The Days Run Away Like Wild Horses

by Charles Bukowski

  he was grasshopper slim with

  very thin arms but

  hit very hard. it went all ten and

  the Jap got the verdict, another

  ten followed. I drank a lot of

  beer

  kept leaving to piss and

  when I came back one time it

  was over: k.o.,

  and I walked out to my car and

  since I was downtown I

  drove to where I worked in the

  daylight

  to see if maybe the place looked less

  painful and

  I looked through the window and

  thought I saw Ralph the stockboy in

  there

  crawling around on his hands and his

  knees. he was an odd one and

  the secretaries were afraid of him

  and I thought I should call the

  police

  but then I thought

  I don’t care if he raids the

  place or sets it on

  fire. I got back into my car

  and took the freeway back to my

  apartment.

  I drank a couple glasses of scotch,

  set the clock for 6:30

  ate a vitamin

  thought about a whore in Glendale

  checked the ball scores

  pissed again

  turned out the lights

  got into bed (alone)

  didn’t pray

  thought of places like Japan and

  Central Avenue

  thought about the dead and

  the famous

  thought about dying

  while the Thames went along without

  me and the girls walked up and down the

  sidewalks without me

  and then I thought I wouldn’t mind

  so much

  and went to sleep and

  slept good.

  the seminar

  (dedicated to my betters)

  Wednesday, 24 July 1969; Morning Session (Robert Hansen

  and Allen Truport):

  discussed sure discussed

  WORK HABITS. Bob ingests, ingests, ingests, so we get those

  wonderfully turned—

  Allen keeps large notebooks

  wherein

  he told us

  he notes down EVERYTHING. a kind of spatial flowing

  viewPOINT.

  Allen says

  he writes all the time as much as possible;

  it’s like hanging a coat in a closet: you’ve

  got to get in there. reasonableness may not be

  enchanting, but said Allen, it is REWARDING.

  a big notebook, he said, by God that’s the

  THING!

  like Genet on the sand

  blowing cock!

  Bob said:

  what the primary interest is and should be is ingesting,

  ingesting, a kind of pulmonary percussion indrawn, tightened and

  then placed upon the paper, the marble in tight order of grip,

  allowing the function to be the (possible) anguish rather than

  any

  MESSAGE or a) art-order

  b) audience-relationship.

  Allen: I want to write

  ENOUGH POEMS

  so that when I die

  all the shit will be out of me, I mean the guff, the nonsense,

  the turds yes, ah I mean—that I have expressed enough

  ENOUGH you see to

  free me.

  R.H.—I realize the standard essence of all your POETRY;

  I say content is an extension of form. we must barter

  for a firmer divinity. the conduct of children,

  for instance, is fairly free but

  UNFORMED

  and in the final

  multiplication…useless.

  I would say that the difference between

  Hansen and Truport is that Hansen KNOWS

  what he is

  doing.

  Evening Session (R.H. and A.T.)

  Bob says priests should stick to their robes and leave

  POETRY

  to him.

  I agree

  with this.

  Allen says political poetry or poetry dealing with immediate causes and reflections is

  interesting, and interesting

  goes well, badly written

  or not, it appears IMPORTANT, is appears sympathetic

  and the ONE THING I do not want to do is lose

  my AUDIENCE.

  Thursday, July 25th; no classes:

  a dozen of us had gone over to Buchanan 106

  for the hell of

  it

  to use the lecture room

  anyhow

  but we found some WOMEN in there

  and they appeared HOSTILE when we walked in and

  even MORE hostile when we began talking about

  POETRY.

  their hostility is perhaps understandable because we

  DON’T

  tend to them.

  they’ll just have to WAIT until workshop

  CLASSES to get a portion of our

  attention.

  but it was really something, all of us there together,

  talking, TALKING,—Hansen, Truport, Missions, De Costro

  Sevadov, and Starwort, all all

  together

  here in ONE room was

  the heart of American POETRY

  talking, my

  god.

  Friday, July 26th; Morning Session:

  De Costro dominated the whole damned meeting. he has

  big hands and many

  IDEAS. Truport appears to be afraid

  of De Costro. Hansen cools it. nobody gets along.

  yet there is no

  YELLING. these are only poets.

  De Costro says the root of the thing is transferred to the tree

  and the tree dies and

  becomes HISTORY

  and that

  generally

  history is pretty

  disappointing, it’s easier to chop down a

  tree than a poem, he says, history chops

  YOU down.

