Meanwhile, Larsen’s article on the littles had already appeared. Not that it matters. But everything always works in a bugged-up fashion and I find more and more that there just aren’t any people around. Everybody’s clay or horse-shit or posing.

  As far as that goes I cannot seem to get unstrung either. I just lay in the sack or stare out the window and I say to myself, come come, old man, this is not the way to create Art. And then another voice says, well, hell, EVERYBODY’S busy creating ART, and maybe that what’s the matter. They’re all trying to MAKE IT, trying to hustle up their little snail walls. God damn the prince and Tolstoy and Norman Mailer. [* * *]

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  The Webbs eventually published an issue of The Outsider featuring a “Homage to Kenneth Patchen” section, but not a separate book by him.

  [To Jon and Louise Webb]

  August 23, 1963

  [* * *] Good on the Patchen; he’s not believed in his fame or he knows that a man working out of fame is the same as a man working out of failure—each time the one or the other begins again, they begin even. You might call this innocence or you might call it non-innocence or you might call it anything, but whatever it is, it is good that he has it.

  Does accepting the Patchen book mean that Buk book #2 is off? This will be o.k. if you cannot bear the load, and remember I told you I did not hold you to a second book—which it looks like we don’t have the poems for anyhow.

  It Catches is plenty for me, I can only bear about so much good.

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  [To Jon and Louise Webb]

  September 18, 1963

  [* * *] Got rid of a mass of your rejects to Targets for $25 for his next issue as a Signature. Also Holland took a couple, so the luck holds. With It Catches coming up, I might need another 10 years off to get my senses back. There is always the danger of writing too much or pushing beyond yourself. Something kills writers and kills them pretty fast, and then we all die anyhow like the fly and the flower, the wail…shit, so…some dullard outside honking his horn; somebody else hammers. Still the insomnia thing but most of the bleeding has stopped. nasty letter from a churchboy who was handed one of my poems…. I’m interested in the Patchen section, of course. Do try to get some DRAWINGS from him along with photos. Do you know that I haven’t read any of his books, never seen one? Just a poem here and there, mostly a reprint and mostly all good in this awesome softly real good way; but then, I have not been much of a reader for some time. I get the idea, though, that he has remained alive as an Artist. On the back-thing, I really don’t know. I am somewhat confused on the back-thing. I think everybody with a bad back should be taken care of, including Patchen. I mean, have the medical thing. But the poems are Patchen, and the draw
ings. And he’s as OUTSIDE as any, sure. [* * *]

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  [To Jon and Louise Webb]

  September, 1963

  [* * *] It took a lot of guts to turn down the Roman offer but hell, you’ve been there and you know it is only finally chopchop and twist and chop and demand and then you’ve had it. You depend on their money and the “free editorial reign” but they’ve got ways of pulling their money out or getting nasty, and all these fingers running through your brain like neckties. I know that I have always felt better broke than not because when you are broke you have nothing to lose and are loose, and when you get it you worry about protecting it and you don’t do anything but protect it. [* * *]

  Gypsy, take vitamins, even I do—99¢ for a month’s supply—and eat bread and potatoes, and when you can’t sleep at night don’t fight it, get up and read a newspaper, something dull, the financial sect., war, marches, weather reports, so forth. And be kind to yourself when you’re feeling bad, try to think of something good that once happened to you or of something good that might happen to you. We are often too tough with ourselves. I know that this sounds like a corner preacher or etc. but try a little of it: OL’ BUK’S EASY WONDER CURE. I wish I could give you about 20 of my pounds; I am a swine; in a morgue I would look like a stuffed turkey. [* * *]

  [P.S.] no man is an island but why are so many of them flecks of dirt?

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  [To Neeli Cherry]

  September 20, 1963

  well, kid, I got your burnt Bukowski poem bust-out booklet, and it was somewhat like finding angels female with good figures and some wing in The Daily Racing Form, and I thank you for the toast (burnt) and I guess you are neva gon forget I threw one a your poems in the fire. but you’ve got to remember it was a hot night and the fingers of my mind were sweating, I was almost out of stuff to drink and your old man kept running in and out of the back door with this constant stagger of logs and I was standing in front of the fireplace and it got hotter and hotter and I thought I was a wheel from the old Lafayette Escadrille and when you handed me a poem there was nothing left to do but dump it along with the rest of me. ;;;ah, a hell of an excuse. !!!

  well, the booklet had some good poems in a kind of blaring hard-stone sense that is really closer to feeling than the perfumed hanky drillwork of OUR contemporaries; but I remember your bedroom and you asleep in there like a sick frog, and pictures of Hem on your walls, pictures of Hem and maybe Faulk and so forth, well, this is better for a kid than Henry Ford and almost as good as ice hockey but look someday the pictures have to come down, the walls will have to be as bare as say the ass of your own reflections getting pinched by the light, and paeans to a minor poet c.b. must stop. It is pretty hard, as you must guess, not to die before the last Supper of your 30th. birthday in our American Society, and then you are never safe, you can go at any time like any Mailer or Jones, although I do not know their ages nor am I interested. The novel nowadays has become the guillotine. You can last longer growing inside and around the poem although it isn’t any news that you won’t make any money but you’ll live longer even if you sell papers on the corner than you will hustling The Book of the Month Club. This is stale advice from an old man to a young man, and much of the bad breath of old age is that the old tend to tell the young where the sun comes up. I think maybe it is time for the old to listen to the young but since I am at this moment handing it out, I will continue to slough it. Don’t ever write a novel unless it hurts like a hot turd coming out. You will know when this happens; it has not yet happened to me but it can happen to you. If you ever feel like pressing, get drunk or draw something on a piece of paper or a piece of ass. There are plenty of doors to go out of that breaks the place of yourself up but if there’s enough left when you get back maybe you got a hustle going. [* * *]

