The Roominghouse Madrigals (2 page)

A question put to me quite often is, “Why do your out-of-print books cost so much?” Well, they cost so much because that’s what booksellers can get for them from collectors.

“I want to read your early poems but…”

I don’t even have some of my early books. Most of them were stolen by people I drank with. When I’d go to the bathroom, they did
their
shit. It only reinforced my general opinion of humanity. And caused me to drink with fewer people.

At first, I made efforts to replace these books, and did, but when they were stolen all over again I stopped the replacement process and more and more drank alone.

Anyhow, what follows are what we consider to be the best of the early poems. Some are taken from the first few books; others were not in books but have been taken from obscure magazines of long ago.

The early poems are more lyrical than where I am at now. I like these poems but I disagree with some who claim, “Bukowski’s early work was much better.” Some have made these claims in critical reviews, others in parlors of gossip.

Now the reader can make his own judgment, first hand.

In my present poetry, I go at matters more directly, land on them and then get out. I don’t believe that my early methods and my late methods are either inferior or superior to one another. They are different, that’s all.

Yet, re-reading these, there remains a certain fondness for that time. Coming in from the factory or warehouse, tired enough, there seemed little use for the night except to eat, sleep and then return to the menial job. But there was the typewriter waiting for me in those many old rooms with torn shades and worn rugs, the tub and toilet down the hall, and the feeling in the air of all the losers who had preceded me. Sometimes the typewriter was there when the job wasn’t and the food wasn’t and the rent wasn’t. Sometimes the typer was in hock. Sometimes there was only the park bench. But at the best of times there was the small room and the machine and the bottle. The sound of the keys, on and on, and shouts: “HEY! KNOCK
IT OFF, FOR CHRIST’S SAKE! WE’RE WORKING PEOPLE HERE AND WE’VE GOT TO GET UP IN THE MORNING!” With broomsticks knocking on the floor, pounding coming from the ceiling, I would work in a last few lines….

I was not Hamsun eating his own flesh in order to continue writing but I had a fair amount of travail. The poems were sent out as written on first impulse, no line or word changes. I never revised or retyped. To eliminate an error, I would simply go over it thus: #########, and go on with the line. One magazine editor printed a group of my poems with all the ########s intact.

At any rate, here are many of the poems from that wondrous and crazy time, from those distant hours. The room steamed with smoke, dizzied with fumes, we gambled. I hope they work for you. And if they don’t, well, #### ## ###.

 

Charles Bukowski
San Pedro, 10-31-87

night has come like something crawling

up the bannister, sticking out its tongue

of fire, and I remember the

missionaries up to their knees in muck

retreating across the beautiful blue river

and the machine gun slugs flicking spots of

fountain and Jones drunk on the shore

saying shit shit these Indians

where’d they get the fire power?

and I went in to see Maria

and she said, do you think they’ll attack,

do you think they’ll come across the river?

afraid to die? I asked her, and she said

who isn’t?

and I went to the medicine cabinet

and poured a tall glassful, and I said

we’ve made 22,000 dollars in 3 months building roads

for Jones and you have to die a little

to make it that fast…Do you think the communists

started this? she asked, do you think it’s the communists?

and I said, will you stop being a neurotic bitch.

these small countries rise because they are getting

their pockets filled from
both
sides…and she

looked at me with that beautiful schoolgirl idiocy

and she walked out, it was getting dark but I let her go,

you’ve got to know when to let a woman go if you want to
keep her,

and if you don’t want to keep her you let her go anyhow,

so it’s always a process of letting go, one way or the other,

so I sat there and put the drink down and made another

and I thought, whoever thought an engineering course at Old Miss

would bring you where the lamps swing slowly

in the green of some far night?

and Jones came in with his arm around her blue waist

and she had been drinking too, and I walked up and said,

man and wife? and that made her angry for if a woman can’t

get you by the nuts and squeeze, she’s done,

and I poured another tall one, and

I said, you 2 may not realize it

but we’re not going to get out of here alive.

we drank the rest of the night.

you could hear, if you were real still,

the water coming down between the god trees,

and the roads we had built

you could hear animals crossing them

and the Indians, savage fools with some savage cross to bear.

