Screams From the Balcony (45 page)

 

Penguin Books published selections by Bukowski, Norse, and Lamantia in their Penguin Modern Poets series (no. 13), but the book did not appear until 1969
.

 

[To Carl Weissner]

September 26, 1967

hello, Karl: god damn it, I mean, hello, Carl Carl
Carl
:

[* * *] heard from Nikos Stangos,
PENGUIN BOOKS
, I think it is some of Norse’s dirty work. anyhow it appears Norse und myself and one other, maybe Lamantia, will possibly appear in their next poet’s series of 3-in-a-book. which would feel very strange to me. now I am trying to put Stangos on Al Purdy. I consider Purdy and Norse the two best living poets, and it would make me feel strange, good, godly, golden to run in a book with these 2 magicians. Stangos is a new editor and he’s had his fill of the run—Olson, Creeley, Dorn, Whalen, Snyder, so forth, who, for me, are too architechial [
sic
] and mathematic. but, shit, it could probably fall through, and I am ready for that too. or maybe not, because hearing from Stangos he feels very warm and real and ready to take the flyer. he does not appear to be the backout type. I sense that he ready for the gamble. Norse and I have been in the underground cobwebs for so long that I feel that any type of good luck will not now destroy us or make us careful writers—that is not too careful to keep taking shots in the dark dark dark. I think we are now too old to think of anything but the days as they are, with us hanging there, drawing these things, and waiting. no school, ho, no politic, just the typer and the walls. [* * *]

[To John Martin]

October 18, 1967

been meaning to write. your special delivery royalty check bounced me out of bed at 7:30 a.m. Sunday morning. almost didn’t answer door. but the enclosure was well worth it. people who have seen the
Curtains
drool over it. I mean, the printing, layout, so forth.[* * *]

[To Thomas Livingstone]

October 18, 1967

have been fucked-up, drinking, so forth, general decline of the psyche, so forth, and so late answer. yes, I liked your writing in
Nothing Doing in London
, they just sent me your pages. the part with the guy in the phone booth, the whole phone booth bit was an immense and startling piece of writing. the pages sent me had laid around on my battered coffee table for a couple of weeks, and finally one day in a fit of depression, I though I was going cuckoo, real deep blues and no way out except all the way, and then I picked up your work. when I got to the phone booth I started laughing. real good writing makes me laugh; if not out loud, then kind of inside, but yours had me laughing outside too. I’m crazy this way. let me say that your writing saved the day for me. that day, anyhow. what luck. what’s going to save the future days, if anything, I don’t know.

on books. frankly, Purdy’s last book was not as good, and maybe the one before that not as good…. I mean, if you’re going to get Purdy, try to get
Poems for All the Annettes
. 2$. the publisher is
CONTACT PRESS
, 28 Mayfield Ave., Toronto is the address listed and I think Toronto is in Ontario, Canada. the book may be sold out, tho. might be better to write Purdy [* * *]

my own stuff is out of print and I am out of copies, so hell. but have just corrected first proofs on something to be called
At Terror Street and Agony Way
, a bunch of poems somebody had handed to somebody and somebody had stuffed in their closet and then later somebody had put them on tape, and there I heard them in a place up in Silverlake hills, and I said I wrote those poems and the guy said hell yes, John gave them to me when he was running his magazine, and I said, so that’s what happened to them. meanwhile a guy bugging me to do a book, so I took the lost poems to him, threw in 4 or 5 new ones and he had, we had, the book. I’ve got about 500 poems out there missing. I mean people don’t return them. I never see them again. fuckers. real shits. so well. a book of
new
poems will be out early next year, no title yet, but
this
book
At Terror Street and Agony Way
will be out
soon
, like I say, at printer’s. publisher wants $4 for the mother, Black Sparrow Press, p.o. box 25603, Los Angeles, Calif. 90025.

I hope some of this helps you out. now the clock hands dig into my back. how’s that for corn? anyhow, time running out, game must go on, all that shit. so, here I go. [* * *]

[To Douglas Blazek]

October 30, 1967

[* * *] yeah I’m still writing columns most of the time for
Open City
and I’d clip and mail some of these to you but I am tired,
TIME TIME TIME
slugs me up the side of the head, saying old man, you got nerve. lay down.

give it up.

admit you’re dying

so if I get out the scissors and start clipping the things I’ll feel pretty damned silly, like I am being watched.

