Betting on the Muse

by Charles Bukowski

  forgotten.

  nobody talks of books,

  of paintings,

  of the stock market or

  the life of the

  inch worm.

  each person quietly

  mocks the other person,

  in a wholesome, good-

  natured way

  (of course).

  some heads fall,

  others

  laugh.

  it is an evening of

  friends and

  relatives.

  the hours inch-worm

  along.

  they and we are in the

  trenches

  of hell,

  throwing mud at the

  fates.

  then they grow weary of

  the absurd battle and

  leave

  one by

  one.

  then there is just the

  wife and

  myself.

  soon she goes up the

  stairway

  and I am left with

  myself,

  right back where I

  began.

  I sit there

  lighting

  cigars.

  there are still things

  to be

  resolved

  but what are

  they?

  I turn out the lights

  and sit in the

  dark.

  then I see a strange headless

  thing walk up to the

  glass door.

  it places its paws

  high

  upon the

  door and

  leans there.

  its eyes are in its

  belly.

  one is gold and

  glowing.

  the other is green

  with shots of

  red.

  I walk up the stairway,

  climb into

  bed.

  my wife snores

  peacefully.

  the night is finished.

  I am still alive.

  the bluebird swallows

  the worm.

  the harbor tangles with

  the fog.

  morning swarms the

  window.

  I am a joke told

  again.

  I sleep.

  a great show

  when I went to visit my friend

  at the Motion Picture Hospital,

  it was full of actors and

  freaks and directors and

  assistant directors and grips

  and cameramen and film editors

  and script writers and sound

  men and etc.

  some of them were sick

  some of them were dying

  but somehow it wasn’t like a

  regular hospital,

  that special heavy darkness

  wasn’t there,

  everything was:

  “LIGHTS! CAMERA! ACTION!”

  everybody still

  on the

  set.

  at least, it seemed like that

  to me.

  as bad as most Hollywood

  movies had been, were and

  still are,

  there remained the touch of

  the brave and dramatic in

  the air.

  when I went to the cafeteria,

  everything was on cue:

  even the people in wheelchairs made

  dramatic gestures, spoke in

  senatorial tones; they had

  fierce blue eyes,

  white, carefully cropped

  beards,

  deliberate enunciations,

  there was blithe bullshit,

  a whole Shakespearean

  afterglow.

  dwarfs sitting at tables

  eating blueberry

  pie.

  old script writers, all

  looking Faulknerian

  musing about their drunken

  afternoons at Musso and

  Frank’s.

  old dolls, once beautiful

  now toothlessly munching

  soft toast, poking at

  peaches.

  and almost all the rooms

  were private,

  arranged to bring in the

  light of hope.

  the nurses, as in all

  hospitals

  worked their asses

  off,

  and the doctors were

  congenial,

  good actors in a bad

  scene.

  and my friend, who was

  dying, spoke to me

  not of his death

  but of his idea for

  his next

  novel.

  he also spoke of the

  crazies and geniuses

  or would-be

  geniuses

  running

  loose.

  “we’ve got one of the

  original Tarzans here,”

  he told me.

  “every now and then he

  runs all over the

  place

  giving his Tarzan

  yodel and looking for

  his Jane.”

  “they let him run

  loose?”

  “oh, yes, he doesn’t

  harm anybody.

  we rather like it.”

  well, my friend

  died, so I didn’t go

  there anymore.

  but it was a very odd

  visitation.

  death was there but

  death was on camera

  as He was so often in

  Hollywood.

  it was as if

  everybody was ready for

  the last scene,

  having practiced it so

  often

  already.

  and about a month

  later

  I read a small bit in

  the paper:

  Tarzan had

  died,

  perhaps he has gone

  on to find his

  Jane.

  there are still happy

  endings, aren’t

  there?

  like my friend who

  died

  his books have become

  famous throughout much

  of the

  world.

  which is only half a

  happy ending

  but at least his widow

  in Malibu

  won’t have to baby

  sit

  to have bacon with

  her

  eggs.

  epilogue

  Fante gone to Hollywood,

  Fante on the golf course,

  Fante at the gambling tables,

  Fante in a home in Malibu,

  Fante a friend of William

  Saroyan.

  But Fante, I remember you

  best,

  in the 1930s

  living in that hotel next to

  Angel’s Flight,

  struggling to be a writer,

  sending stories and letters

  to Mencken.

  the scream came from

  the gut

  then.

  I heard it.

  I still hear it.

  and I refuse to imagine you

  on a golf course

  or in Hollywood.

  but now it doesn’t matter.

  you’re dead

  but the good writing

  remains

  and the way you helped

  me get the line down

  the way I

  wanted it.

  I’m glad I finally met you

  even though you were

  dying

  and remember when I

  asked you,

  “listen, John, whatever

  happened to that

  Mexican girl in

  Ask the Dust
?”

  and you answered,

  “she turned out to be

  a goddamned

  lesbian!”

  and then the nurse

  came in with your

  big white

  pill.

  Fante

  every now and then it comes back to

  me,

  him in bed there, blind,

  being slowly chopped away,

  the little bulldog.

  the nurses passing through, pulling

  at curtains, blinds, sheets.

  seeing if he was still alive.

  the Colorado Kid.

  the scourge of the American

  Mercury.

