Screams From the Balcony by Charles Bukowski
Pappa Webb pissed at me now for various reasons. this is how it works. gangrene in the beef stew. so, they held me up to the sun and the sun shined on me. but whatever is left must go on, a while…huh?
If you want any advice from an old head, I’d havta say—try to hold off any real or desperate entanglement with women as long as possible. The problem is not so much in losing a woman, this is expected, but it is in seeing where they finally go…toward the rottenest death, toward the falsest of the false, toward the lie, toward the obvious lie forever. It’s like a comedy, only you are the only one in the audience and they are on stage.
And look, pretty boy, I still don’t get your movie-writing shit. are you, alone, going to turn the whole rot upside down and make truth of it? you couldn’t take 5 years, how you gonna change a whole industry? I think that you are in some kind of dream-state. If you have the guts to wash dishes, surely you have the guts to know where you are. One doesn’t work without the other. You confuse me because you have too many cards in your deck.
I talk to you straight because nobody else will and also because I have a little time now, having had my asshole sliced a bit, and unable to work. but actually, yes, I did meet more death in you the last time I met you than the first—you were more cosmopolitan, less human, more full of angles and ways…. Christ, I know the Romantic in us must die sometime, but must all else die too? But, this is the same old horse-shit!—the old talking down to the young…I went through so much of it, and all their advice was bad. So, all ya gotta do, is turn everything I have said to you, turn it upside down and you’ve got the truth.
I told off some Catholic priest the other day. you think I’m turning into an old crank? enjoy your next piece of ass to your full capabilities, hahaha ha ha!
* * *
[To Steven Richmond]
May 16, 1966
[* * *] by the way, somebody’s stealing some of our fire—or borrowing it anyway. Frances showed me a copy of Xenia 2. she has a couple of poems in there and not bad ones at that. but what I mean is, baby, there are articles—attacks on Olson & Poetry Chicago, so forth. the problem being, with them, that the poetry they print does not attack the problem or rattle or burn or jump or exist. in other words, they know what’s wrong but they can’t dance. which still gives the edge to Earth—she dance, she know what’s wrong & she know how. ya. [* * *]
if the universities ever read Earth they will burn their doors and books and walls. god damn, something in red just walked by. my pecker jumped like a worm in a sparrow’s mouth. when they gonna let this old man rest? [* * *]
* * *
[To Steven Richmond]
[ca. June 1966]
[* * *] I composed this magazine in 20 minutes—from memory. I hope to hell you don’t think I am serious! [* * *]
* * *
THE TOILET PAPER REVIEW
our motto is: we don’t give a shit
edited by
Charles Bukowksi
pirc
priceless
* * *
* * *
editorial
the only ones who can write is us. nobody else can write but us. we are the only ones who can write. I don’t understand why other people can’t write. send money. send your wife—for one night. we do this for love.
we hate war. we like guitars. we paint. we swim. we know everything. the world is evil. we are not evil. send money. we send love. we send love everywhere. send your girlfriend—for 2 nights. don’t pay your income tax. blow up the troop trains. smoke pot. sell pot. write your president. write your gov. write your mother for money and send it to us. don’t send your mother—at all. literature and the world are in bad shape. we are dying. legalize rape.
no payment for poetry.
yours, love,
Charles Bukowski
* * *
* * *
poem
o it says
vamma
?????
????//////
crutch
hold me
Hold me
o eternal motor
super heart
supermarket heart
sputtering
the night becomes me
and I die
—John Vance, Glendale
poem
it is only
me.
—Curly Eisten, Pasadena
* * *
* * *
poem
war is terrible. people get killed in wars.
I once killed a man. I will never kill
another man. bow to the sun. suck your own
cock. the stars come down like
RAIN. love, love
LOVE.
—Joe Esterlund, Cleveland
poem
o dear, the green of me, the green of me
is dying in the fountains
the green sun stops my breathing
mother asks me to get married
I can’t teeth the worl
or I am afraid
o my green my green is
going
in fountains
and the stars are
grey.
—Mary Jane Wicks, New York City
* * *
* * *
if you say you like poetry, this is another editorial, then god damn you, buy books, sned send me money, I am up on a pot charge. anybody who says they like poetry and doesn’t send me money is a god damned fink.
editor
adv.
bring your case to me.
John Manse, attorney
3314 Tower Building
shoes repaired
Joe Coldone
111 E. 5th st.
note: all manus. must be acc. by stamped return envelope. not resp. for anything. no payment for material.
adv.