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  [To Jon and Louise Webb]

  October 1, 1963

  I did not make work tonight, and so there it goes: the job on the edge of the cliff again, and I do not like work and have no trade but I do like to eat, so this is basic, the basic training of slaves to fear, but I wrote some poems and it does not matter whether they are good or not—yes, it does, everything should be as sharp as possible: I talk like a fool; what I mean is, it is good to hear the typewriter running again across my brain like a lawnmower or a machinegun or what is left of anything. You’ve got to get the idea of this breakfast nook here, it’s always hot, and mostly always beer, but sometimes just the window and I look out the window and like any other damn-fool writer I begin to wonder where the soul went, and I used to think this was foolish, but no more, I know that the soul does go: ZIP, and then that’s that. Only you don’t think of it like an expensive item, like a big diamond, more like a good solid piece of ass with eyes of sea that walked out for somebody with more $$$ or more dangle or more natural decency toward his fellow being, ow. [* * *] There are good days, tho, when the whole world unfolds…unfolds like what? like a lie. Most of us hold onto jobs if we can, sell brooms door to door, work in post offices, slaughterhouses, collection agencies, all that hell. Hell and hell and hell, on and on. I no longer wonder about Rimbaud running the guns and hunting gold and going buggy in Africa. He only wanted time to write poetry, I think. And he wanted it so bad that he didn’t write anymore. Starvation may or may not make artists; I only know that it gets very tiresome to STARVE while guys pass you on the streets with faces that look like dishpans and bellyfuls of porterhouse and fries and all those things that kill: like penthouse blondes and collections of Mozart, ow. I mean, I write better, I think, when I am not worried about the belly or the rent or scraping up a piece of ass. These things are primaries and when you get them out of the way you can begin to worry or unworry about a hell of a lot of other things you wouldn’t have time to think about in the first place. I don’t mean I am for Harvard educations. I’m not. If I had one I would probably say they are o.k. but since I don’t have one they can’t be o.k. for me because it is not happening. I paid the rent today and if I walk on the job tomorrow and they do not barber me too much we will have PEACE for 3 or 4 days, maybe. There is always this sense of futility and disgust that you have been hammered finally into something which you do not WANT TO BE, and as long as you are conscious of this and not man enough or clever enough to find a way out, you are going to be pretty generally unhappy like with hot tongs gripping your guts most of the time. This is sad but it makes me glad I’ve written a few poems today, bad and/or?, and this is madness too, I know, a kind of screaming. Yet I know people, other people who do this; they send me their poems in the mail. Well, it’s nice to be selected to have poems sent to if you are not an editor; if you are an editor, well, it’s just another day’s work. Well, most of the poems are bad, to me, that is. I don’t like them. I read them and say, Christ ugg, and throw them away. Yet these people think I am human, more human than an editor, and this is all right. But what I get from this mainly is the idea of all these people going wacky mad etc., out there really, while in actuality they are working as waitresses, truck drivers or male hairdressers. I prefer the poems from the ladies especially when they enclose their photos. But what I mean is: there are all these people out there going mad and writing bad poetry, and when somebody does SHOVE THROUGH it is kind a landmark, don’t you think? Now Ginsberg bothered me a long time, and then somebody told me Burroughs got a regular check from the Burroughs adding machine co. and some of the floss fell away, let alone the homo bit which DOES bother no matter how humanitarian you try to get. But you’ve got to hand it to Ginsberg. He’s gotten away. He’s sitting in India, which is something. I guess they’ve got good beer in India and I imagine now and then Corso comes to see him, which will later give them both something to talk about write about, a kind of Lawrence-Huxley mess, you know the people bite on this and get excited. The only people who come to see me are winos who need enough change to round out 64 cents. But Ginsberg has gotten out of it somehow so he has time to write even if he ends up writing bad
ly. It’s a gathering of dust and electrodes and a vomiting out, later. But he’s got a better chance than if he were working in a Chinese Laundry or as Secretary of State—IF HE REMAINS UNPROFESSIONAL. But the problem is not Ginsberg tonight, it is me. I feel like a sow or an edge of dust of a lamp shade in the attic. I do not want attention; I want myself and they are tearing the arms of my mind apart. The only thing which saves me from cutting my belly out like an apple pie is that I am a coward, and anyway I have so many things wrong with me now that any one of them could take care of the situation with less clutter. God save the King and send in the longshots. If people can set themselves on fire in the streets, I can have another cigarette. They have turned off the refrigerator and the beer is warm. I must wash my stockings.

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  [To Jon and Louise Webb]

  October 18, 1963

  [* * *] Whenever I need a lift I look at that table of contents you sent and I think of all the pages and all the poems. You really let the book run away with you and I’m glad. If I remember right you were once thinking of 60 pages. If I never write another poem, I will always have this book, a kind of holy thing to me. [* * *] And we’ve got the right title too. After these months it has become solid as a wall. I’ll never forget the night I came across it, early a.m., and I said, they’ve got to take it, they’ve just got to. And then sweating Cerf. I’ve been lucky on the titles of my books because the editors have always gone right along, and each title has explained my mental-spiritual shape of the moment—or if this is too fancy: the way I felt. [* * *]