Screams From the Balcony

by Charles Bukowski

  * * *

  Vagabond no. 2 with the Bukowski material was published by John Bennett in Munich in 1966. Klactoveedsedsteen (named after a composition of Charlie Parker’s) was published in Heidelberg and edited by Carl Weissner, who was to become a frequent correspondent and eventually Bukowski’s literary agent in Germany.

  [To Ann Menebroker]

  September [10], 1966

  good to get call, seriously, tho I didn’t know what to say, got lift. like old times, what, old girl? damn, how we carry on! I guess we often get the deep blues, both of us, and wonder what it all means—the people, the buildings, the day by day death things, the waste of time, of ourselves.

  I’ve thought of phoning you at times but afraid your husband might answer and he’d think I was trying to break up your happy home, which I’m not.

  very odd thing happened today. I got a letter from a street sweeper in Munich, Germany, and he showed a magazine (English-printed in Germany, the editor is a dishwasher) to a postcard seller on the street, an old man, and the old man read my long poem in the mag to a group of young people in the streets, translating from English to German as he went along, this is enough to chill hell out of me. I was originally born in Germany and once spoke the language as a child but now can no longer speak or understand it. and here was this old postcard seller reading one of my poems in GERMAN, in the streets of the land I was born in. who says we don’t return? who says that miracles never happen? unfortunately, the long poem is printed with a couple of pages reversed (Vagabond 2 is the mag), but the message still seems to get through, so what the hell? you’ve got to write pretty strangely to have your poem printed in any order, but, since, in this one I was talking of the old mysteries of the soul plus the good fight, it read almost sensibly. good.

  meanwhile, another German magazine Klacto has taken a couple of my poems. the editor of this one is also very poor. what are all these poor men doing? what crazy souls they possess! it is good to have your own courage but it is also good to take hope and courage from the ways of others. this I haven’t been able to do until lately. some very very strange people are arising, Ann. but mostly they are not arising in America. there is something about this land and its ways that kills almost everybody. there doesn’t seem room or reason for the truly living creature.

  but little miracles keep chipping in to keep me going. an unexpected phone call in the middle of the afternoon from Sacramento; a seller of dirty postcards reading my poetry to children in a foreign land; the Lamp taking a couple of my poems after I had accused them of belonging to the “ladies sewing circle”—now my landlady shows at the door—“come on down and have a beer.” and so I will go on down there and drink with her and her old man the rest of the night. they like me and I am glad. I am glad to be liked. corny? I am glad to be liked by the non-literary people, and the literary ones too. I am glad you are Ann Menebroker. I am glad you phoned. perhaps someday we will meet and it will be very embarrassing and dull, and we won’t go to bed together, but no matter what you think or how odd you think I am, I will still be glad that you were, in many ways, a part of my life, and I especially remember you in the bad times of 3, 4 years ago when I was very close to suicide. it’s been a long sweep of years and I think we are all stronger and better for it. when, often, I do not write or snap or seem the aged crank, do forgive this, for there are still times when the knife still gets close, very close, and things fall apart and I am not fair to people. I think, however, that you know all these things. and since you do, this letter is long enough.

  * * *

  Notes from Underground (San Francisco) was a continuation of John Bryan’s Renaissance. It ran for three issues from 1964 to 1969.

  [To William Want-ling]

  Mid September 1966

  [* * *] Notes from Underground now out, you’ll get your copy soon. I told Bryan yours was the best writing in there, und he agreed. glad you didn’t insist on changes. it reads as a raw, original and sheer-pure work. if the rest of your novel is up to this level, some of your worries are over. everything fit, the conversation and the action. well, balls—before you swell out to python-size, nice to have known you. ya still gonna drop me a card after you’re famous asshole? good.

  actually, I am drying up on letters. it was a phase, maybe. big arguments along this row last night. I was not in it. everybody drunk around here, all these places. somebody in driveway couldn’t drive. ramming into things. another drunk screaming at him. real loud bingo game. YA WANNA TRY ME? -THAT’S POSSIBLE TOO. I HAD AN ACCIDENT. -YEAH, WHO RAN INTO YOU??? NEVER MIND, WHAT YOU DOIN’ LIVIN’ IN A DUMP LIKE THAT? —I OWN THIS PLACE YOU LOUSY SHARECROPPER! this kind of dialogue. I am listening in the kitchen, drunk, smiling, broke, stupid, enjoying the flare from an electric light overhead. realizing that I am not the only man in the world who is insane. [* * *]

