Storm for the Living and the Dead

by Charles Bukowski

  equity,

  1690 cubic feet, anorexia, the shade of

  Marcus Junius Brutus &

  a new typewriter ribbon.

  a photo of Hemingway pasted in my

  bathroom.

  god christ, Harry, I am a writer,

  and it’s not easy when I am the only one who knows it,

  except maybe Dirty Jane,

  but I’ll probably end up some day so famous

  that I won’t be able to stand myself

  and it will be the razor.

  anyhow, strange ending

  to the same dirty game.

  Bukowski just by to borrow a razorblade—

  wonder what he needs it for

  with all that

  beard?

  men’s crapper

  take this one:

  first before he shits he wipes with

  easy grace the

  lid of the seat, he really shines the damn

  thing

  then he spreads toilet paper over the seat,

  quite neatly, even

  dangling a gob of it where his powerful genitals will

  hang, and then he lowers with

  dignity and manliness

  his shorts and pants

  and

  sits and

  shits

  almost without passion

  scuffling an old dirty newspaper

  between his feet and reading about yesterday’s basketball

  game—

  this you see here is a Man: worldly, and no crabs for this

  baby, and an easy

  a real easy

  shit, and he will wipe his ass

  while conversing with the man who is washing his hands

  at the nearest sink,

  and if you are standing nearby

  his little mouse eyes will fall upon yours without a

  quiver, and then—

  the shorts up, the pants up, the hook of belt, the flush of

  toilet,

  the washing of the hands

  and then he stands before the mirror

  surveying the glory of himself

  combing his hair carefully in neat and

  delicate swoops, finishing,

  then putting that

  face

  close to the mirror

  and looking in and upon himself, then

  satisfied

  he leaves

  first making sure to give you the elbow

  or the ponderous nightmare insult of his empty

  eyes, and then with

  the twirling of his dumbstruck egotistical buttocks

  he leaves the men’s room,

  and I am left with facetowels like flowers

  mirrors like the sea

  and I am left with the sickest of hopes

  that someday the real human being will arrive

  so that there will be something to save

  let alone

  shit

  out.

  like a flyswatter

  write to the president

  it is coming through

  everything is coming through

  some day you will kiss dogs on the street

  some day all the money that you will need will be

  yourself

  it will be so easy that we will go completely or

  seemingly mad and

  sing for hours

  making up words and laughing

  sweet jesus boy

  the dream is so near

  you can touch it like a

  flyswatter

  while working through walls toward

  burial

  the Bomb itself won’t matter

  peanut butter bluebirds torn before your eyes won’t

  matter

  it is just

  the conformation of light and idea and stride all

  bunched

  ganged

  walking along

  a hell of a mighty night

  a hell of a mighty way

  it’s so easy

  some day I will walk into a cage with a bear

  sit down and light a cigarette

  look at Him

  and He will sit down and cry,

  40 billion people watching without sound

  as the sky turns upside down and

  splits the backbone

  open.

  take me out to the ball game

  the girls can take it

  sideways

  standing up

  or upside down on their heads

  or on your

  head

  how the girls can take it

  front or

  back

  bite

  suck

  tongue

  leather

  slap

  punch

  knife

  burn

  tanned or bathed in orgy butter

  drunk

  sober

  high

  angry

  low

  vicious

  happy

  pretending

  the girls can take it

  all you’ve

  got and room for

  more;

  what little you’ve

  got—

  penis, heart, lungbreath, sweatstink

  albatross moan

  elephant insight

  flea scream

  warty hogtongued old men

  young boys with sad pimples

  madman and genius

  butchers and nazis

  sadists and simpletons

  gas men

  ass men

  half-men

  elf-men

  bellboys—

  how the girls can take it,

  you can drive a Helm’s Bakery truck through it

  whistle blowing

  you can play a harmonica with it,

  make men jump bridges for it

  or because of it

  or because of it not,

  but it just isn’t all that good

  farting

  legs back in ridiculous supine position,

  it’s a kind of a cunty trick to chop the blueness out of your

  eyes

  to boggle your ass like a looney

  praying for ejaculation proof

  of some pre-created

  cardboard

  schoolboy Manhood.

  the girls can take it

  will take it

  can take you

  make you into a Captain of Industry or

  an eater of shit,

  anything they want

  they can bury you, marry you

  flog you

  cover you with icing like a cake

  put your dick into a jar of black widow spiders

  and make you sing

  TAKE ME OUT TO THE BALL GAME!

  the girls walking along on Sunday mornings

  can make you think of Mahler

  the paintings of Cézanne

  they can make you think of quiet things

  quiet true and easy

  things;

  how they sway and glide in their yellow and

  blue dresses . . .

  they’ve put half the madmen beating their padded walls

  where they are, god,

  I once chased one half across the state of Nevada

  and when I spun her around

  I saw I had been chasing the same ass

  but it was upon the body of another woman!