and finally there was the last look in the mirror

as the drunken lovers hugged

and I walked out and lifted a piece of straw

from the roof of the hut

then snapped the lighter, and I

watched the flames crawl, like hungry mice

up the thin brown stalks, it was slow but it was

real, and then not real, something like an opera,

and then I walked down toward the machine gun sounds,

the same river, and the moon looked across at me

and in the path I saw a small snake, just a small one,

looked like a rattler, but it couldn’t be a rattler,

and it was scared seeing me, and I grabbed it behind the neck

before it could coil and I held it then

its little body curled around my wrist

like a finger of love and all the trees looked with eyes

and I put my mouth to its mouth

and love was lightning and remembrance,

dead communists, dead fascists, dead democrats, dead gods and

back in what was left of the hut Jones

had his dead black arm around her dead blue waist.

I

 

the cannoneer is dead,

and all the troops;

 

 

the conceited drummer boy

dumber than the tombs

lies in a net of red;

 

 

and under leaves, bugs twitch antennae

deciding which way to move

under the cool umbrella of decay;

 

 

the wind rills down like thin water

and searches under clothing,

sifting and sorry;

 

 

…clothing anchored with heavy bones

in noonday sleep

like men gone down on ladders, resting;

 

 

yet an hour ago

tree-shadow and man-shadow

showed their outline against the sun—

 

 

yet now, not a man amongst them

can single out the reason

that moved them down toward nothing;

 

 

and I think mostly of some woman far off

arranging important jars on some second shelf

and humming a dry, sun-lit tune.

 

II

 

outside, the quick storm turns the night slowly

backwards

and sends it shifting to old shores,

and everywhere are bones…rib bones and light,

and grass, grass leaning left;

and we hump our backs against the wet like living things,

and this one with me now

holds my yearning like a packet

slips it into her purse with her powders and potions

pulls up a sheer stocking, chatters, touches her hair:

it’s raining, oh damn it all, it’s raining
!

and on the battlefield the rocks are wet and cool,

the fine grains of rock glint moon-fire,

and she curses under a small green hat

like a crown

and walks like a gawky marionette

into the strings of rain.

 

 

(Dear Sir: Although we realize it is

insufficient payment for your poems,

you will receive 4 contributor’s copies,

which we will mail directly to you or to

anyone you wish.—Note from the Editor.)

 

 

well, ya better mail one to M.S. or she’ll prob.

put her pisser in the oven, she thinks she is hot

stuff, and mabe she is, I sure as hell wd’t

know

then there is C.W. who does not answer his mail

but is very busy teaching young boys how to write

and I know he is going places, and since he is,

ya better mail ’m one…

then there’s my old aunt in

Palm Springs nothing but money and I have

everything but money…talent, a good singing voice,

a left hook deep to the gut…send her a copy,

she hung up on me, last time I phoned her drunk,

giving evidence of need, she hung up

on me…

then there’s this girl in Sacramento who

writes me these little letters…very depressed

bitch, mixed and beaten like some waffle, making

gentle intellectual overtures which I ignore,

but send her a magazine

in lieu of a hot poker.

 

 

that makes 4?

      I hope to send you some more poems

      soon because I figure that

      people who print my poems are a little

      mad, but that’s all right. I am also

      that way. anyhow—

      I hope

          meanwhile

                you do not fold up

before

          I

          do.

                  c.b.

 

 

I did not know

            that the Mexicans

                  did this:

                        the bull

had been brave

            and now

                  they dragged him

                              dead

around the ring

            by his

                  tail,

                        a brave bull

                              dead,

but not just another bull,

                  this was a special

                              bull,

and to me

            a special

                  lesson…

                        and although Brahms

stole his
First
from Beethoven’s

                 
9th
.

                and although

the bull

      was dead

                  his head and his horns and

his insides dead,

                  he had been better than

                        Brahms,

                                    as good as

                              Beethoven,

and

as we walked out

            the sound and meaning

                  of him

kept crawling up my arms

and although people bumped me and

stepped on my toes

the bull burned within me

            my candle of

                  jesus,

dragged by his tail

            he had nothing to do

                        having done it all,

and through the long tunnels and minatory glances,

the elbows and feet and eyes, I prayed for California,

and the dead bull

            in man

                  and in me,

      and I clasped my hands

                  deep within my

pockets, seized darkness,

            and moved on.