  * * *

  [To Douglas Blazek]

  September 19, 1966

  raining, something by Rossini, coffee here, just took Maria and Frances to their place—all day Sunday recovering from about a week’s drunk, god o mighty, my timecard in hell looks like it’s speckled with henspots—same old blackouts, dizzy spells, balls balls balls what a game! anyhow, rec. all the Assholes, und tanks, babe, your usual lively production, glad to be part of the team, and now Assholes is lined up with the others in the wobbly bookshelf and I kind of feel like a christmas tinsel Hemingway. [* * *]

  I hope the foreword went [* * *] if you use the foreword, fine, it will be foreword #3 [* * *] Sherman, Richmond, Blazek…all odd-cat poets with warm and mad string of melody and punch and message. no regrets, shit, I stand back of these. [* * *]

  I hope you and Norse mend it. I like to think that I understand both of you a little. we are all cut and hammered by so many things that do not always show in the poem directly. these things happen. our strings get out of tune. I know how you have to squeeze the faint and slipping and tired minute to get out one page of that mimeo and here I have an edge on Norse in knowing how it goes…the pains in the back, the neck, the chest, the fucking soul…the foreman’s face again, and what a FACE! Norse, tho an excellent poet, is more the literary and leisurely type, and when coming across him try to remember his diving board is a little different. god, the sun just came up. see what these prayerful lectures of mine can do? but must get to sleep, or the sleep substitute. I’m going to need some moxie to handle them tonight, sick as I feel. I’m known as “rough, tough Hank.” “Hank the Crank.” “Hank the Barber.” but you need fangs down there or they’ll eat you up. I can’t recite Keats to them. better the iron hand. [* * *]

  * * *

  [To Douglas Blazek]

  Early October, 1966

  [* * *] good, you’ll use the foreword, even tho I guess part of it does not jive with your hives. I still hope we learn how to spell “Polypolesian wars.” I am not for deliberate misspellings just for the hell of it. [* * *] I am not being straight-laced but why give them a chance for their dirty mudballs? [* * *]

  * * *

  [To Carl Weissner]

  Early October 1966

  thanks for M[anifesto] for Grey Generation, lively as hell, but don’t know quite how much manifesto in there except life-um jump, which is o.k., of course, very little around. I have been on the drinking thing and very sick, but remember some tape myself, talking with big cat with beard who has run away from 2 wives, changed name and is now letting another woman support him. he has children somewhere, both poetry and in flesh. now new name. he didn’t drink. took some stuff. I drank and took some stuff. most talk utter waste, of course, most of the time looking at electric light or wondering how stupid I am. and realizing I am much more unhappy than anybody I have met. I have a reputation for toughness, I don’t know where it came from. I once tried to bust up a few heads and a guy’s house, but, bah, that was sometime back. listening now to an opera that is putting me to sleep but that is all there is on my radio and I don’t have sense enough to turn it off. [* * *]

&n
bsp; you can talk about poetry and talk about poetry and all you end up with is an old rubber tire full of shit. I mean, we talked somewhat about poetry and it got dull. then I told stories about jail, drunks, whores, my father, and it got better. then maybe about the last 2 hours we found the recorder was not recording well. all that wisdom LOST! about a beancan full.

  I can’t seem to get straight around here. I have 15 or 20 poems I have scribbled into notebooks but can’t seem to get them on typer, and a couple of editors asking for stuff and I can’t even give them the joy of rejecting me. I think my chicken-shit job has drilled a hole into me and the whole city is riding through me with dirty boots on and dripping condrum. [sic]—if I could get my hands on a good young piece of ASS!! ah. [* * *]

  drunk outside staggering into hedge of thorns. I know that hedge of thorns. we are all drunk around here, all unhappy. we can’t sleep. we are tired of talking. when we shit we sit on our ivory stools dumbfounded that something actually seems to be happening at last. we are proud of our shit. an act. our shit is as good as anybody’s shit. old hollow god, try to ace us out here! [* * *]

  god damn, it’s ten o’clock. got to quit typing. the law, the law. the little drunken fists banging my rented walls!