  I’ve cleaned out entire bars in my fury,

  tried to drown myself

  in dirty apartment house bathtubs,

  and for what?—

  a cunt.

  a hole in the wall.

  a mirage.

  cheese on the windowsill

  covered with flies.

  how the girls can take it.

  how the girls can bring it on.

  keep it going.

  the Soviet ta
nks rolled into Prague today

  filled with their children.

  the girls wear flowers in their hair.

  I love them.

  I thought I was going to get some

  I had just vomited out the door of my car

  had mixed reds, wine, beer and whiskey.

  late Saturday night

  no, early Sunday morning;

  I couldn’t take much more; I was always

  killing myself

  ending up in jails, hospitals, doorways, floors . . .

  translated into 7 languages

  taught in half a dozen modern lit. courses,

  I still didn’t know anything,

  didn’t want to;

  I finished the last retch

  closed the door

  and swung east on Sunset—

  when I saw this thing with long blonde hair

  vomiting, really letting it

  go—spitting out the rotten life the rotten booze—

  the slacks were down, dragging,

  ass-bare under the cardboard Hollywood moon—

  the thing was really sick:

  it heaved, then moved down a little ways,

  heaved, all that white ass,

  and I thought, shit, I’m gonna get me some—

  it’s been about 2 years and I’m tired of writing about

  hand-jobs—

  but when I got up close

  I saw that they weren’t slacks but pants;

  it was just a long-haired kid with a big naked ass,

  but then, like my buddy Benny used to say—

  “what the hell difference does it make?”

  and I was just about to pull over by him

  when the squad car saw him

  and cut in between us

  and the two cops leaped out

  quite happy and excited with their find—

  “HEY, MOTHER, WHAT YOU DOING WITH YOUR BUNGHOLE

  SHOWING?”

  the kid spread his legs, threw his arms up into the air.

  “HEY, YOU!” one of the cops yelled at me.

  I cut my lights and slowly moved on out as if I hadn’t

  heard. then put it to the floorboard at the first

  right. at Gramercy Place and Hollywood Blvd. I stopped

  opened the door and

  vomited again.

  poor son of a bitch, I thought, instead of

  taking him home or to a hospital

  they’ll take him to jail—all that white ass.

  maybe they’ll take some of it. well, it was too late for

  me.

  I closed the door, turned on the lights, drove on,

  trying to remember where I

  lived.

  charity ward

  and they threw me in a cellar for 3 days

  and it was a very dark place, and it seemed as if

  everybody were insane down there and that,

  at least, kept me happy. but every now and then

  a big bastard who called himself

  “Booboo Cullers, the big man of the Avenues!”

  would come around, I mean he would get out of his bed

  and he was huge and mad and I was weak, very,

  and he would beat the other patients with his fists,

  but I’d always manage to bluff him

  I’d pick up my water pitcher

  raise back left-handed, curse, and aim.

  Boo gave off.

  after carrying off 6 dead

  one by natural causes

  5 by the hands of the wondrous Booboo Cullers

  the big man of the Avenues,

  they strapped down the huge Booboo

  with great difficulty,

  and I watched while the wards beat against his

  face and his belly and his genitals until he

  stopped screaming and subsided

  and I smiled and realized that the word

  Humanism meant

  only the most comfort for the most humans,

  which I thought was

  very nice.

  like that

  one of the most beautiful blondes of the screen

  unbelievable breasts hips legs waist

  everything,

  in that car crash

  it took her head right off her

  body—

  like that—

  there was her head rolling along the side of

  the road,

  lipstick on, eyebrows plucked, suntan powder on,

  bandanna around hair, it rolled along

  like a beach-ball

  and the body sat in the car

  with those breasts hips legs waist,

  everything,

  and in the mortuary they put her together again,

  sewed the head back

  on,

  jesus christ, said the guy with the thread,

  what a waste.

  then he went out and had a hamburger, french fries

  and 2 cups of coffee,

  black.

  phone call from my 5-year-old daughter in Garden Grove

  hi, Hank!

