Beerspit Night and Cursing (9 page)

I feel how you rather underread me, that is fortunate.

I am list. to awful beaut. music on radio now and I fuckcannot believe I am quite alive.

Your soul-starved jew and sincere negro chap…which one scored?

Y are an idiot Martin, stick to ur China chap…on my advice…gd dam it u are lookin for somethin that does not exist

A POUND IS ONLY BORN EV
3 thousand yrs.

You ok mar, b you have a lot to learn.

I would certainly like to meet u personally in order to deater-kuju juzeu U…

los angels
fri nite aug 6

L.A.
Thurs nite, Aug. 11?

Dear Sheri:

wuz only kiddin’ about cookies…course if your woman’s heart is set on making them…I bragged about your sending me brown bread when Jory dragged me to Wm. Pillin’s, hope u don’ mind…

I guess you would say my stars are out of kilt. last 3 or 4, 5 days, sag strummed on bad guitar…stretched on bed sweating like slave nigger, trying to figger out ceiling, so low. luckily I caught a little Rochmoninoff on radio, twice…he very close to me in spirit and I heard him cursing the gods, the dogs, the cats…fustian gloaming…and I laughed inside because I knew what he meant.

don’ take me too hard on anything. I roll with the words like a horse in the field and I pick up a lot of burrs. daddy
Pound my boy too: courage ratio, style; famous enough but alone for it all.

wrote you a couple of letters, 6, 7, 8 pages, read them, tore them up.

Guess I was a little hard on Jory, but all that front-running stones me. But you are right: we can’t all be bitch hermits. an I see from his letters he is still going strong. well.

old girl and I broke up:
JEZUS
, she screamed, I wish just once,
JUST ONCE
, you would show up here
WITHOUT BEING DRUNK
!

an’ I said, swayin’ in the middle of floor, oh, aw right, I’m leavin’.

And I walked out and went downstairs and had a beer with a roomfulla people arguin’ about nothin’. Then I went back upstairs and said, see, I’m back, be happy, and I laughed.

but she didn’t even hear me. she was standin’ in middle of room, shuddering big tears the size of her silver rosary, and then she looked up at me, hating like hell, and began cussing and screaming and I left that time for sure.

she put me thro plenty of hell years ago and I think what puzzles her now is that she can’t put me in hell anymore…

Guess you are right: Jory is all for me, thinks I am somebody. letter from him today giving me addresses of some new mags. As front-runner he gets a lot of this stuff.

According to Griff of
Hearse
I have a chapbook coming out in less than month:
Flower, Fist and Bestial Wail.
Will get a copy to you. More or less earlier pomes, he left out some of what I think are best. Not apologizing, only saying not my selection.

Jory said Morris reading was a mess, everybody walking out, Wang, etc and only wuz a coupla snot-nosed poets reading vury thin poesy…frum wha’ I unerstan’ Morris waited for the boys to come to
him
, and they did not. But hermit does not unnerstan all this doubletalk, and so forget.

Stars still feel all outa kilt so I am quitting now. All right, Sheri, baby, I am thinkin’ of u, oney don’ tell Po’ Li.

L.,

Charles (Buk)

Lost Angels Monday [15 August 1960]

Dear Sheri:

rec. your wand-waving exhort and expl. of canto 90, and Pound knew good gal when he saw one…read several times, caught no mostly light and let rough edges go, if I may say rough edges: the rough edges are me, no Pound nor Sheri…thank you.

oh only to say awfully sick this morning…somebody’s symphony in C. Minor on. would prefer D. minor key this morn. celebrated birthday last night. awful thing, staring down thru orange juice this morn, still alive…

ended up in vile dive on Hollyw’d blvd, strippers on v. bias shaking breasts and box in my face…one all inlum. in neon…wang wang wang, blap alp blap, right in face and I laughed, I laughed when all others including women serious…all this illuminated fuck…and I laughed and everybody got angry, so I walked out to make them feel better and went across street to brightlight cheap palace fulla bums and I felt better.

thanx again for
Rockdrill
, my west coast a Africa cleared up.

but now awfully sick, will sleep and try to put this body together.

