Storm for the Living and the Dead

by Charles Bukowski

  Charles Bukowski,

  dear boy,

  the game is ending and you

  never got

  past midfield,

  punk.

  fact

  I have 90 thousand dollars

  in the bank

  am 50 years old

  weigh 280 pounds

  never awaken to an alarm clock

  and am closer to God

  than the

  sparrow.

  blues song

  pardon the territory of my grieving—

  it’s improper I know,

  maybe even

  hostile

  but the bacon’s burning

  the bacon’s burning

  tall nights

  armed with machineguns

  circle my dizzy and cowardly

  bed

  the

  bacon’s

  burning

  so let’s wipe our silly

  arses

  pretend that we are pleasurable

  meaningful things

  isn’t that the tune

  to try to beat

  the dirtiest trick of them

  all?

  fat upon the land

  all these,

  fat upon the land

  teaching English at the universities

  and writing

  legless

  headless

  bellybuttonless

  poetry

  knowing where to apply for the

  grants and

  getting the grants and

  more grants

  and writing more

  handless

  hairless

  eyeless

  poetry

  all these,

  fat upon the land

  have found a hiding place

  and have even achieved wives to

  attach to their ninny

  souls

  these,

  take paid trips

  to the islands

  to Europe

  Paris

  anywhere

  in order

  it is said

  to gather

  material

  (Mexico, they simply run to on their

  own)

  while the jails are overcrowded with the

  mislaid innocent

  while the hunkies go down

  in the mines

  while idiot sons of the poor

  are fired from jobs

  these

  wouldn’t dirty their hands and

  souls on

  these,

  fat upon the land

  join at the universities

  read their poems to

  each other

  read their poems to

  their students

  these,

  pretend wisdom and

  immortality

  control the presses

  fat upon the land

  as the jail-lines form for half-dinners

  while 34 hunkies are trapped in a

  mine

  these

  board a boat for a south sea island

  to gather an anthologized

  poetry of

  friends

  and/or

  appear at anti-war demonstrations

  without ever knowing what

  any kind of war

  is

  fat upon the land

  they are drawing a map of our

  culture—

  a division of zero,

  a multiplication of

  senseless

  grace

  “Robert Hunkerford teaches English at

  S.U. Married. 2 children, pet dog.

  This is his first collection of

  verse. He is presently working on a

  translation of the poems of

  Vallejo. Mr. Hunkerford was awarded

  a Sol Stein last year.”

  these,

  fat upon the land

  teaching English at the universities

  and writing

  neckless

  handless

  ball-less

  poetry

  such is the manner and the way

  and why the people

  do not understand

  the streets

  the verse

  the war

  or

  their hands upon the

  table

  our culture is hiding in the lace dreams of

  our English classes

  in the lace dresses of our English

  classes

  American classes

  is what we need

  and American poets

  from mines

  the docks

  the factories

  the jails

  the hospitals

  the bars

  the ships

  the steel mills.

  American poets,

  deserters from armies

  deserters from madhouses

  deserters from strangling wives and lives;

  American poets:

  ice cream-men, necktie-salesmen, corner paperboys,

  warehousemen, stockboys, messengerboys,

  pimps, elevator operators, plumbers, dentists, clowns, hot-

  walkers, jockeys, murderers (we’ve been hearing from the

  murdered), barbers, mechanics, waiters, bellboys,

  dope-runners, boxers, bartenders, others others

  others

  until these arrive

  our land will remain

  dead and ashamed

  the head guillotined off

  and speaking to the students

  in English II

  this is your culture

  but not

  mine.