  FUCK ALL MEANING! Bob suddenly screams.

  then, in softer voice:

  we ought to discard.

  we all agree that feeling is everything and

  we go out for coffee

  leaving three girls sitting

  there with their dresses hiked-up around their

  HIPS.

  Monday, July 29th; Morning Session:

  I saw all FIVE OF THEM!!!

  around a desk

  TOGETHER:

  Hansen, Truport,

  De Costro,

  Starwort and

  Phillip Maxwell.

  Phillip didn’t ARGUE didn’t say much

  and left before the meeting was OVER

  but explained he’d wait

  OUTSIDE for the free lunch. his books haven’t been

  GOING well.

  Starwort read his Man on a Streetcar Running Backwards

  from Bent Lily #8.

  I couldn’t really understand his

  READING

  but will have to see

  the work in print before I make a

  JUDGMENT.

  v Maybe Allie Denby

  will send me a

  copy of the issue, tho, alas, I understand it is

  now a RARE ITEM

  going to $20 out of Fort Lauderdale.

  the past can only take place in the PRESENT, if you

  know what I mean, said

  De Costro.

  we all

  nodded.

  Truport said he was afraid of being BROKE. he was

  lined up for one more session at the

  U. of K.

  but hadn’t heard much

  more. of course, he’d been moving

  around quite a bit, in TOUCH and


  OUT OF TOUCH:

  Paris, Cuba, the Congo, India, Moscow and Denver, Colorado.

  we spoke of The Cantos.

  Pound continually tries to find space

  AREAS, ARENAS OF CONTOUR for his extra-cerebral

  power-poetic

  uningrained…uncontrived soul-mind…like a…like a

  whip lashing against the sides of an old

  BARN.

  we want a COMPLETE EMERGENCE, said De Costro.

  nothing half nothing wilted

  we want the poetic Christ-thing walking out of

  the barn

  and Teaching—not from the TOP-down

  but through and through and

  THROUGH.

  god damn it to hell, said Starwort. suddenly.

  in taking my notes I could not fit it into

  the

  conversation.

  First Workshop session with R.H.:

  he seemed to say a lot that I didn’t understand but

  the others seemed to understand

  and the session went well.

  Bob looked well. I had a

  HANGOVER.

  Wednesday, July 31st; Morning Session (most of us there):

  there were again the old arguments about Vietnam,

  Cleaver and the Panthers, all of which, I am afraid, I

  no longer

  understand.

  I am AFRAID

  I am getting tired

  although the others appear very

  energetic.

  I need SECURITY, said Hansen. I need a perpetual FATHER

  and a GOOD JOB or my work is

  HINDERED.

  Allen read some of his early stuff. I understand some of it

  but FRANKLY, I think he tends to

  holler and OVERSTAGE.

  I left with a

  HEADACHE.

  Friday, August 2nd; Morning Session:

  Allen spoke of some of the poetry he had seen in

  the campus shithouses and said it was pretty

  GOOD.

  then Wm. Burroughs was discussed

  his USE of timely and pertinent

  news material that RELATED…

  by clipping out words in the paper

  and pasting them in DIFFERENT ORDER

  A NEW ORDER

  was established

  and a neutralization of time and event

  WAS

  established.

  THIS WAs imporTANT. YeS. I’ll sAY sO.

  we all admitted we often read Time and

  Pravda.

  then Allen read

  AGAIN

  this time from UnpubliSHED

  WoRk

  dIrEcTly FrOM the JOuRnals

  there were 250 people attending

  and he read LOUDLY and I had another

  HANGOVER.

  he screamed for FORTYFIVE MINUTES! then became

  TERRIBLY

  exhausted, you couldn’t hear him, his voice BECAME

  a monotonous drone and he asked the audience:

  may I stop now?

  they applauded LOUDLY.

  Sunday, August 4th:

  the janitor had locked all the doors on the campus so

  we met at Hansen’s room and drank port wine. Denise and

  Carol came up but they were SAFE

  although everyone appeared a little sullen.

  I think it was being LOCKED OUT like that.

  later in the night Allen grew angry and slapped

  Bob. then Allen read his poetry again, it was

  good being there all together all of us.

  I have tried to take notes and hope you have

  APPRECIATED THEM.

  next summer I am sure we will be

  INVITED BACK

  and I look forward

  EAGERLY

  to these great American poets

  and their DISCUSSION of what makes POETRY GO, what it

  iS!!

