Beerspit Night and Cursing (19 page)

who is
FAMOUS
for his anger
ANGER ANGER ANGER
yet I never say anything

everybody fears him, he has bluffed the world but he
comes to Buk: what’ll I say? what’ll I do?

And so I tell him. Well, hell, I don’t care really, what you do. I don’t like you.

…aw, fo Kriwts sake Sheri stop wotthehell screaming bout romantized orangsucked bankers, so
MUCH
old stuff
STUFF

the owl screaming…u make me feel like a much older man than I am.

AND, HELL, AM NOT GONA FORGIVE U FOO THAT
!!!!!!!!

Jeffers’ old “aunt-voice” on the phone was the best protection he cd have. Never judge a face by its beard. I think that in the long range Jeffers’ poems will be more
SECURE
than ur Pound’s because although now many of Jeffers’ words appear to be in the form of plads clicks old saws, and Pound’s were the new cut raw, it has appeared to me, finally in the line of reasoning,
WHERE POUND WAS TRYING TO IMPRESS WITH A POEM
, Jeffers was merely trying to
WRITE
a poem. Pound was, and is, entirely, too busy. Jeffers knows. Buk knows what Jeffers knows and is a little mixed on what Pd sass. But still, both good.

Pound was a fool to give his formulas. Because once the many have uo pon the hands of the few,

THE MANY WILL MAKE THE FEW NOTHING
,

and that is why doctors put their prescrivbitchiions in greek
BECAUSE THEY REALIZE THAT THE KNOWING OF KNOWLEDGE IN THE HANDS OF THE FEW PASSED INTO THE HANDS OF THE MANY WILL AND WOULD CAUSE KNOWLEDGE TO BE USELESS
…like too much gold or cold or too many wives.

I wuld never be Ezra’s thane and even well when I fell drunk upon rugs, I still called his name through the names of horses because I knew I come on strong if they let me live.

ON YOUR KATS
: The ancient Egyptians elevated Man and Cat, woman and dog shunned.

Sure, yv got to fight me because you
KNOW IN YR MARTINELLI WAY
that I yam a master of the future and you are catching one cutting me in my sloe growth

befoo it’s tu late

and meanwhile I will talk to u and not be silent

lak Ez or Rob

hoo both know u are alive,

and I don’t know

but I know they are alive

LIKE
SEBELIUS
WHO WHEN HE STARTED GROWING OLD

SHAVED THE TOP OF HIS HEAD

AND WOULD NOT STEP OUT OF THE DOOR
,

well, here was a giant and it gave the boorish mob something to pick on and show sickness no? and when a beautiful man of face and spirit and body, when a man of such men is put upon earth, a man of giant strength of the pure plant in search of sum and sun, a man in search of the 3 or 4 women hoo will and would hand him the palm, such a man will shave his head in shame when he realize the end of the spirit and mind are walking hand in hand toward the altar of death while leaving him sitting here there, and some day it 2 will reach me, and I very much believe I will kill myself rather than will I suffer thro a cane this mind that at its growing strength is only looked upon as a side tune and the exit of the monkey and the organ grinder for nickels that will no longer feed or hold still the wind of the starving banyan tree.

On fk cats, Shri:
KAT
: the ancient Egyptians elevated man and cat; Man and Cat, I should say it; woman and dog expelled. It is only in distillation, the selective cruelty of a formulated concept engendered from basics that we get power. Your Pound realized this. Hitler did. Nap. The Romans thro dominance of class, the Greeks thro dominance of mind. Pound has a Greco-Roman complex grown out of an inferior background that should have made him as invalid as a grocer selling you a piece of bread and saying, “Nice day, isn’t it?” But Pound’s courage got so good it carried him past the mark, so although, allow me to say this, his selling out of America was the best thing he ever did, and I think the Russians are younfer-kristsakes and stronger than we

hoo are worried abt next hear this, car model,

and we grow young guys like Gib and Ernie

who are most interested in carburaters and Martinellis,

but I love them both, all 3 of ya and I hope hell the bible

u don’t inhale any fancy tinfoil and shit hot yr shitters.