  * * *

  [To Douglas Blazek]

  October 14, 1966

  [* * *] this time until Jan. is the overtime season and also I have to pass a rather diff. and searing time burning dull flaggelette exam to hold this job I hate, so it will seem Time done shitted all over me, but if you’d care for me to read some books and give you capsule digest with shark tooth, o.k., send me some books and I will submit wonderful reviews like nobody ever read top of spaghetti eating contest. it will give me excuses not to study chicken-shit exam. but remember, I do not like very much poetry and I will have to say so. I DO NOT MEASURE BOOKS AGAINST OTHER BOOKS, I MEASURE BOOKS AGAINST MYSELF. further, I know I have plenty of blind angles but it is only by nursing and mother-nourishing my prejudices that I feel better, and the longer I nurse them the more they seem like truth, and I find that this being holy and kind and broad-minded toward others makes me unholy toward myself. I guess what pissed me most as a child was being 2 feet tall and having to take all that shit from those (parents) who were automatically in control of me through nature’s and society’s big dumb dragging asshole. now that I am six feet tall (minus ½ inch…why quibble…I am damn well covered with 220 pounds of beerfat and my feet and breath stink much of the time) the control is extended to other hands and other ways. [* * *]

  Menebroker—all these letters through the years—enough to give a musty candle a hard-on. [* * *] now all this talk from dear Ann about offensive obscenity

  o b s c e n i t y

  even the word THE WORD WANTS TO MAKE ME RAM MY DICK THROUGH A CEMENT WALL, and she—knows it. you follow? of course you do. this Tom Wolfe she talks about—You Can’t Go Home Again, Look Homeward Angel, so forth—completely bad writing, very bad writing, the worst, he drivels his jackedup juvenile romanticscockism all up and down the pages wearing you out like a cheap pair of stocking wear out. in the summer. of course, the first time you read him, if you’re young enough and haven’t been scraped too much by prune-picking machines, he really seems like the REAL THING. there are many writers only good the FIRST time you read them—Saroyan, the short stories of Chekhov, Upton Sinclair’s lancing for a Utopia, Sinclair Lewis who seems to be writing from notes from his sleeve, Conrad, Jack London, Gogol, Gorky…but the second time around it is like reading a column on sports by a fattened and spoiled and stale columnist. calumny. cunt. crap. to hell with Tom Wolfe, I shit on his grave. [* * *]

  * * *

  [To Ann Menebroker]

  October, 1966

  [* * *] on obscenity, I don’t know much about it except that it (the charge or talk about it) frightens and bothers so-called honest writers. to me there is nothing obscene about sex or bodily function (tho both become a mess sometimes); the only obscenity is bad writing on the subjects. good writing or pure Art is never obscene no matter what the subject, wordage, painted or sculpted matter. I don’t think a hell of a lot more than that can be said. I suppose then it is only up to us to decide what is good, what is Art or what is not. and that’s where roads and swords cross—Artistic moralities. what may be Art to me may not be Art to you and therefore obscene, or the other way around. and the line of demarcation is different in each of us. in other words we are never going to agree—you or I or anybody else, just what is obscene and what isn’t. so no need for me to go on talking about it. [* * *]

  * * *

  [To Carl Weissner]

  November 2, 1966

  [* * *] they raided Richmond’s bookshop in Santa Monica, Calif., taking around 2 dozen books, including some of mine, and also took a letter from the typewriter that Richmond was typing to me. 20 centuries of civilization, semi-Christian, and we haven’t gotten anywhere. the publication of his newspaper the Earth Rose got their eyes stuck upon him. headline: FUCK HATE.

  Whereby, on this day we able minded creators do hereby tell you, the Establishment: FUCK YOU IN THE MOUTH. WE’VE HEARD ENOUGH OF YOUR BULLSHIT.

  inside, poems by Bukowski, Richmond, Buckner.

  4 arrests so far. Richmond out on bail.