lobelight and love,

Charles

Bukowski

Los Angeles
August 16th. 1960

Dear Sheri:

well, I am sitting around waiting for a singing telegram which will arrive about 9 am and embarrass me, but the gal means well: I will pretend, if possible, to enjoy it. But she should know, after these years, that this type of thing simply dissolves me into a liquid pain that lasts for days. well, hell,
there’s nothing to do but wait. it’s 8:30 am now and I am halfdead with agony…Christ, maybe she’ll only send a flower. but no, she’s too raw, she’s been drinking and somewhere out of her past life she thinks this is the gay, all-gallant thing to do. Happy birthday. Jesus Christ. oh.

well, maybe it will be nothin. maybe it is all a dream. but she tipped her hand phoning last night and I read right thru her mind. You would never do a thing like this to me Sheri. would you? I don’t think you would crash my insides with some shrimp bastard wailing in my ears. I know you wouldn’t, Sheri.

I know she means well. In her mind it is a great thing and I should be happy that someone remembered my birthday. This type of thing is done in movies: a singing telegram.

OH GREAT GOD JESUS I AM DYING. LET ME FACE THE SIMPLE TIGER
.

It’s 8:40.

Sheri, I read your explan. of Canto 90 again; I was awful sick yesterday and it came thru clearer now. You have the pure classical style, in feeling and in love. You are the one woman I know that Pound deserved, and you deserved him. You could never make ignoble love. The only thing ignoble about a love between you and any man is that perhaps the man could not stand up to you, he would not deserve you. I am not sure I would deserve you, ever. I have much growing up to do. I have always moved slowly, developed slowly. The poems I wrote, the poems that are to be collected in this chapbook I will send you—they are not poems, but beginnings, small rantings. But the trash must be burned first. I feel inside…some growing, but whether it is life or death, we will have to wait and see. You have helped me grow by putting me in touch with the larger equation, and yet there is a part of me that does not want to lose sight of the small. The small holds its secrets too. I think it is human to notice the small and to speak about it, but to remain ever small is error. I will have both: the large and the small. I think this is both: humanity and immortality, today and tomorrow, you…and I. Sheri. invisible love.

8:55. Perhaps it won’t happen.

It is odd…that Pound who was my personal god…has come upon me through you. How they used to rave, my women,
EZRA POUND, EZRA POUND
, oh god damn it,
I’M SICK OF THE NAME
! But I loved them all with my scarred face and
body, my scarred soul…until they turned against my spirit…as Fry did…calling Franck’s Symphony in D ugly…
ugly
. I have never heard any music that is ugly. i have heard inane music, I have heard silly music, I have heard discordant music…but music in itself, even the simplest modern tune carries in it part of the human crying, and to call it ugly…esp. the Symphony in D.…and she was tone-deaf and I told her so, and how her little face twisted up in hatred, in defense…and I said, tell me one piece you
like
, classical, modern, anything, and she could not answer, and I was sorry for her.

Sheri, I am no angel. women cannot stand me for long. perhaps it is that I am selfish, I will not submit my soul wholly, I save a secret piece for myself…and woman wants to control her man to feel secure. I can understand this. But I do not ask a woman for her complete soul either. I feel that when all secrets are gone, love ends, love becomes unbearable. And how many couples have unveiled the last shreds? millions upon millions and they turn outward instead of inward and die before a television set or clipping a hedge or boiling a can of soup…tenuous, tenuous…beware showing all, the dirty underwear of the mind, the tired cravings, the cowardice, and worst of all…the strengths. a tenuous, subtle tuning…an almost perfect love must have two almost perfect people…all this, Sheri, on reading yr Canto 90, Pound’s canto 90…

I would liked to have seen the Jays and Squirells fighting over the nuts in the shell. Too bad the jays won. One time I was driving toward Caliente, a race track, Mexico. But something was wrong with me. I didn’t want to go. I didn’t want to see horses, to bet. Something inside of me was twisting. I said, turn back, turn back. But I kept driving. But I didn’t want to see a horse, make a bet, buy a drink, push and fight the mob. All of a sudden, I could drive no longer. Just outside San Diego I pulled over to the side of the road and sat in my car and I looked at the water. The waves came in and rolled around inside of my chest. It was hot in there, a sewer of flame, and I let the blue rool there, the foam sizzling in the fire. What I’m trying to say is, finally got out of the car and stood over edge of cliff hanging over sea…and out they came…two squirells (spell?) or squirrels? think latter…and they stood and simply looked at me…these 2 sea sqs. and they looked for minutes on end, for centuries, and they sensed in their animal way that there was no
danger within me…I was no enemy, and this puzzled them and they had the long look, awfully long look, squirrel eye whirling with each sea and each sun and with me and we fell across the gulf that held us separate and we each were one within the other…until at last some shifting in space…sent us apart, 2 small squirells and I, like lost lovers ended, and they ran down their rocks, all tail and fur, and my heart pounded in pain of severence. Well, hell, I drove on to the track and dropped 50 or 60, and no wonder, my mind was not on the horse and I did not care…

Well, 10 am and no telegram. the gods must have answered my call. I am glad. I am going to sleep.