I sometimes laugh to maybe myself and realize I can spare it because I have so much I can give some of it away [in] 8ball letters like this, but that’s the way it goes, and if yu take yr shots at me, that’s ok, but I think

someday these letters to u, like the letters to Sherman must cease. Not out of anything, but my sense that it
DRAINS
. Perhaps this haz ct up with EzraPd. Remember anybody hoo haz gone az far nose the essential rules.

You go ahead and draw Ernie all the time. Whatever is needed is needed. If Ernie is good for you, I give u Erns. If Pond is good, eye giv.

It doesn’t seem plausible to me, pardon me, that “the Gods sent a son of the Jews to love Ezra’s PoundKake”

“sent to sass Ez and grab him by his one handle.”

Your deal with Pond is not “international scandal”, dontletus outgrow ourselves.

Jews know enough to
DO
, yes, but they can never sit still enough to figure out
WHY
, and a Jew will never have an Art collection or a wife except to show to somebody else, and he will never
CEASE TO WANT, RICH OR POOR
, and that is the weakness of the Jewish race, and I cannot hope to help them and they do not even think of helping me. But that’s ok, I never ask for help.

I have sorryly worried and worked many factories in this candy land to pay my rent, and I have found the Nefucknegroes to be my most interesting companions, but I knew what they were fuck suffering from as I suffered from something else, quietly, and we drank our sick wine on lunch hours together and we had our backalley fights, some of which I won and some of which I lost. My hands are very much small for some reason and I have to hit harder and faster, which I generally do after losing the opening rounds and reaching down
DEEPLY
for what is stored in a small packet just above my asshole.

One of my only friends is now fighting 6 rounders at the Olympic. He is more polite than I and has a bashful smile and his body is a sickly white. And every man he has fought has now retired. I am dumb, he says, I am dumb.

Only when you are speaking to me, I say, over whatever rot we may be eating.

Ah shit, Here Sheri, I
know
E. P.
Walker will go on the cover of yr A and P.

No, Walker is not as noble as Ezra; there are some proving
fk ground first. Thus your say alone will not raise a difference because the springs rattle nicely. Both E.P.’s are yours; keep me out of this squabble.

I don’t want to sleep with you; as far as I am concerned you can go to hell. Give me the leaping Dutch gal over the Sunday-morning fence looking to the voice of God. I’ll give her that voice. She can wash my dishes anytime.

IF HER ERNIE IS THE SON OF GOD I AM GETTING THE HELL OUT OF HERE
!

JUST LIKE JORY’S CROSSIN THE JORDAN
.

I am Leo the Lion, and I will not mess with second-rates.

True love does not create
ART
….

Whoo givez a damn the secret of the world? This is highschool.

What we want is the secret of self, one at a time.

What makes one plant grow makes another plant die.

I am going to paint one day and when I do I will show the world what color means, as I did one night to my x-wife, Fry and I awakened her and showed her the colors and she said, “Oh, you have color like Van Gogh, you
LOVE
color, you don’t
ACT
that way!”

And I said, I’m going to drown it.

And she said, what do you mean?

And I walked in and turned the bathtub full of hot water and I stood there waiting, and she said, so just help me, so help me god, if you throw that beautiful painting into that hot water I will leave you.

It took her six months to pack…

Delecto, delectq. q. q. a. delecta. meow culpa?

I am listening to an opera now that I have never heard. All male pure voices without
complaint
or gross love, like the Greeks admiring their statues in the sun. What is this?

Gib’s only hope is that Walker gets constipated and starched-up, and fed-up. Gib is hanging in strong, however, and I am laughing, because I am yr spirit-husband and am Out of it. Ah.

Don’t get burned, sun-burned, I mean.

lfff,

Buk

[
handwritten
:] P.S.—there was “
communication
” between horse and woman (other than spiritual) in
Roan Stallion
. Gd. damn u, Sheri, why don’t you
READ
this book! Buk.