  [* * *] that hour I did sleep I had a terrible dream that a snake bit my cock. only I never saw the snake. only a kind of voice told me. and sure enough I looked down and there was this very clean ugly hole right on top of my cock (in the dream, babe) and when I awakened and saw that my string was o.k. I felt a little better. maybe it’s the jug of table wine. so, then, enough. beware the hammerhead albatross.

  * * *

  Weissner eventually published extracts from Bukowski’s letters to him in Klacto, no. 23, Sept. 1967.

  [To Carl Weissner]

  November what 18?, 1966

  [* * *] by the way, you asked, should you like to run excerpts from any of my letters, please do. although I have an idea I have not written much. it is odd, but letters from you seem to calm me, give me some place…I do not quite stare at those rusty razor blades in the same dream-like stutter-stance. I do not mean that I need honey-pie custard soothing, but statements of actual fact and torture of men within civilization make me realize that I am not the only man alive who has to fight himself to keep from driving an ice pick straight down his bellybutton. [* * *]

  I get my limbo kicks with my drawings…like to draw people fucking each other, strangling each other, staring at walls, smoking cigars, lost among bottles under an electric light. once had a book of drawings due out but the guy just collected money on the ads and now sits on the drawings and no book, no response to inquiry, no return of drawings. a real shit. the world of the arts is full of shits too, both editors and writers, so beware, Karl. I was an editor once and I got some very nasty responses, espec. to my one or two page rejection slips which I used to write everybody. instead of soothing rejection this simply brought out the fangs, yellow ones, esp. from writers of reputation. “who the hell are you? I’ve never seen your name on any of the little magazines? how can you tell me about my work?” so forth. or a simple little slip back saying “SHIT.” it was true, I hadn’t begun to write. I began at 35. but I knew whether I liked a poem or not. and why. and men don’t write with their reputations; they write, most of them, with typewriters. each time you sit down reputation is gone with yesterday’s sun; every man begins even again. right now, I am very glad I do not have a hotshot reputation—it keeps me clear with myself. [* * *]

  good that Norse is mending. I can’t say enough about his work. he is one of the few men whose work lifts me. some of the more famous leave me quite flat and empty, and angry with their dull tricks and empty kookoos. but Norse has this CLASSICAL SENSE OF REALITY. he can’t write a bad line; I’ve never seen one. he uses the language perfectly. I don’t. my work is full of stone, clipped little droppings out of the side of broken mouth. they have kicked too much shit out of me. I try to stammer out a phrase o
f fire but by the time I get it from my head-gut to the page it begins to look like an ad for a used car. my vocabulary dribbles down more and more to 30 or 40 words and there isn’t anything I can do about it. Norse tells me how (in his work) but I can’t follow him, I have to play with my own marbles. treat him well, he is one of the great ones of our rather strange times. [* * *]

  Burroughs, Ginsberg…how does it feel to be communicating with the Lights of the Age, and also with me. B. and G. have disappointed me at times, but let’s admit that they have done things, and that no man creates pure Art day after day. me, I get rejected enough and it’s good for the asshole, it make my cock hard. the editor of Illuminations writes that Creeley attacked me at some place, he named some name, a club or reading place I’d suppose and the editor defended me. that Creeley searched me out for attack shows that I am functioning along the right trail. Creeley’s type of writing has always disturbed me at being anti-life, scratched-out with snob and comfortable wire. that he has noticed the opposite of his writing and that it bothers him, that’s fine. I do not say that sometimes Creeley does not create Art; he does not create my kind of Art. the years that I have worked in slaughterhouses and factories and gas stations and so forth, these years do not allow me to accept the well-turned word for the sake of the well-turned word…. there must be more for me or I am just another suicide in a cheap room or in the alley or in the sea of in the gas cloud. I do not treat my work as holy or necessary except to myself. the reason I send it out? to see if I am totally mad or not. I think. I think, but am not sure. there may be some ego there too. Charles Bukowski on a page. so that when I roll over in a drunk tank or am having my guts cut out or my ass cut out or my soul cut out, I feel like I’ve saved a fraction, a match stick. save what you can under all conditions, that’s my motto, hurrah! it’s only the man who gives it ALL away who is truly ugly, who does not deserve to walk under a tree and inherit the earth. [* * *]