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| Charles Bukowski |
at seventeen i was a Marxist and an idiot.
i read the Beat generation because
everywhere i looked were rules
and the only alternatives I’d seen
were hobos.
then i found the literary misfits
the bad boys
burroughs kerouac whoever
they got it right
and they got right to it
for better or worse
usually worse,
like me
they had no patience
and didn’t love themselves.
reading them is a bit like drinking tasteless beer.
there’s no reason for it.
besides that it’s cheap
and once you’ve gone through two or three
there’s no reason to stop;
two or three just leave you tired.
so you burn through it all,
like the author
and come to the end of a living body
of work
unsatisfied.
so i took a chance
and tried my luck with a different crowd.
i started with Joyce
only to see what i was up against
then went to Baldwin because he reminded me of my mother
and finally settled on Hemingway, the father
i never had, who showed me
that great feat, the novel, could be done.
it became clear that the writers i'd sat around with
the poets
the bad boys
breaking silly little rules
were just like teenagers
who never stopped wearing silly shit.
they wanted desperately to do what the masters did
but never had the patience or bravery
to see if they had the gift.
i feel sorry for them,
but not too much.
sure, sometimes
i worry that i'm drifting to the right,
i'm drifting to the right.
so what?
i wonder how much farther i'll go.
anyway, i'm not afraid of living
any more.
because i met Bukowski.
thank god for Bukowski.
crude dirty old Bukowski.
i met him at the wrong time
and found him sort of juvenile.
i pictured Hemingway saying,
“Just capitalize the letters, Hank. If you have something to say, say it.”
and someone else, who never, God bless them, ever
wrote nearly as much as Bukowski saying,
“Acknowledging the authority of the oppressor in order to subvert their authority
is itself an act of subservience.”
which is
very good
horseshit.
Bukowski was unkempt
and like my old friends he broke the rules.
he began all his sentences with lower-cased letters.
but, what’s different about Bukowski, and what matters,
is that he wrote one hundred poems a night for fifty years
on a typewriter
perhaps if an ordinary man is to accomplish anything
he must cut corners.
so you feel like crying when an amateur mexican boxer goes down.
and you feel like murder when management changes the odds
at the last second of the 8th race
at the Santa Anita racetrack.
feel like cheering when the gamblers climb the gates
and management directs the jockeys to start the race
and a small moan comes from the crowd
as the men
who have nothing but their bodies
lay themselves down on the track
and glance over their shoulders
as the jockeys kick the horses into a gallop
and plunge the animals into them.
for once all the bodies are touching.
there is an exhale
then it's over.
writing thousands of poems
dozens of books
burning like oil
eighty years
whoring
and
gambling
and
pumping the iron.
Bukowski showed up.
if Hemingway’s metaphysic was the bullfight.
Bukowski’s was the horserace.
there were one hundred bad ones for every good one.
and every good one came at the price of ninety nine.
but unlike bullfights or horse races
you never see Bukowski’s bad poems.
after his death they published three books of his poetry
and they’re all good.
one is called
"girl in a mini-skirt reading the bible outside my window."
you can imagine what it's about,
but you'd be wrong.
another is called "art."
here it is:
as the
spirit
wanes
the
form
appears.
Bukowski was cheap
but he wasn’t tasteless.
sit with him.
fifty years at a typewriter
is as good company
as wine.
