Beerspit Night and Cursing (35 page)

June wonsix2

Ya, Sheeriiie:

it appears yr letter was mainly to see the pome I wrote about you I wrote about pound I worked at something but it is plainly to be seen now that the pome is gon I have destroyed it my better judgment saying do so it is a bad poem even if it is dedicated to Martin[elli] and so I tore it and tore it and therefore I cannot enclose it even if I wanted to. if I recall it was not a rough pome almost a pleasant poem and not a long pome and it was almost a love poem and it said Sheri, Pound is old and although i am old i am not that old and I am not Pound but I am Buk which is not as good but it is still light dark light and Pound is in Italy and Pound is old and I am in Los Angeles and I am not so old and so therefore why do we not reach an approximation of love. that is about what I said in the poem. the people said it was well written but too personal and I said it was not well written and not even personal at all, that is was almost laughing without meaning it, but the thing in me said anyhow it is a bad poem so I tore it.

Yes, somebody put a wire in the
Outsider
man Webb and this jazz thing came out which does not reach me at all and which may be my fault, but I have given jazz chance after chance just like a bad whore, but it continues to lie to me. jazz, the essence of it is too thin, too flat; it rests and tickles on the mind, it draws out the weak and simple area of the mind. Jazz deflates. jazz is flesh without backbone. I would rather go to hell on a donkey.

I prefer certain classical pieces, both ancient and modern, that have not been overplayed until here too all essence is lost in hackneyed repetiveness.

Jory is in L.A. now. He knocked on door and found me in bed resting, waiting to go to track. I do wish these people would at least phone. I gave him a beer and went down to the mailbox: yr letter and another. I read them and put them in my pocket. Who? he asked. Sheri and somebody, I said. Is Sheri in San Francisco? I guess so, I said. I am on some kind of bonded word not to expose her whereabouts but I don’t know her whereabouts anyhow. Will you tell her, asked Sherman, that I will be in San Francisco the second week in June? All right, I said, I will tell her.

You are hereby told. I gave him 5 dollars and he left. He is
MAKING IT
here in L.A. The ladies love the boy but I think he is looking for a mother. Or a father. I made a note that that would be the last of the money from me to him. I have starved in cardboard shacks and on park benches and never asked a dime. But this is bitching. I do not like myself when I bitch or compare. I usually do not like myself anyhow, and this only makes it worse. Enough.

Got a notice from my x-wife in Alaska. She is marrying an eskimo. Not won dam do i giv a wit. po’ po’ eskimo. Mi old girl friend died 5:45 p.m. Jan. 22, 1962. It did not go well for me for quite some time and even now it is not so good, but, I am not looking for a mother.

Cuscaden
writes (
Midwest Poetry Chapbooks
) that my 3rd. collection of poems
Run with the Hunted
will be out in about 2 weeks. I had more of a hand in the selection here and I think these poems are both my latter and better. But maybe not. Maybe this kroutpole head iz crumbling. o, mortal wound of nothing, o beast crying in cave, Bukowski done, Bukowski nothing, ayeeie, ayeeie!!! next page babe—

Mead is bringing out a couple of my pomes in
Satis
and there is an article on me by Cuscaden. I do not know what the article says but I think Cuscaden is a little too overboard on me, which is all right as long as I don’t go believing it, and I know all the things that are wrong with me, the things that are weak, wrong, sad. I wonder how strong a man can get? And then I wonder if a piece of steel is any longer human. The perfect sighting is the perfect art: being human and being not-human, somewhere in between there is art. So fuck it. I would rather ride a dinosour to hell.

Another too personal poem:

Remains

Yes again. It is very bad. The jazz bit. It kills or distorts the whole flow of the magazine. It is like a lead in the back. A bullet.

I have much to do now. And when I mean much I mean nothing. Doing nothing. Letting the ceiling have its say. God oh jesus I am glad we eat and shit, I am glad there is music. I am glad there is rye bread; I am glad there are old dogs in the streets. I am glad there is rain and bridges and wine. And sleep.

Look, baby, don’t blow yr brains out.

Or the other either.

Love,

Buk

L.A. Friday

Dear Sheri:

Please disregard last letter. I wrote while intoxicated. I see by yrs that I might have inferred that I wanted to see you. This is child-stuff. You and I would not strike it. I mean, I am not good with people. It is so.

Enclose
Satis
in case Mead did not send. In
review
of my work Cuscaden does not get everything right, and in one case,
So Much for the Knifers
etc., he gets it exactly backwards. But it’s all right. He’s of good intent and knows that I swing the hammer around because I’ve got to.

I don’t know if I wrote in my drunk letter what the next problem will be (except the going on, that is), and the next problem will be to keep from getting the fathead, to keep from believing the bildge about me and so forth. I have seen people like Corso and Ginsburg and Kerourac go the way of self-love, of self-importance. I think I am harder than that but I must be wary. One magazine has accepted 14 poems, another 15, another 6. This can cause trouble. The world, even the Art world, is very corrupt, rotten. They will print you if you have half a name and half a talent. They will print you if you have a
big name and a little talent (or no talent at all). It is up to me not to fall into the pit.

