Read New Poems Book Three Online
Authors: Charles Bukowski
CONTENTS
THE NIGHT RICHARD NIXON SHOOK MY HAND
THOUGHTS WHILE EATING A SANDWICH
READING LITTLE POEMS IN LITTLE MAGAZINES
PLACES TO DIE AND PLACES TO HIDE
THEY ROLLED THE BED OUT OF THERE
IT’S DIFFICULT TO SEE YOUR OWN DEATH APPROACHING
MADE IN THE SHADE (HAPPY NEW YEAR)
PROPER CREDENTIALS ARE NEEDED TO JOIN
HUNGARIA, SYMPHONIA POEM #9 BY FRANZ LISZT
THERE’S A POET ON EVERY BAR STOOL
A PAUSE BEFORE THE COUNTER ATTACK
About the Book
Charles Bukowski was one of America’s best-known writers and one of its most influential and imitated poets. Although he published over 45 books of poetry, hundreds of his poems were kept by him and his publisher for postumous publication. This is the third collection of these unique poems, which Bukowski considered to be among his best work.
Bukowski’s Beat Generation writing reflects his slum upbringing, his succession of menial jobs and his experience of low life urban America. He died in 1994 and is widely acknowledged as one of the most distinctive writers of the last fifty years.
About the Author
Born in 1920, Charles Bukowski became one of America’s best-known writers. During his lifetime he published more than forty-five books of poetry and prose including the novels
Post Office
(1971),
Factotum
(1975),
Women
(1979) and
Pulp
(1994) all available from Virgin Books.
PART 1.
I watch the old ladies
in the supermarket,
angry and alone.
GERMAN
being the German kid in the 20’s in Los Angeles
was difficult.
there was much anti-German feeling then,
a carry-over from World War I.
gangs of kids chased me through the neighborhood
yelling, “Hienie! Hienie! Hienie!”
they never caught me.
I was like a cat.
I knew all the paths through brush and alleys.
I scaled 6-foot back fences in a flash and was off through
backyards and around blocks
and onto garage roofs and other hiding places.
then too, they didn’t really want to catch me.
they were afraid I might bayonet them
or gouge out their eyes.
this went on for about 18 months
then all of a sudden it seemed to stop.
I was more or less accepted (but never really)
which was all right with me.
those sons-of-bitches were Americans,
they and their parents had been born here.
they had names like Jones and Sullivan and
Baker.
they were pale and often fat with runny
noses and big belt buckles.
I decided never to become an American.
my hero was Baron Manfred von Richthofen
the German air ace;
he’d shot down 80 of their best
and there was nothing they could do about
that now.
their parents didn’t like my parents
(I didn’t either) and
I decided when I got big I’d go live in some place
like Iceland,
never open my door to anybody and live on my
luck, live with a beautiful wife and a bunch of wild
animals:
which is, more or less, what
happened.
THE OLD GIRL
she was very thin, gray, bent, and each day she
waited at the door of the
First Interstate Bank in San Pedro,
and as the people came and went she
approached them
one by one
and asked for money.
about 75% of the time
I respond to those who ask but with
the other 25% I am instinctively put off
and just don’t have the will to
give.
the frail old woman at the bank put me off, she had
put me off for some time and we had a silent
understanding: I would lift my hand in a
gesture of protest and she would turn quickly
away, this had happened so often
that now she remembers and doesn’t
approach me.
one noon I sat in my car and watched
her
and after 20 attempts she scored
17 times.
I drove off as she was approaching yet another
soft touch, and even so I
suddenly felt real guilt for my unfeeling habit of
refusing the old
girl.
later in the clubhouse at Hollywood
park
between the 6th and 7th races
I saw her again as she was going up the
aisle
frail and bent, a large wad of
paper money clutched tight in a bony hand
clearly on her way to
bet the next race.
of course, she had every right to
be there,
to place her bets with the rest of us,
she only wanted and needed
what most people want and need:
a chance.
I watched as she
reached the top of the aisle and
I saw her stop and speak to a young man
who smiled and then
handed her a
bill.
not to be distracted I
rose and went to the betting window
to place my own
wager.
and, going back to my seat
as I was
walking down the aisle she was
coming up and we saw one another
and without thinking
I held my hand up,
gently, in that familiar
gesture
she’d seen so often
in front of the bank.
she looked at me with
unblinking blue eyes and said,
“fuck you!”
as we passed on the stairs.
she was right, of course, it’s
a matter of survival—General Motors does
it, you do it, the cat does it, so
does the bird, nations do it,
families do it, I do it,
the boxer sometimes does it,
it’s done when you
buy a loaf of bread, it’s done sometimes
out of madness and fear, it’s
done in the doctor’s office and
in the back alley,
it’s done everywhere
all the time
over and over again:
we all want to survive.
it is the inevitable way
the familiar way
the way things
work.
I went back to my seat to
ponder all that but I
couldn’t come up with anything useful at
all …
as the horses broke from the
gate
hustled by the crouching jocks
in their silks—
orange, blue, yellow, shocking pink,
green, chartreuse, a
stampeding rainbow of controlled
fury,
the sun shot through the
screaming
and I suddenly knew that
we are all caught forever in the
self-same trap
and I instantly forgave that old
girl
for belonging.
THE BIRDS
the acute and terrible air hangs with murder
as summer birds mingle in the branches
and warble
and mystify the clamour of the mind;
an old parrot
who never talks,
sits thinking in a Chinese laundry,
disgruntled
forsaken
celibate;
there is red on his wing
where there should be green,
and between us
the recognition of
an immense and wasted life.
… my 2nd wife left me
because I set our birds free:
one yellow, with crippled wing
quickly going down and to the left,
cat-meat,
cackling like an organ;
and the other,
mean green,
of empty thimble head,
popping up like a rocket
high into the hollow sky,
disappearing like sour love
and yesterday’s desire
and leaving me
forever.
and when my wife
returned that night
with her bags and plans,
her tricks and shining greeds,
she found me
glittering over a yellow feather
seeking out the music
which she,
oddly,
failed to
hear.