  love song

  I have eaten your cunt like a peach,

  I have swallowed the seed

  the fuzz,

  locked in your legs

  I have sucked and chewed and tongued and

  swallowed you,

  have felt your whole body jerk and twist as

  one

  machinegunned

  and I made my tongue into a point

  and the juices slid down

  and I swallowed

  maddened

  and sucked your whole insides out—

  your entire cunt sucked into my mouth

  I bit

  I bit

  and swallowed

  and you too

  went mad

  and I drew away and kissed

  then your belly

  your bellybutton

  then slid down inside your white flower legs

  and kissed and bit and

  nibbled,

  all the time

  once again

  those wondrous cunt hairs

  beckoning and beckoning

  as I held away as long as I could bear

  then I leaped upon the thing

  sucking and tongueing,

  hairs in my soul

  cunt in my soul

  you in my soul

  in a miracle bed

  with children screaming outside

  while riding on skates

  bicycles at

  5 P.M. in the afternoon

  at that wonderful hour of

  5 P.M. in the afternoon

  all the love poems were written:

  my tongue entered your cunt and your soul

  and the blue bedspread was there

  and the children in the alley

  and it sang and it sang and it sang and

  it sang.

  poem for Dante

  Dante, baby, the Inferno

  is here now.

  I wish you could see

  it. for some time

  we’ve had the power to

  blow up the earth

  and now we’re finding

  the power to leave

  it. but most will have to

 
; stay and

  die. either by the Bomb

  or the refuse of stacked-up

  bones

  and other emptied containers,

  and shit and glass and smoke,

  Dante, baby, the Inferno

  is here now.

  and people still look at roses

  ride bicycles

  punch time clocks

  buy homes and paintings and cars;

  people continue to

  copulate

  everywhere, and the young look around

  and scream

  that this should be a better place,

  as they’ve always done,

  and then gotten old

  and played the same dirty game.

  only now

  all the dirty games of the centuries

  have added to a score that seems almost

  impossible to right.

  some still try—

  we call them saints, poets, madmen, fools.

  Dante, baby, o Dante, baby,

  you should see us

  now.

  the conditions

  presently, under the conditions of the sun

  my world is ending.

  marked by the worm,

  haggled by a world population

  that has no reference to me.

  presently, under the conditions of the sun

  my world is ending.

  my friends, it has hardly ever been

  a kind time.

  I’ve shown courage, drunkenness and

  fear.

  the heart continues to work

  through unquestionable terror.

  under the conditions of the sun

  I make ready to lay down

  the labor, the pain and whatever

  honor is left.

  29 chilled grapes

  the process of learning is devious

  all these windmills

  all this bloody transition

  plugged sinks

  toilet-paper minds

  love’s lie, that naked whore

  dogs with more souls than Pittsburgh millionaires

  wrecked men who thought grace more eternal than cunning

  the process of living is too short and too long

  too long for the old who never find out

  too short for the old who found out

  too soon for the young who never know

  too much for the young who find out

  the process of continuing is possible

  with the aid of alcohol or dope or sex

  or gold or golf or symphony music,

  or deer hunting or learning to dance the funky chicken

  or watching a baseball game or betting on a horse

  or taking 6 hot baths a day

  or hanging it onto yogi

  or becoming a baptist or a guitar player

  or getting a rubdown or reading the comics

  or masturbating or eating 29 chilled grapes

  or arguing about John Cage or going to the zoo

  or smoking cigars or showing your pecker to little girls in the park

  or being black and fucking a white girl

  or being white and fucking a black girl

  or walking a dog or feeding a cat or screaming at a child

  or working a crossword puzzle or sitting in the park

  or going to college or riding a bicycle or eating spaghetti

  or going to poetry readings or giving poetry readings

  or going to a movie or voting or traveling to India or

  New York City or beating somebody up

  or polishing silverware or shining your shoes

  or writing a letter or waxing your car

  or buying a new car or a throw rug

  or a red shirt with white dots

  or growing a beard or getting a crewcut

  or standing on the corner sweating and looking wise

  the process of continuing is possible.