  I’m still climbing the tree and I haven’t fallen

  out, so I guess I’ll never fall out

  now . . .

  tuesday night! mama, mama, Hank’s coming to see us

  tuesday night! can we sleep together, Hank?

  that’s nice. and we can play in the sandbox before

  dinner.

  you know, we cleaned it out, Granny and mama and me,

  we hosed all these spiders out and we

  cleaned the awning. there’s only one place where it’s

  all fucked-up . . . what? I said, “there’s only one place

  where it’s all fucked-up”

  it’s down in the corner

  and you and I can dig that

  goop outa

  there . . .

  the solar mass: soul:

  genesis and geotropism:

  now let me attempt to

  attenuate Veechy’s larynx greatness:

  for what man of the time could have

  said:

  “Spooks, Sparks, Spindels—stern strapsin.

  Goad oospore from the opine ophite.”

  Stithy!

  and this was before

  Pound, Olson, Williams, John

  Muir.

  “Plan planifolious planimeters!” he once wrote to

  me.

  “By the beard of the quinquangular rock,” I rejoined

  him, “you’ve struck it!”

  I visited him in Italy on All Fools’ Day

  and his mastery of the punctate pulvilli

  never left me in doubt

  drear.

  “Trepan,” he said, “ode—whist!—attar astragals.”

  it was the last. I saw. of him. Veechy had

  emblazoned embouchures, cryptonyms, drosometers;

  let the favose favor of him

  ring through the ruck,

  rubefacient, and give too, rustle in the

  rutabaga.

  hooked on horse

  we used to work on stools next to each other.

  he was black and I was white

  but this isn’t a racial thing—

  we were horseplaying buddies

  and we’d sit there sticking letters

  all night and through overtime.

  our eyes looked like junkies’ eyes:

  we were hooked on Horse.

  about 2 A.M. I would leap up and throw all my letters down,

  “o, jesus!” I’d yell, “o, jesus christ!”

  “what what?” my buddy would ask.

  I’d stand there with a cigarette burning my lips:

  “o, sweet jesus, I’ve got it! I’ve got it! o, sweet jesus,

  it’s so simple! it just came to me! why didn’t I think of it?”

  “what is it?” he would ask, “tell me.”

  then the supervisor would run up:


  “Bukowski, what the hell’s wrong with you? man your case! have

  you

  gone crazy?”

  I’d stand there and calmly light a new cigarette:

  “look, baby, stand off! you bug me! let me be the first to tell you,

  baby,

  my working days here are definitely limited! I’ve got it! I’ve really

  got it

  now!”

  “your working days here, Bukowski, are definitely limited! now

  man your case and

  stop screaming!”

  I’d look at him like a dog turd and walk down to the

  crapper. why hadn’t I thought of it before? I’d buy a place in the

  Hollywood

  Hills, drink and screw all night, gamble all

  day.

  then I’d walk back, feeling calm.

  it would be all right until 4 a.m. and then my buddy would leap up

  throwing his mail all over the case:

  “it’s all over! it’s all over! I’ve got it! o, my god, I’ve got it!

  it’s so simple! all ya gotta do is take the horse that . . .”

  “yes, yes?” I’d ask.

  and the supervisor would come running down again

  and ask my buddy:

  “now what the hell’s wrong with you? you crazy too?”

  “look, man, back off! get your face out of my face

  before I cut you loose!”

  “you threatenin’ me, man?”

  “I’m tellin’ you, I’m through with this job! now back

  off!”

  we’d run to the track the next day to make our kill

  but that night we’d be back on our postal stools, as

  usual. of course, it doesn’t make much sense to work for 20 or 30

  bucks a night

  when you lose 50 bucks a day. he quit first and I soon

  followed. I see him at the track every day now.

  his wife takes care of him. “I finally got my play straightened out,”

  he tells me.

  “sure,” I say and walk off, thinking, that son of a bitch is really crazy,

  then I walk toward the 5 win window to place a bet on my newest

  angle play,

  all you do is take the speed rating, add it to the first 2 figures

  in the money

  earned column, then you . . .

  fuck

  fuck the censors

  and fuck squiggly joe

  and fuck fuck

  and fuck you

  and fuck me

  and fuck the blueberry bush

  and a jar of mayonnaise

  and fuck the refrigerator