Screams From the Balcony (36 page)

 

Larsen’s book is
The Popular Mechanics Book of Poetry,
published by Blazek’s Mimeo Press in 1966
.

 

[To Steven Richmond]

April 12, 1966

[* * *] got to agree with you on the Larsen book. humor is good when it stems from truth—in fact, truth alone is often humorous in itself, makes me laugh. but the humor of artifice—whose worst device is exaggeration—always makes me a little ill because it is just another con game. confined, my last days in the hospital, with some idiot with a t.v. set he never shut off, I was laid open to what the world considered comedy and at the expense of my dwindling sanity. how they made me ill with their obvious extremisms—lying there with my ass torn open, my beautiful walls taken from me. I suppose that the worst is Bob Hope with his flip little cute exaggerations. and his name droppings. I don’t keep much up with the world and he drops these names I never heard of, all supposing to
mean
something. about the only lout I could stand was Jackie Gleason—at his best he showed some showmanship, at his worst he was like the rest. but Larsen, Larsen, no.

 

Bukowski wrote a foreword to Richmond’s book
, Hitler Painted Roses
(Santa Monica, 1966)
.

 

[To Steven Richmond]

April 15, 1966

hang in there on
Hitler
, the more they holler the more you’ll know you are getting closer to the bone. I remember when I was a kid, 16, 17, I was just beginning to play with short stories. came home one night and here were all my clothes thrown out on the front lawn—coats, shirts, shorts, stockings
and
short stories. the old man had dipped into a drawer, uninvited, and had become a literary critic. “No son of mine is going to write stories
LIKE THAT
and live in
MY HOUSE
!” “Come on out here,” I told him, “and I’ll beat the shit out of you.”

be glad
Hitler
curls their neckbones. you are there. [* * *]

[To William Want-ling]

April 18, 1966

[* * *] dull letter. sorry. but have been writing a lot of poems, even a review of Artaud for local liberal rag. the libs too are a kind of jellyfish crowd. I want to see the poor man fed, sure. but don’t make me love him. anyway, surprised they took the Artaud, I hung some strong salty lines in there, using the review as a crutch to slip across some of my own demented and boiling ideas. [* * *]

[Addressee Unknown]

Mid-April 1966

Randy, old kid,—

Frances and I separated now. turning your letter over to her. she is good at writing long (long) equivocal things. you’ll probably get a 6 pager full of…wisdom.

I keep writing my poems and waiting, mainly, to die.

Sorry I am a little short of tonality and space here. All I can hand you is a brick. Love works like machinegun fire. I don’t trust it.

You are a good young kid but you will be broken like the rest of them. Your first mistake was not to take the 5 years rap. It would not have killed you, not nearly as much as the 30 days you are doing now. But that’s the way it works. It’s very tricky. we are finally tricked out of the last of our wits. so be it. so says this drunken voice from the top of a syphilitic mountain.

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????

R
ANDY
P
AGE
—

       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 longshot shit medal. [* * *]

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.