The Roominghouse Madrigals: Early Selected Poems, 1946-1966

by Charles Bukowski

(she doesn’t care that

  I’ve got to finish this thing).

  it’s just a poor little neighborhood

  no place for Art,

  whatever that is, and

  I hear sprinklers

  there’s a shopping basket

  a boy on roller skates.

  I quit I quit

  for the miracle of food and

  maybe nobody ever angry

  again, this place and

  all the other places.

  Conversation in a Cheap Room

  I keep putting the empties out back but

  the kids smash them against the

  wall almost as fast as I can drink them, and

  old Mr. Sturgeon died and

  they carried him down the stair and

  I was in

  my underwear; the rats ran after

  him leaping with beautiful tails like the

  tails of young whores half-drunk on

  wine; I kept watching the

  signal change outside and

  my shoes sitting in the closet and

  pretty soon people started coming

  in, talking about death and

  I watched a billboard advertising beer, and

  we turned out all the lights and

  it was dark and

  somebody lit a cigarette and

  we all watched the

  flame; it warmed the

  room, it put a glow on the walls and

  there was a flaring concert of

  liquid voices saying the

  room is still here, the

  drawers are

  still here; Mrs. McDonald will

  want her rent.

  that’s all they

  said.

  soon somebody went out for another bottle and

  we were thinking of

  something else.

  I don’t remember what, but

  the

  signal kept changing.

  I Was Born to Hustle Roses Down the Avenues of the Dead

  1

  rivergut girlriver damn drowned

  people going in and out of books and

  doors and graves people dressed in pink

  getting haircuts and tired and dogs and

  Vivaldi

  2

  you missed a cat argument the grey was

  tired mad flipping tail and he monkied

  with the black one who didn’t want to

  be bothered and then the black one

  chased the grey one pawed it once the

  grey one said yow

  ran away stopped scratched its ear

  flicked at a straw popped in air and

  ran off defeated and planning as a

  white one (another one) ran along the

  other side of the fence chasing a

  grasshopper as somebody shot Mr

  Kennedy.

  3

  the best way to explain the meaning

  of concourse is to forget all about

  it or any meaning at all

  is

  just something that grows or does not

  grow lives a while and dies a long time

  life is weak, the rope around a man’s

  neck is stronger than the man because

  it does not suffer it also does not

  listen to Brahms but Brahms can get

  to be a bore and even insufferable when

  you are locked in a cage with

  sticks almost forever.

  I remember my old

  man raged because I did not sweat

  when I mowed his lawn twice over

  while the lucky guys played football

  or jacked-off in the garage, he threw a

  2 by 4 at the back of one of my legs

  the left one, I have a bloodvessel that

  juts out an inch there now and I

  picked up the log and threw it into

  his beautiful roses and limped around

  and finished the lawn not sweating

  and 25 years later I buried him. it

  cost me a grand: he was stronger

  than I was.

  4

  I see the river now I see

  the river now grassfish

  limping through milkblue

  she is taking off her stockings

  she is beginning to cry.

  my car needs 2 new

  front tires.

  Winter Comes to a Lot of Places in August

  Winter comes in a lot of places in August,

  like the railroad yards

  when we come over the bridge,

  hundreds of us,

  workers, like cattle,

  like Hannibal victorious over the Mountain;

  Winter comes in Rome, Winter comes in Paris

  and Miami

  and we come

  over the silver bridge,

  carrying our olive lunch pails

  with the good fat wives’ coffee

  and 2 bologna sandwiches

  and oh, just a tid-bit found somewhere

  to warm our gross man-bones

  and prove to us that love

  is not clipped out like a coupon;

  …here we come,

  hundreds of us,

  blank-faced and rough

  (we can take it, god damn it!)

  over our silver bridge,

  smoking our cheap cigars in the grapefruit air;

  here we come,

  bulls stamping in cheap cotton,

  bad boys all;

  ah hell, we’d rather play the ponies

  or chance a sunburn at the shore,

  but we’re men, god damn it, men,

  can’t you see?

  men,

  coming over our bridge,

  taking our Rome and our coffee,

  bitter, brave and

  numb.

  Bring Down the Beams

  folding away my tools with the dead parts of

  my soul

  I go to night school, study Art;

  my teacher is a homosexual who teaches us to

  make shadows with

  a 2b pencil (there are five laws of light, and it

  has only been

  known for the last 400 years

  that shadows have a core);

  there are color wheels,

  there are scales

  and there are many deep and futile rules

  that must never be broken;

  all about me sit half-talents, and suddenly—

  I know

  that there is nothing more incomplete than a

  half-talent;

  a man should either be a genius

  or nothing at all;

  I would like to tell that homosexual

  (though I never will)

  that people who dabble in the Arts

  are misfits in a misshapen society;

  the superior man of today is the man

  of limited feeling

  whose education consists of

  ready-made actions and reactions to

  ready-made situations;

  but he is more interested in men than ideas,

  and if I told him that a society which takes

  its haircuts from characters in comic strips

  needs more than heavenly guidance,

  he would say

  with sweeping and powerful irrelevance

  that I was a bitter man;

  so we sit and piddle with charcoal

  and talk about Picasso

  and make collages; we are getting ready

  to do nothing unusual

  and I alone am angry

  as I think about the sun clanging against the earth

  and all the bodies moving

  but ours;

  I would bring down the world’s stockpile of drowned

  and mutilated days!

  I would bring down the beams of sick warehouses

  I have counted

&nb
sp; with each year’s life!