Dr. S. Rivers, psychiatrist
112 E. 5th st.
* * *
letters
yours is the best magazine ever. raw guts.
—Randy Page, Ohio.
your first issue knocked me out.
—Randy Page, Ohio.
I read it straight through.
—Randy Page, Jr. Ohio
have been waiting a long time for something like you.
—R.P., Cleveland
how do you DO it????
RANDY PAGE—
poet
I was not pleased.
Rance Edwards, Eirie, Pa.
* * *
* * *
the police threw the cat out the window and found 4 lousy grains of coedine. I am going to enter Ohio State, take a major in Engo9sh oit. to hell with the spelling, the mispelling. if you don’t like it too bad. this magazine is for fun and love, LOVE, LOVE. nobody will be send an issie until the write me a LONG LETTER asking for it. are you going to ask for it? send stamps, love, $$$$$. we don’t have much money. paper costs money. and we need volutnteers to do the work. I’ve got the keep the lawns trim and have to collect rents from the bums in back. we hope to continue with this mag. but need your helop & love & money.
ed.
poem
the sky reaches for my intestine
and the kitten walks across the floor
and the door is the moon
and I am an iceberg
and want icecream and pussy
and my green is going
and I can hardly see the stars,
o my god,
the pain,
fuck you.
—Randy Page, Ohio
* * *
* * *
LOVE
LOVE
LOVE
AND THANKS TO ALL OUR FRIENDS
* * *
[To William and Ruth Want-ling]
June 20, 1966
shouldn’t have told you about the Pulitzer nomination because it’s useless and futile, no chance, but thought it might amuse you in a kind of obscene manner, you know, maybe here I am dying and I am nominated for a lon
still weak but feeling better, must be short here now, haven’t worked for a couple of weeks—doesn’t help with $$$ but spirit she lifts like kite, color comes back in eye, skin begins to glow, no doubt fucking job is one-half of what is killing me. they kill me if I work, I starve if I don’t. [***]
hello Ruthie:
o christ christ ya I’d ride a bicycle if not too many hills. I don’t have a beard but I’ve grown me a little red goat. hell, thot it would look good in a casket if I get a casket. now now, don’t lecture me. I know, dramatics. ya, I could put on shorts. old as I am I’ve got these huge mysterious muscular legs, don’t know where they came from. I could see Bill and me now, bicycling, red goat and beard, legs and glazen eyes…. every gal in town would get it bad, my my, and we would pedal along singing Salvation Army hymns or old Wobbly songs. maybe some day we will, if Bill and I climb through our troubles. just never ask me to be happy, that makes me unhappy, or never ask me to be just, that makes me unjust. o.k. o.k. o.k. o.k.
* * *
[To Douglas Blazek]
June 25, 1966
[* * *] strange woman came to my door the other night, one a.m. “yeah?” I said. she wanted to know if I were Charles Bukowski. I let her in. weeping face. good legs. I was sober, sitting there looking at the walls. soft pecker. I explained that I was ill, told her to look at my paintings on the walls. she looked and didn’t say anything. Blaz, I will no longer fuck on demand or because it’s there or because something has to be proved. that’s called old age. I signed something and sent her on her way. now Hemingway would have had her all up and down the springs, flexing his soul muscles. I was glad when she left and fixed myself a glass of tea (see T. S. Eliot) and then got down on my nubs and prayed for a good night’s sleep. lately I can only get an hour, an hour and a half’s sleep a day or night. if I get 3 I feel pretty good. keep leaping up imagining burglars, my brain going, going. or that somebody is planning to kill me. (that’s an old one.) meanwhile Webb writes that I have been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. Webb said they asked for a bio and photo. altho what a bio and photo have to do with a man’s work, I dunno. [* * *] happened to mention to Want-ling, and he and wife made a big thing of it, made me feel rather foolish. I liked better Frances’ reaction. she came over with the kid and demanded 19 weeks child support in advance, she wanted to go to mountains or camp or somewhere with kid.
“god damn it,” I told her, “don’t you realize that I am dying? don’t you realize that I am not working? I’m not a money tree, I am SICK SICK SICK SICK!”
“well, that’s not Marina’s fault, that’s not my fault. I wanna go to camp, I wanna get outa the smog, I wanna get my baby outa the smog!”
that’s when I thought it would be amusing to tell her. “I’ve been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize,” I told her.