[* * *] your problem is the same as mine—difficult to transmit the living juice from gut to outside speech, almost impossible. and. not to pat our broken backs, but I think that’s the way the good guys fail. watch the fluid-speech, interesting boys—they have coconut brains. anyhow, you ever hit town, mother, phone. I will never forget the old long letter days, the days of
Confessions
and
Assholes
. them was good daze, babe. you in your factory. me where I am now. both being burned alive and not a fucking thing to do about it. bung-holed, axed, knifed, smeared in our own bloodshit and then told by an eyeless rat with a tin badge that we were not doing well enough, missing too many mondays and spitting out blood into the urinals. your letters got me through some days. it was a time. [* * *]

[To Douglas Blazek]

November 3, 1967

[* * *] on the dick-print thing I thought it over and I can’t help you. at first I thought
SENSATIONAL
, why not? like Hedy Lamar strung to a cross at any age. but later I got to thinking—no, dad, you’re too
OLD
to print your cock across a cover. leave it to some hairy young cat. I am not crying the old-age blues, Blaz, I mean it just doesn’t work to have some old beggar like me print his cock. it shuffles over into the area of madness that way, which is o.k., only I am mad enough crazy now. I hope you understand and do not think me chicken-shit. I go on instinct, and for me the thing does not seem spiritually sound. o.k. I let you down.

[To Louis Delpino]

November 7, 1967

I’ve kind of dropped out of the letter-writing phrase [
sic
] in order to batch up enough glue to hold myself together a bit longer. the letter-writing thing can become a trap—I started by writing one or 2, then it got to three or four, then it got to 13 or 14, and all I was doing was writing letters. now, if this were my prime purpose, fine enough, but there are other things to do along the way too—like taking a good crap or inking out a sketch or catching a few winners at the track, or just staring at walls. wondering about toes and your waste, and what the game was about. there are
TIMES TO DO NOTHING
. very important times. hard to get between women and jobs and sickness and and and…so, the writing of too many letters to too many people can get to be like carrying 50 pound rocks back and forth during your few moments of leisure. but people will get pissed; they will think you’re up tight or writing President Johnson or essays for the
Atlantic
. me, I’m hanging onto the slippery walls.

[To Douglas Blazek]

December 16, 1967

hello virile captain slugger of the gross elephants:

no, not going with the overtime, too sick, really, washed-out, parts broken, and you might be walking down Haight any day now and somebody will come up to you and say, “hey, Blaz, you remember this Bukowski guy?” “yeh.” “well, he died.” even Bukowski can die. Hemingway did, and they say, Christ. well, christ, christ, so I am hanging on, barely. (I will write you a letter some day when I am 70. from the fountains of hell.)

hope to enclose last column of Dirty Old Man. I can’t enclose them all.
Open City
has moved over to a fairly respectable boulevard, near City College, and I hadn’t been over until today, and some of my fears were true. I mean as soon as the publications begin moving up a little, they begin to operate like he dear madam’s exclusive fly suckoff parlor, extra phone, new hustlers and con-men, take-over chaps, and the volunteers get younger with tight dressers and cool pussies of snobbery. it wasn’t too bad today but I did detect a bit of it, and I foretold to a buddy of mine who used to write for them but no more—“as soon as we help them make it they will have no use for us. bad writers will take over, the pages will be ¾ ads, and the rest will be unreadable.” I’m not saying they’ve gotten to that yet but swinging in the door here was this receptionist and she gave me this look like, “if you’re the trashman, he’s already been here,” but I busted right past her cool cunt and hollered “Bryan Bryan where ya at?” I saw him nailing a board to the wall and he said, “Hey, Bukowski!” and the cool cunt musta read the paper because when she heard “Bukowski” she hiked her skirt 4 inches, spread her legs and her pussy started to hiss Yankee Doodle Dandy thru her bargain basement panties. but maybe they won’t get up too high down there, I hope not, anyhow, one column a week is almost too much for a dying man and maybe I am looking for an excuse to quit. quitter, quitter; dirty dying old man. all right, all right. [* * *]

sure, man, run some of my letters, would like to see, for whole thing becoming covered with a kind of moss and I feel dead already & would like to see that I did gabble about in my palmier days—when I jacked off with both hands, crosshand stroke, underhand and back up around the ass. would really like to see it; would revive some of my mimes. right now, as far as the writing goes it goes slowly. I wait on myself, feeling badly, feeling the Notre Dame worms crawling in my bellyhairs, I still wait, wait for the poem to come out-butter and tacks and a lady with a limp and beautiful knees going by my window. my window my window my window ah my window. [* * *]

[To Jon and Louise Webb]

[December 27, 1967]

want to thank you for the o.k. to
PENGUIN
on reprint of some of
It Catches
stuff for the
Penguin Poetry Series
. it won’t be out until Xmas ’68, and the royalties are not astounding but if I am around by then whatever bit it is might save me from the pit, the pit of madness, sickness, the row, whatever pit there is, each inch helps save what’s left, so thanks, surely, the o.k., esp. since you are evidently down on me—a column, a Shermanism, whatever the hell, I don’t know, but that’s the way it works. I know that you were very unhappy and worried in Tucson and both not feeling well, and it was a bad time for me to be there. so it goes, but still you were good enough to give the
PENGUIN
O.k., so you do not play small and bitter games and crash a man down because of dislikes. that’s good moxie, and all I can say is “thanks,” which doesn’t seem like very much.