  Mencken’s Catholic bad boy.

  gone Hollywood.

  and tossed up on shore.

  being chopped away.

  chop, chop, chop.

  until he was gone.

  he never knew he would be

  famous.

  I wonder if he would have given

  a damn.

  I think he would have.

  John, you’re big time now.

  you’ve entered the Books of

  Forever

  right there with Dostoevsky,

  Tolstoy, and your boy

  Sherwood Anderson.

  I told you.

  and you said, “you wouldn’t

  shit an old blind man,

  would you?”

  ah, no need for that,

  bulldog.

  it got away

  lost another poem

  in this computer,

  it’s like reeling in

  a fish

  and then it

  escapes the hook

  just as you reach

  for it.

  only this poem

  wasn’t a very big

  fish.

  the world won’t

  miss it.

  it has swum

  away to the

  Netherlands.

  and I’m baiting

  my hook

  again.

  waiting for

  the big

  one.

  the luck of the draw

  after decades and decades of poverty

  as I now approach the lip of the

  grave,

  suddenly I have a home, a new car, a

  spa, a swimming pool, a computer.

  will this destroy me?

  well, something is bound to destroy

  me soon enough.

  the boys in the jails, the slaughterhouses,

  the factories, on the park benches, in the

  post offices, the bars

  would never believe me

  now.

  I have a problem believing myself.

  I am no different now

  than I was in the tiny rooms of

  starvation and madness.

  the only difference

  is that I am

  older.

  and I drink better

  wine.

  all the rest is

  nonsense,

  the luck of the

  draw.

  a life can change in a tenth of

  a second.

  or sometimes it can take

  70

  years.

  let it enfold you

  either peace or happiness,

  let it enfold you.

  when I was a young man

  I felt that these things were

  dumb, unsophisticated.

  I had bad blood, a twisted

  mind, a precarious

  upbringing.

  I was hard as granite, I

  leered at the

  sun.

  I trusted no man and

  especially no

  woman.

  I was living a hell in

  small rooms, I broke

  things, smashed things,

  walked through glass,

  cursed.

  I challenged everything,

  was continually being

  evicted, jailed, in and

  out of fights, in and out

  of my mind.

  women were something

  to screw and rail

  at, I had no male

  friends,

  I changed jobs and

  cities, I hated holidays,

  babies, history,

  newspapers, museums,

  grandmothers,

  marriage, movies,

  spiders, garbagemen,

  English accents, Spain,

  France, Italy, walnuts and

  the color

  orange.

  algebra angered me,

  opera sickened me,

  Charlie Chaplin was a

  fake

  and flowers were for

  pansies.

  peace and happiness

  were to me

  signs of

  inferiority,

  tenants of the weak

  and

  addled

  mind.

  but as I went on with

  my alley fights,

  my suicidal years,

  my passage through

  any number of

  women—it gradually

  began to occur to

  me

  that I wasn’t different

  from the

  others, I was the

  same.

  they were all fulsome

  with hatred,

  glossed over with petty

  grievances,

  the men I fought in

  alleys had hearts of

  stone.

  everybody was nudging,

  inching, cheating for

  some insignificant

  advantage,

  the lie was the

  weapon and the

  plot was

  empty,

  darkness was the

  dictator.

  cautiously, I allowed

  myself to feel good

  at times.

  I found moments of

  peace in cheap

  rooms

  just staring at the

  knobs of some

  dresser

  or listening to the

  rain in the

  dark.

  the less I needed

  the better I

  felt.

  maybe the other

  life had worn me

  down.

  I no longer found

  glamour

  in topping somebody

  in conversation.

  or in mounting the

  body of some poor

  drunken female

  whose life had

  slipped away into

  sorrow.

  I could never accept

  life as it was,

  I could never gobble

  down all its

  poisons

  but there were parts,

  tenuous magic parts

  open for the

  asking.

  I reformulated,

  I don’t know when,

  date, time, all

  that

  but the change

  occurred.

  something in me

  relaxed, smoothed

  out.

  I no longer had to

  prove that I was a

  man,

  I didn’t have to prove

  anything.

  I began to see things:

  coffee cups lined up

  behind a counter in a

  cafe.

  or a dog walking along

  a sidewalk.

  or the way the mouse

  on my dresser top

  stopped there,

  really stopped there

  with its body,

  its ears,

  its nose,

  it was fixed,

  a bit of life

  caught within itself

  and
its eyes looked

  at me

  and they were

  beautiful.

  then—it was

  gone.

  I began to feel good,

  I began to feel good

  in the worst

  situations

  and there were plenty

  of those.

  like say, the boss

  behind his desk,

  he is going to have

  to fire me.

  I’ve missed too many

  days.

  he is dressed in a

  suit, necktie, glasses,

  he says, “I am going

  to have to let you go.”

  “it’s all right,” I tell

  him.

  he must do what he

  must do, he has a

  wife, a house, children,

  expenses, most probably

  a girlfriend.

  I am sorry for him.

  he is caught.

  I walk out into the blazing

  sunshine.

  the whole day is

  mine.

  temporarily,

  anyhow.

  (the whole world is at the

  throat of the world,

  everybody feels angry,

  short-changed, cheated,

  everybody is despondent,

  disillusioned.)

  I welcomed shots of

  peace, tattered shards of

  happiness.

  I embraced that stuff

  like the hottest number,