The gods now have me up for test. They are looking down and waiting. I must not add to decay. These walls are mine.

love,

   
Buk
Buk

[
dated by SM 7 August 1962
]

Dear Sheri:

Enclosed review from apparent liberal N. York rag and if one may defend one’s self, the reviewer’s idea of poetry and mine are different: he believing a poem must be fragile, “poetic”, so forth, and I believing…nothing.

I am late for the god damned job and must run like any other legless worm.

No, you nedn’t “expose” yrself to me keep in yr clean light it is best we never see each other

      we fall short

            we fall short

                  we fall short

                          alllove,

BUKOWSKI

L.A.
a Monday in August

Dear Sheri:

be calmed: I do not believe in my subject matter; it is only that I exist in this fashion and I photograph my existence…It is hard as hell to live as a Saint, the nerves give way, and then it would be tough to participate in Sainthood and find out later—like an oyster taken out of its shell—that you were wrong. If you don’t put any chips on the table they can’t rake them in…

Ginsburg and Corso are bothered with self-importance. They run about in various countries holding their names up above their heads while they still shine. They have taken to the worst trap and their writing—their creation—must suffer because they have taken their gift out of the mould and are using it as a wedge into something else. When I go to the racetrack or to bed with a whore, I stand aside. I really do not enter. I am there to record the sounds of another world. I do things without
being
things. My x-wife found this out after 3 years of wifing: “You are nothing but a god damned puritan,” was her way of expressing it. I wouldn’t give her my soul to walk about in her bedroom slippers and she had thought I would be easy taking, “a dupe”, after reading my poems. I am soft as air in part & then there is the hard German steel. I attempt to use these fruititians properly. God and the devil grant I am not too much in error. It would be difficult to self-impose any given laws…only there is a
very odd
thing…I am guided someplace from the back and above. Otherwise I would long ago have been gone over the rapids.

Most poets—if I may call them that—are lost in the slush and hazard of their own work. They do not know the secret and even if you told them the secret they could not use it. When Ezra said “do not worry ab’t yr contemporaries” he said plenty.

Part of the secret is in having somebody in back and above. Part of the secret is in laying down the word. The word must be put on the page so that it is drilled down there, screwed-down, fucked-down, so that it will not brush away. The language must be a
basic
language that does not change. Your Kerwhoreac had an idea of this when he began but he found it too easy and he now beats on it like a drum, and as a consequence, he writes very badly. Basic language does not mean easiness. The
thought must seep down through, and the words without the mind are so much formula and most writers end up formula because they get tired and they write what they want them to write. When you get tired, stop writing. I stopped for ten years. I filled up enough in ten years to write for 200, maybe 2,000. Everything is so simple, and yet they cannot see. Pound saw and Jeffers saw, and the rest of the pages were wasted. T.S. Eliot got pretty and took to the bit and they cut his mouth out. The gods give us this thing and the gods get angry, pretty damned angry when they are wronged.

Somebody at Wagner College wants me to send a holograph(?) of one of my poems and a photo for somebody at Brown University, but this is a hell of a lot of work and I might pass. I don’t like to be photographed and I am—in the world’s eye—a very ugly man.

To publish a magazine like
Satis
would cost between 200 and 250$ for 300 copies, which means you would have to sell them all to break even. Which you don’t do.

Do not become too incensed about
Mead and Rutherford:
their English brand of humour, ya know.

…on the job, I am cracking. I failed an examination last week and the man with the cigar roared back and laughed. My mind simply would not work at the thing, would not pick it up. But these are practicalities and just so much trash.

Good to get yr long letter and know you are trying to guide me through the rapids, and I cannot disagree with anything you say.

Tired today and sick. Drunk last night. I was on radio last night (taped), a reading of some of my poems but by the time it came on (11 p.m.) I was too far gone to listen.

May the gods be kind as possible…

love,

Buk

[
handwritten postcard from the Del Mar Turf Club, postmarked 21 August 1962
]

Dear Sheri

Telephone still in head. All good.

Drove down here (100 mi+), will prob stay 3, 4 days. Hope they run with alacrity.

Wish I were one of your flies.

L.
Buk

L.A. Sept. what? 5, 1962 or 1662 or 1442

Dear Sheri:

Death has me inside a napkin and is ready to wipe its bloody snout face of a head and mouth, gut reaming down into all the shit I have been stepping, making us one. hurrah.

flies walk my head,

talking about buttons.

e.e.
cummings
died.

hemingway died.

Faulkner died.

Jeffers died.

J.Christ died. I am dying, I am dying, I am dying, I am dying, I am dying

to some of us
      sometimes
            come this thing—

that no matter what is done
it is of no matter

but see this, essentially it has
ENDED
, & tho

the grass grows and the dead are buried

we see only thru motion picture eyes

the scene, as they say,

the burning soldiers marching into a golden city:

sigh.

Ezra still breathes and if suddenly not,
he leaves us the W(o) R K

jade-mad butterflies cuarved
      carved curved
            into the sides of rivers