I hope that wherever you are now that things are easier.

I didn’t get the grant. just a form-letter. so it’s try to hang onto the horror of the post office; if it weren’t for Marina I think I’d just go out and lay down in the gutter. everybody I know has either gotten a grant or been offered one, so I guess Bukowski is just shit with the govt. agency, and so I sit and peck at the typer while my toenails bite at my feet. in same mail—a few weeks back—a letter from W. C[orrington] telling me, in essence, that I could dish it out but not take it.

the dog-pack is really after my aging ass.

did
have some luck with
Evergreen
. poem in Dec. issue and they have accepted a rather long one on bullfighting for a future issue.

so the horses began again Tuesday and maybe a little action can help me forget the whole damn poetry scene. it’s good to drink a hot coffee out there, the ice wind from those snow mountains north chilling your god damn shorts as you work out the winner of the first race. that’s as good as anything. we don’t ask much of the gods. just that they keep quiet for a while.

all right, then. punchy, I shape up to stick more letters. in my neat little shit-cage. and remember the good days past. there were some.

[To Douglas Blazek]

January 15, 1968

[* * *] Heard from Penguin & Webb relented, said o.k., so it’ll be Norse, Bukowski, Lamantia, Dec. ’68.

The problem with being a poet is that by the time you get well-known you can’t write anymore. or, at least, not as well. but, still, being young & unknown isn’t the answer either. a lot of them grin out machine-made shit that they think is very real only because
they
like it. then, they quit. to become a good writer takes time & luck & moxie & no special
desire
to
be
a good writer. [* * *]

[To Jon and Louise Webb]

February 25, 1968

[* * *] don’t know if I told you but I have been twice interviewed by the big boys in the post office who don’t quite like the idea of me writing this column “Notes of a Dirty Old Man.” that column has cost me plenty of woe, as you might know. also somebody wrote in to them saying that I was not married to the mother of my child and that we lived separately. the same person also mailed them a batch of “Notes” with certain passages outlined in ink. they didn’t care too much for something I wrote about the post office, plus a thing on sodomy. I told them that I would have to continue writing “Notes,” no matter the result. “Are we to consider the postal officials as the new critics of literature?” I asked them. I also mentioned the
ACLU
. they said that they were not sure of what to do with me because they hadn’t had “a case like this in ten years.” ten years? I wonder who the other guy was? anyhow, I am told that the whole business must be taken up higher for review. I was sitting in a large dark room at the end of a long table with just this little lamp there and these 2 people looking at me. I’ll probably be machine-gunned someday as I walk out this door. joke, of course. or, is it? they asked me if I were going to write anything more about the post office. I told them, probably not. so it might be a truce or they might be waiting for me to really expose myself where they could more easily strap me to the cross.

“have you ever had any books published?” they asked me.

“yes.”

“how many?”

“I don’t know. 4, 5, 6, 7…I don’t know.”

“how much did you
PAY
these people to publish your work?”

ummm, ummm, umm.

[* * *] have really been in very strange mind state lately. seem to be frozen. can’t move or write. 25 or 30 unanswered letters in big coffee can on shelf. Harold Norse seems to be in this same deep freeze—the inability to do anything. shot to shit, sick, weak. it might only be a refueling period. or maybe we’re both finished. difficult to tell. strange that we should both be in the fix at the same time. I consider Hal a much better writer and person than I am, more human, and getting a letter from him is always a big event to me. I hear Anais Nin is trying to get him a grant so he can come here to Capistrano Beach, where he thinks there is a doctor who can cure him. that’s a place down about halfway to San Diego. it would be good to see him. no need to talk. we could just sit around the same room for a couple of days and look out the window, or walk along the beach, say about 6 p.m. among the insane and wild-eyed gulls, we walking along wondering wondering what went wrong with the machinery of everything. [* * *]

met Neal Cassady before he died, up at
Open City
one night. I had some beer with me. have one, I said. he drank the thing like water. “have another,” I said. he was crazier than I was. it was beginning to rain and we all got into the car, Bryan, myself and Cassady. we got one of the famous Cassady rides on the rain-slick streets. then we ate together at J.B.’s and had a few more drinks. Neal was the hero of Jack Kerouac’s novel
On the Road
. about a week after I met Neal they found him dead along some railroad tracks in Mexico. he’d mixed too much booze with nembutal. deliberately, perhaps. [* * *]