Down in mailbox…letter from Jory, business-like, names, addresses, remarks on literary world. Jory still front-running. Tells me he got long Auntly letter from
Thorne
. How these gals love a Jorum. Also acceptance from mag in Texas
Quagga
, for this Summer’s issue. My poem
Riot
, memo of jail life when celled with public enemy #1,
Courtney Taylor
. Bit about riot took place one day in dining hall…

10:15…well, it came…no singing telegram…but flowers, flowers, flowers,
FLOWERS
…gladiolous, roses, carnations, daiseys, nastrusums, and some I don’t know, some I don’t know…a bundle of color and smell and leaves, and no silly singing messenger boy…this is bread for the soul, brown bread and singing and the sea and the squirrels…I have wronged a lady again…she knows me…she
KNOWS ME
…and I will sleep…and I will sleep…in peace…

love,
     
Charles
            Buk

L.A. Too late for thunder [6 September 1960]

Dear Sheri:

slept in the ossuary 24 hours, no o weary slip, 5 day drunk, lost wallet, robbed, raped, tangled in vines covered with strange grey bugs…armies by, out of side of head, shadows, palms, nuns stripping before the pale red seas of god…ouch, water running out of pipes, water better than music…can wash halfsoul in water like dirty underwear…go go numbers and sound…blast of shotgun that broke the veins of Van Gogh’s brushes, stroking sunlight into corn and feet and malaria and flies and the thin wafting of useless air. well, it’s all right. I don’t need much more than this. I can hear the water running and I will drown my burning feet. where are the cloves? where is the minister spitting in a jar? water, rain, wine, time running away with our lives like a dog with an old bone to bury.

so well, no more than this
Charles
Buk

L.A. Thursday, maybe Sept. 9, ’60

Dear Sheri:

got your cookies today. o good good and in radius of calm light when all is
lutarious.

heavy wagons of unknow now run over all fingers of feeling, combs a thousand harpoons, grass only covers dead, catfeet running with mice under obnoxious moon.

polination of giggling backless mass continues: fruit, rock and boar. etlolate yearheart.

sick, sick, sick, can write no more.

Charles
Buk

L.A.., Oct. 5 or 6, ’60

Dear Sheri:

Poetry, at times, must be allowed the emotion that the pretext of philosophy is denied under the chains of knowledge.

Ez said many good things—good things for him—rules, lights, which made the mostly good Ez, but forms change: I am no Ez, don’t want to be, but must follow more a sense that screams when I bang my toe.

There is no one more disgusted with the similarity and posing of the poets than I. I have for a while been mulling on an Essay:
The Fallacy of Poetry, Modern or Otherwise
. However, I felt, finally, that the energy had rather be put to the poem than to qualing over inadequacies.

Good to hear from you, Sheri; I need a new ribbon and hope you can read this. Feel rather dull today, not a good time to write. All poems out, nothing on hand, nothing boiling. Am in Autumn
Epos
, will be in Winter also present
Quagga
.
Targets
have given me 8 pages in Winter issue and I have sent him bucket of poems to narrow down on.
Webb of
Outsider
taking some. On the other hand, there are those who sit and sit…and sit, and neither accept or reject, and don’t even answer inquiries and I don’t know who has what or why. I don’t have any carbons, just a lot of empty beer cans. Between the 15th. and 29th. of last month wrote 20 or 30 new poems, sent to
San Francisco Review
, and now if they don’t take, for a while will leave alone, giving them full shot and the hell with it. What I am trying to say, Sheri, is—there simply aren’t any poems around, but if I write some new ones, or if something comes back that does not dismal me too much I will send it up to you for a look. Would rather have you look at a few than simply send you something that
I
want…The classics dull me, Sheri, please stop putting
me on the classics, I have read most of them, or tried. I understand the falsity of most poetry and the poetic world by reading any little mag of poetry.