Early Dec., a Friday in 1961
I mean early Jan. ’61, 1:30 Pm
and I do not know the date—

Shareei!

enclosed copies.

some technicals: the
Signature
section is a portion of a larger
Targets
#4,
of which I am enclosing a copy with the others. Garner had a batch of sig. sections printed, however, and sent me a good helping.

Sometimes my head of hair is curly, sometimes not. Sometimes it’s red; I grew a beard once and it was pure red while my hair was brown, and I was young and felt things running up my arms and I starved so I could have time to sit in the sun; mostly I watched the birds eat the crumbs and the rocks, and they were fat, fat lovely catdreams, and I was bone and I watched their heads as they walked—duck, duck, duck (watch a bird walk: his head moves his body), but I could not find a big enough crumb and certainly the rocks would not do, and one December in Atlanta I stood under a frozen tree, a tree as frozen as I, and the birds were gone and I decided to make a million, to eat and fuck continually, hire and fire slaves, grow dull and certain; but it was only a very bad moment, and I went up to a church door and decided to go inside and get warm but the door was
LOCKED
in the
MIDDLE OF THE DAY
, I’ll never forget it or understand it, but God and I had much earlier disagreed upon some finer points. Anyhow, about my hair, if you want to curl it, and my toes—
FIRE
!!!**—I’ve been in some tough spots (spiritually) (the physical doesn’t count except as you live through it down into the dark growing or dying). So have away,
Shed. Pound was your man, and he’s mine. And Jeffers too. Right now, both. Maybe sometime someday if I can live a little longer (I go, I grow so
SLOWLY S L O W L Y
), maybe neither.

I need sleep.

Will write on some things—some disagreements—Sunday.

Why did I think yd get mad abt
Horse on Fire
? Oh hell, I figured you’re the type hoo gets mad easy. I am the other way: my hair will not curl although I may pull up lame.

luf,

Buk

[
note dated 7 January 1961 by SM
]
[
CB received a postcard from SM quoting
Lord Beaconsfield,
then appended a reply below it and sent it back
:]

Said Lord Beaconsfield, “the man who does not
LOOK UP
will
look down
(as our dear Mr. Bukowski) and the spirit that does not dare to soar is destined perhaps to grovel…”
Sheri

1-9-61
[
postcard
]

Dear Sheri:

Let us not “look up” but keep our eyes level with the universe lest we become run over in body and psyche crossing the ordinary streets of our days.

The difference between a pose and an action is the electric quality of force that gives us the nerve to enter hell and heaven alike.

Your Pound toiling in the immortal light still found time to become Fascisti’ and enter earthly squabbles, and as Shermans and Ginsburgs take the bait, we who find little to elevate in our residue, continue to shape and sound the word…as clean as anybody’s flag.

Charles Bukowski

1-9-61 [
postcard
]

Sheri:

Oh, I
know
Pan is a deity!

Why must you be such a schoolteacher with me?
Bastinado!

Pax vobiscum.

Buk

L.A. Monday, Jan. 9, 1961

Dear Sheri:

It appears I missed one or two of your questions in yesterday’s letter. About the Webb-thing. This young man wrote into Webb blasting him for printing “names”, and that it wouldn’t cost W. a dollar a copy to print
Outsider
if he used platinum plates. The young man claimed to be a printer. He told Webb he should be ashamed to show his face in the streets. And that Webb didn’t have any talent and that the reason he was printing the magazine was so that he could be close to the big names.

Well, Webb came to me right away, enclosing the letter. I guess he wanted solace and it was flattering that he came to Buk for salve for his wounds. Well, it was a tough one to handle. Buk does not lie. He got drunk for 4 days.

It is true that Webb was, at the start, fascinated by names. This was a new thing for him, buying the press, type, corresponding, rejecting and accepting manus. He was caught in a trap of new enthusiasm. He has since written me that many of those he accepted at first do not read so well to him now, and in his “awakening awareness” he is going to be much more careful in his selections. Many of the
Grove Press
poets he no longer holds in awe, and several others. It is possible that many “names” dumped some 2nd. rate stuff on Webb.