[To Thomas Livingstone]

February 26, 1968

well, Mahler’s 10th on and I’m hungover and climbing out, climbing back in again. I read your fuck-piece and that boy is a master-fucker, man; I guess every man wants to be a master-fucker and that every woman wants to be fucked by one, and maybe a few men too. well, I have never been a master-fucker; I am usually too drunk or disinterested or cold-hot; a task, you know. and fucking often turns out to be a dirty task, a trick to do. and, in a sense, I think any man’s crazy who does it with real Art. 2 dogs fucking outdo anybody. so, still, yes, enjoyed your piece.

uh, Stuart still has
Crucifix
. he doesn’t know how to move them, nobody knows he
has
them. [* * *]
Terror Street
out soon. also a tape to be issued of Bukowski reading from some of the poems in book. $10. too high, of course. but John Martin (Black Sparrow) knows his collectors. so he’s only issuing 50 tapes. he knows how to make money printing the poets. his royalties, per issue printed, I think he is the highest in the business. he’s printing everybody now—Creeley, Olson, dozens of names like that, pays them in front upon publication and still makes good $$$$. but he realizes the market is limited—really, you know—so he runs only issues of 150 to 250 books, but he gets rid of them. me, he’s going to do first, he said, 500 then 750 because so many whores taxi drivers sex freaks circus barkers and Fuller Brush salesmen read me. I am easy to understand even when I don’t understand myself.

also have had an old book picked up that has gone from hand to hand, not bad poems really but each person who has touched them has been kissed-off by bad luck, so now I hope Potts don’t eat poison or something. but he’s gone to work on getting Darrell of Glendale to work up the book with his new press, and Charlie completely off screw, he intends to publish, what was it 1,000 copies or 2,000? but sensible enough to charge only one dollar. he also wants to lay money and 150 copies on me, but I tell him, take it easy, kid. he writes poetry, and I met him down here once, we got a little high here at my place. real quiet guy. not much talk. I liked him. I am not much talk either. so we just sat around without strain. anyhow, book called
Poems Written Before Leaping from an 8 Story Window
. c/o Charles Potts, 6433 Telegraph Ave., Oakland, Calif. 94609. Apt. #J. one dollah. I intend to agree with him. I think the fucking thing will sell out. it’s the next poem that counts, we know. it’s the way we walk across the floor. but it would still be well to see things working good all around. we’ve had some coming—good pussy and good luck. I’ll take the latter.

listen, Tommy, the next time an old lady very active in church work leaves fleas and lice behind, you tell the man. you missed a perfect shot. I been kicked out of too many rooms for being a drunk and a madman, a bringer-in of ladies of the street. kafka would have spilled the beans on her; me too. if a church lady has fleas and lice the church is fucking her up. sometimes I think twice before killing a fly, but I always end up killing it if I can. all that stupid flesh recognizes is shit. in a pigpen you wouldn’t stand a chance of getting a piece of ass. let us know where we are, then we can be kind when kind is sensible. when kind is insensible we are only adding to error. we’ve got enough help with that. end of lecture.

I have written 40 or 45 weekly columns for the local underground newspaper
Open City
. column called “Notes of a Dirty Old Man.” some smut-peddler in North Hollywood who thinks that I am dirty instead of literary wants to run columns in book-form. hinted $500 to $1000 advance. but I am so fucked-up, job killing me, health bad, sucking on beer bottle, smoking smoking, I get on phone now and then and talk to the guy, hard to reach, must get past his fucking switchboard, “this is Charles Bukowski,” I say, “I’d like to speak to Mr. X.”

“Charles Bukowski? are you one of our distributors? your name sounds familiar.”

“no, baby, the only thing I distribute is the end of my cock into wet and throbbing pussies.”

she gasps and connects me with Mr. Big.

“ah, Bukowski!” he says. “what is it?”

“ummm, ummm,” I say.

“what is it?”

“I’m tied up. can’t get out to see you. must get things in order. tremendous fucking job.”

“I know. yes. well, Charles, line it up. can you call me Tuesday?”

“I think so.”

“o.k., you call me Tuesday.”

Tuesday comes. she gasps and connects me.