  AnD To haVE tHem rEaD thEiR OWN WORKS OnCe

  AgAin.

  —Howard Peter, University of L.

  August 5, 1969

  one for Ging, with klux top

  I live among rats and roaches

  but there is this high-rise apt., a new one

  across from me, glimmering pool, lived in by very young

  people with new cars, mostly red or white cars,

  and I allow myself to look upon this scene as

  some type of miracle world

  not because it is possibly so

  but because it is easier to think this way,

  —why take more knives?—

  so today I sat here and I saw one young man

  sitting in his red car

  sucking his thumb and waiting

  as another young man, obviously his friend,

  talked to a young woman dressed in kind of long slim short

  pants, yes, and a black ill-fitting blouse,

  and she had on some kind of high-pointed hat, rather

  like the kukluxklan wear, and the other young man sucked, sat and

  sucked his thumb

  in the

  red car and

  behind them, through the glass door

  the other young people sat and sat and sat and sat

  around the blue pool,

  and the young woman was angry

  she was ugly anyhow and now she was very ugly

  but she must have had something to interest the young man

  and she said something violent and final

  (I couldn’t hear any of it)

  and walked off west, away from the young man and the building,

  and the young man was flushed in the face, seemingly more stunned

  than angry, and then they both sat in the car for a while,

  and then the other young man took his thumb out of his

  mouth, and started the red car, and then they were

  gone.

  and through my window and through the glass door

  I could see the other young people

  sitting sitting sitting

  around the blue pool. my miracle crowd, my future

  leaders.

  to make it round out, I decided that the night before

  the young man (not the one with the thumb) had tried

  to screw the ugly girl in the pointed hat while they were both

  drunk, and that the ugly girl in the pointed hat

  felt—for some reason—that this was a damned dirty trick.

  she acted bit parts in little theatre—was said to have talent—

  had a fairly wealthy father, and her name was Gig or Ging or

  something odd like that—and that was mainly why the boys wanted to

  screw her: because her first name was Gig or Ging or Aszpupu,

  and the boys wanted to say, very much wanted to say:

  “I balled with Ging last night.”

  all right, so having settled all that,

  I put on some coffee and rolled myself something

  calming.

  communists

  we ran the women in a straight line down to the river

  clinging to the fear in their rice-stupid heads

  clinging to their infants

  mice-like sucklings breathing in the air at odds of

  one thousand to one;

  we shot the men as they kneeled in a circle,

  and the death of the men held almost no death,

  it was somehow like a movie film,

  men of spider arms and legs and a hunk of cloth

  to cover the sexual organ.

  men hardly born could hardly be killed

  and there they were down there now, finally dead,

  the sun straining on their faces of weird

  puzzlement.

  some of the women could fire rifles. we left a small

  detachment to decide upon

  them. then we fired up the unburned huts and moved on

  to
the next village.

  family, family

  I keep looking at the

  kid

  up

  side

  down,

  and I am tickling

  her sides

  as her mother pins new

  diapers

  on,

  and the kid doesn’t look like

  me

  —upsidedown

  so I get ready to

  kill them both

  but

  relent:

  I don’t even

  look like

  myself—

  rightsideup, so.

  shit on it!

  I tickle again, say

  crazy

  words, and and and and

  hope

  all the while

  that this

  very unappetizing

  world

  does not blow up

  in all our

  laughing

  faces.

  poem for the death of an American serviceman in Vietnam:

  shot through a hole in the

  bellybutton

  9 miles wide—

  out it came:

  those Indian head pennies

  those old dead whores

  the sick sea walking like

  pink

  toast

  past bottles of orange

  children

  dripping

  drip

  dry

  barometer

  lowering

  while the guns elevated like

  erections—

  tossed the apple salad back

  into the

  sky.

  (he died then, stuffing balloons with

  marbles as the prince

  laughed.)

  guilt obsession behind a cloud of rockets:

  genuinely traginew, dandy then, babe,

  the age-old bile:

  dummies stuffed with wax and

  steel,

  a deeper dark than any dark

  we have ever

  known—

  I do not speak of such obvious things as

  skin—

  christ, it’s a bad

  fix, ghostly true,

  I might even say

  off the top of the bottle

  that I suffer more than

  most, haha, but

  I’ve also found that