  the process of learning is devious

  all those without hope

  and never knowing it

  the wildflower is the tiger who runs the universe

  the tiger is the wildflower that runs the universe

  and those mad and incomparable human creatures with roach souls

  that I am beckoned to love and hate and live among,

  these must truly someday vanish

  in the dinosaur strength of their ugliness

  so the sun will not feel so bad

  so the sea can throw off the ships and oil and shit

  so the sky can clear of their mean greed

  so night can be told from day

  so that treachery can become the palest of anachronisms

  so that love, which probably began it all, can begin again

  and last and last and last and last and last and last and

  last and last and last and last

  burning in water, drowning in flame

  carbon copy people

  choosing clothes and shoes and objects

  carbon copy people

  walking in and out of buildings,

  seeing the same sun

  the same moon,

  reading the same paper

  looking at the same programs

  having the same ideas,

  sleeping at the same time,

  arising at the same time,

  eating the same food,

  driving the same cars down the same freeways

  carbon copy people

  with carbon copy children

  in carbon copy houses

  with carbon copy Christmases and New Years

  and birthdays and lives and

  deaths

  and lawns and dishwashers and rugs

  and vases and loves and copulations, and

  they have carbon copy dentists and

  carbon copy mayors and governors and presidents

  all seeing the same sun and the same moon,

  o carbon copy coffins

  o carbon copy graves

  o carbon copy funerals

  under the same moon,

  the carbon copy grass the frost

  the carbon copy tombstones,

  the carbon copy laughter

  the carbon copy screams

  the carbon copy jokes

  the carbon copy poems

  the carbon copy carbon copy

  madmen and drunks and dope fiends and rapists

  and cats and dogs and birds and snakes and spiders,

  there is too much of everything all alike,

  I have fingers and there are fingers everywhere,

  if I enter a door I must exit a door,

  I have shit and there is shit everywhere,

  I have eyes and there are eyes everywhere,

  I have nightmares and there are nightmares everywhere,

  if I sleep I must awake,

  if I fuck I must stop fucking,

  if I eat I must stop eating,

  I can’t do anything I want to,

  I am locked into a repetition of sameness . . .

  I am burning in water

  I am drowning in flame

  I am released into sugar clouds that piss vinegar,

  but so are you and so are they and so are we,

  ant thoughts and ant struggles

  against a dynamo of alikened contortions,

  help help help help help help help

  I scream the carbon copy help against the carbon copy sky,

  that all this carbon and cardboard contains blood and pain,

  even love and history and hope,

  that’s the hitch, or is it a trick?

  how can we know? the carbon copy psychiatrists and preachers

  and philosophers tell us carbon copy things . . .

  death? is there death? perhaps the gate swings open

  and we are welcomed by roasted and tortured angels

  where we are finally gypped into an insufficient Eternity,

>   a gag worse than Life . . .

  wouldn’t that be shit?

  to get away from men like gearshifts and women like

  horsemeat, only to

  unfold into worse? o,

  think then of the angered suicides

  the dead heroes of dead wars . . .

  the run-over children,

  the saints burnt at stake—

  all of them short-changed, rolled, doped,

  sold into a slavery worse than snot

  sing your deaths sing your deaths sing your

  deaths, sing your life, sing

  life, this isn’t any

  good, this isn’t any

  good. good god, I forgot to put a

  carbon under this

  paper . . .

  a cop-out to a possible immortality:

  if we can’t make literature out of our

  agony

  what are we going to do with

  it?

  beg in the streets?

  I like my minor comforts

  just like any other

  son of a

  bitch.

  well, now that Ezra has died . . .

  well, now that Ezra has died

  we are going to have a great many poems written

  about Ezra and what he meant and who he

  was and how it went

  and how it still is with

  Ezra gone.

  well, I was shacked with this alcoholic woman

  for 7 years

  and I kept packing home the Cantos through the

  door, and she kept saying,

  “For God’s sake, you got POUND again? You know

  you can’t read him. Did you bring any

  wine?”

  she was right. I couldn’t read the Cantos.

  but I usually brought the wine

  and we drank the

  wine.

  I don’t know how many years I packed those

  Cantos back and forth from the downtown public

  library

  but they were always available in the shelves of

  the Literature and Philology section.

  well, he died, and I finally went from wine to

  beer; I suppose he was a great writer

  it’s just that I’m so lazy in my reading habits.

  I detest any sort of immaculate strain,

  but I still feel rather warm for him and Ernie

  and Gertie and James J., all that gang

  gripping to world war one

  making the 20’s and 30’s available

  in their special way; then there was world war 2,

  Ezra backed a loser and got 13 years in with the

  loonies, and now he’s dead at 87 and his mistress is