“yeah, the Foolitzer Prize,” she said.
that’s what I like about these women. we can’t fool them. they know us. [* * *]
* * *
[To Ann Menebroker]
Sunday in July, 1966
[* * *] the oddity…of continuing to write poetry as one really gets older—I’ll be 46 in August, there is somehow a sense of shame as if one didn’t belong, but I think this is an ingrained Americanism—that age is a crime and that poetry is for the young. my age is a miracle and poetry is for me, or, what I write, whatever that is, is for me. it’s a clarification of issues and also some screaming and also some things which we don’t know. it’s Romantic, unromantic, useless and important. it’s a way to go. I don’t think that I can quit. I believe I will be writing little lines on my drooling bib in my senile crib. the pleasure of my madness. [* * *]
[To William and Ruth Want-ling]
August 6, 1966
[* * *] Webb speaks of another book in late ’67 or early ’68, even tho I have told him I am feeling very bad. it is so strange people ignore me when I say this. Frances ignores it. everybody. it is not the sympathy bit I want; I just want a few people to know that I can’t function so well anymore—the old warrior’s got a flat tire. or maybe Webb speaks of the book to keep me going? I wouldn’t want a book that way. I want my poems to leap through walls. not that the poems are important but if I am playing with poems I don’t want wet sunflower seeds. well, shit, that’s enough singing of the blues. [* * *]
* * *
[To Ann Menebroker]
August 13, 1966
yes, I’d say get a book together, out, never believe you write as badly as some of them would like you to think or never believe you write as well as some of those would like you to think, it’s hash gabble, but the gathering is good for your health, the climate of your being. be there. and don’t worry that maybe Pound has written better or Eliot (T. S.), or that your mother won’t like them or that maybe Bukowski will or maybe Bukowski won’t. to hell with Bukowski. so much of our world is comparison, competition, victory, defeat, scratching, climbing, burying, denying—champions, madmen, fools and apple pie. I am tired of their game. to an extent I am caught in their machine but I needn’t swallow all the nuts, grease and oil. I wrote a poem in Ole about a poetry-writing doctor and this doctor read the poem (it was anti-him as the human being he posed) and wrote back telling me that I had “slipped,” that he and his wife were very concerned about my “decline” as an artist. I didn’t answer. but actually, it is my FREEDOM TO DECLINE, to SLIP. I don’t want to go on and on packing the dear old ARTIST-load anymore than I want to pack any other kind of load. we’re all racing for the Moon of being Top Man. WHERE DO WE DIFFER AS WRITERS FROM USED CAR SALESMEN? this is why I hate to be called a “writer,” and “artist.” call me some other dirty name. think of some of this when you think about getting out a book. don’t worry about some other “finer” writer. think about getting a book out like taking a drink for yourself or scratching your toes. all that I am telling you here is THAT YOU DESERVE A BOOK FOR YOURSELF just like Pound deserves a book for himself or Bukowski deserves a hot bath on an August night of almost no moon. what I am trying to say here is perhaps not very clear—I have slipped, you see. there’s a young man on the bench ready to take over my center field spot—bright eyes, strong arm, a way to go. I hope he enjoys the madness of the days.
well, enough speech-making. listening to something on the radio a bit dull and classical but with just enough bite to help me endure my landlord who rolls past this window mowing his lawn, bug bellied in no wind, hung to his proper string as the young girls walk by, and when a good one walks by, flowing like the magic of stuff stuck somewhere in me, old 46 gets up and walks to the window and looks out, sucking on his cigar, big green tears cascading down his face as he realizes all the years shot through the head, assassinated forever, wasted sure, drank senseless, hobbled and slugged in factories, bad dreams, 2nd rate jails, mouse and ghost-infested rooms across an America without a meaning. boy o boy.
sometimes when I don’t write, please understand that something is happening—flat tires, overtime, illness, accident on freeway, bad horses or just the common white seethe of deadness taking hold inside. I am not hard; I would like to be harder—the days have too many teeth. I think you understand. if you’ve read my book Confessions of a Man Insane Enough to Live with Beasts you might prob. think me quite the cruel dog, but that is just the side I let them see—a cement thing with eyes poked in and mouth talking out the side. in this great land we have been taught not to be seen crying in the streets. we tabulate the works into a pillow at night in a room we think does not know.
* * *
[To William Want-ling]
August 21, 1966
[* * *] But, actually, I don’t know if I wd. like you with college education. You know what college ed. generally means?—security and their way of thinking. they run you thru the hoops and set you free—you think. there’s something clean about washing cars. the kids—I know. layoffs, I know. no work, I know.
The game works in all different directions.