“listen, Mr. X, I got fucked-up. I don’t know, you know.”

“I don’t understand.”

“ummm, ummm.”

“what?”

“how about next week? I should have all the stuff lined-up by then. hell, I gotta buy some kind of artist’s portfolio to haul the crap down in and I hate to go into Art stores, everybody is fake as hell and it takes ten years off my psyche.”

“o.k., call me Wednesday next week, line it up, and then phone me.”

“o.k.”

I think I’ve had 5 or 6 conversations with this guy but I haven’t moved an inch. I kind of know what Harold is bothered with over in England:
THE FROZEN MAN IN THE BARGAIN BASEMENT OF HELL
. I can’t
move
. it doesn’t matter. after all, who really wants fame or money or pussy or anything you have to
STRAIN
at or
WORK
for?

lay back, wait for the Junkman to come get you. it seems the only sensible thing. world-renown means world-error. there’s never a way out. sit and wait for the ax to fall. just try not to be shocked by its fall. your head, my head. balls.

all right, man, they are beating on the walls.

I am not much good at constant correspondence. just felt like writing tonight. and your letter was down there on the floor. you were the target.

all right, another beer, another smoke, then to bed, waiting for ye Ax, ah.

[To Carl Weissner]

February 27, 1968

yes, I too have 35 or 40 unanswered letters, but now entirely beyond me to answer them; I can’t keep up; for each answer to a letter, 3 more come in. I am not in the letter-writing business. I am in a stricken-down stage now, anyhow, bad health, can barely make it about, hand on. I’ve just decided to let people think I’m a shit; it’s easier than answering all those letters. [* * *]

rumors on town hall reading of Bukowski, Corso, Micheline…impossible. didn’t you know I have made it known for years that I don’t read publicly? I am a shit, Carl. just turned down a reading, with fee, at Univ. of Southern Calif. Festival of the Arts. I’ve never read in public, don’t intend to unless it means the difference between starving in the gutter and starving in a closet. I prefer to starve in a closet. have turned down fees of from $200 and $700 and told them to go screw. I believe that if the pricks get a man on stage they get a man jumping through
their
hoop, they make a jerk out of him. I am not an actor, I am a creator, I hope. I do read on tape because this still leaves an area of solitude and peace, but actually I’ve done very little reading on tape and any professional actor could read my stuff better. for a general audience, that is. [* * *]

meanwhile Postoffice has found out I do this weekly column “Notes of a Dirty Old Man” for the local underground paper
Open City
and they look upon it most darkly, they seem to think that some of the work is
dirty
and really not up to what a postal clerk should be doing in his spare time. I have had 2 long interviews with the big boys in long dark rooms and we have sparred back and forth, quietly, neither side giving ground. but, meanwhile, I am still employed and I still continue to write the column. which some smut peddler in North Hollywood wants to put out in book form but I just can’t seem to get out to see him—although Bryan says he is good for $1,000 advance, I am still
FROZEN
. I get smut-peddlar on phone, we talk, I say, “soon soon,” and he says, “fine, fine,” but I just can’t seem to get out there. really
FROZEN
, Carl. can you understand? it’s crazy. people want to do good by me and I won’t let them. I guess I’m just tired. too much going on. and I look down at floor as I type this to you and here is this package,
still there
, looking up at me with its eyeless face, waiting to be mailed to England. ah, England, my England! oh yes, and
PENGUIN
wants to send me advance royalty check on the Lamantia-Norse-Bukowski thing but they also send these
papers
that must be filled out
FIRST
, something about the United Kingdom, I must declare that I am not a member of the United Kingdom or something, 2 or 3 pages, horrible, I can’t get a pen to damned page, and when I do I have to find a Notary Public, some dame will hike her skirt and I will get a hard-on and she will charge me $5 and place a red seal upon the last page of the blue paper if
I EVER FILL IT OUT
! paper, papers, I’ve lost my social security card, can’t get my new registration card into folder on steering wheel of my 57 Plymouth, have lost my state income tax card, new papers to be filled out for govt. partly-sponsored life insurance on job they are trying to kick me out of, 8 or 10 pages, the landlady wants to come in here and put up new curtains, I say, “wait, wait, there are dead bodies in there, I don’t want you to see all the dead bodies.” she laughs, but even she and her husband fuck me up; I just about get straight and she comes on down here and knocks on the door and gets me to come down and they both get me drunk, we sit up all nights singing very silly songs, and I can’t get anywhere. [* * *]

 

Statement
was a pamphlet / manifesto by Robert Kelly, published by Black Sparrow Press in April, 1968
.