  I want trumpets and crowing,

  I want a red-palmed Beethoven rising from the grave,

  I want the whir and tang of a simple living orange

  in a simple living tree;

  I want you to draw like Mondrian, he says;

  but I don’t want to draw

  like Mondrian,

  I want to draw like a sparrow eaten by a cat.

  Reunion

  the love of the bone

  where the earth chewed it down, that’s

  what lasts,

  and I remember sitting on the grass

  with the negro boy,

  we were sketching housetops and

  he said,

  you’re leaving some out,

  you’re cheating,

  and I walked across the street

  to the bar

  and

  then he came in—

  you are due back in class

  at 2, he told me,

  then he left.

  class doesn’t matter, I thought,

  nothing matters that we’re told,

  and if I am a fly I’ll never know

  what a lion really is.

  I sat there until 4:30

  and when I came out,

  there he was.

  Mr. Hutchins liked my

  sketch, he told me.

  that was over 20 years

  ago.

  I think

  I saw him the other night.

  he was a cop in the city jail

  and he pushed me into

  a cell.

  I’m told

  he doesn’t paint

  any

  more.

  Fragile!

  I tried all night to sleep

  but I couldn’t sleep

  and I began drinking

  around 5:30

  and reading about Delius

  and Stravinsky,

  and soon I heard them getting up

  all over the building,

  putting on coffee,

  flushing toilets,

  and then the phone rang

  and she said,

  “Sam, you haven’t been in jail?”

  “not lately,”

  I told her,

  and then she asked where the hell

  I had been and all that,

  and finally I got rid of her

  and pulled up the shades

  and put my clothes on,

  and I went down to the coffeeshop

  and they were all sitting there

  with bacon and eggs.

  I had a coffee and went on in.

  I emptied the baskets and

  ashtrays, put toilet paper

  in the women’s john

  and then scattered the compound

  to sweep. the old man came in

  and eyed me riding the broom.

  “you look like hell,” he said, and

  “did you

  put paper in the ladies’ room?”

  I spit into the compound and

  nodded. “that package to

  McGerney’s,” he said. “12 pints

  of floor wax…”

  “yeah?” I asked.

  “he says 7 of them pints

  were broken. did you pack them right?”

  “yeah.”

  “did you put FRAGILE labels

  on them.”

  “yeah.”

  “if you run out of FRAGILE

  labels, let me know.”

  “O.K.”

  “…and be more careful

  from now on.”

  he went into the office and

  I swept on toward the back.

  a few minutes later

  I heard him laughing with

  the secretaries.

  I unlocked the back door, brought in

  the empty trashcans, sat down and

  smoked

  a cigarette. I began to get sleepy

  at last.

  one of the secretaries came back

  rotating her can,

  pounding her spikes

  on the cement floor.

  she handed me a stack of orders

  to pick and pack, and this look, this

  smile

  on her face saying—

  I don’t have to do much work,

  but you do.

  then she walked away wobbling,

  wobbling meat.

  I put some water in the tape machine

  and stood there

  waiting

  waiting for 5:30.

  I Am with the Roots of Flowers

  Here without question is the bird-torn design,

  drunk here in this cellar

  amongst the flabby washing machines

  and last year’s rusty newspapers;

  the ages like stone

  whirl above my head

  as spiders spin sick webs;

  I can leech here for years

  undetected

  sleeping against the belly of a boiler

  like some growthless

  hot yet dead

  foetus;

  I lift my bottle like a coronet

  and sing songs and fables

  to wash away

  the fantastic darkness

  of my breathing;

  oh, coronet, coronet:

  sing me no bitterness

  for I have tasted stone,

  sing me no child’s pouting and hate

  for I am too old for night;

  I am with the roots

  of flowers

  entwined, entombed

  sending up my passionate blossoms

  as a flight of rockets

  and argument;

  wine churls my throat,

  above me

  feet walk upon my brain,

  monkies fall from the sky

  clutching photographs

  of the planets,

  but I seek only music

  and the leisure

  of my pain; oh, damned coronet:

  you are running dry!

  …I fall beneath the spiders,

  the girders move like threads,

  and feet come down the stairs,

  feet come down the stairs, I think,

  belonging to the golden men

  who push the buttons

  of our burning universe.

  Monday Beach, Cold Day

  bluewhite bird-light

  nothing but the motor of sand

  noticing bits of life:

  I and fleas and chips of wood,

  wind sounds, sounds of paper

  caught with its life flapping,

  deserted dogs

  as content as rock,

  facing rump to sea

  furred against sun and sensibility,

  snouting against dead crabs

  and last night’s bottles…

  everything dirty, really,

  really dirty,

  like back at the hotel,

  the white jackets and 15c tips,

  the old girls skipping rope

  not like young neighborhood girls

  but for room, bottle and trinket,

  and the hotel sits behind you

  like grammar school and old wars

  and you simply roll upon your stomach,

  skin against warm dirty sand

  and a dog comes up with his ice-nose

  against the bottoms of your feet

  and you howl angry laughter

  through hangover and forty-year old kisses,

  through guilty sun and tired wave,

  through cheap memories that can never be

  transformed by either literature or love,

  and the dog pulls back

  looking upon this stick of a white man

  with red coal eyes

  through filtered smoke,

  and he makes for the shore, the sea,

  and I get up and chase after
him,

  another hound, I am,

  and he looks over a round shoulder,

  frightened, demolished,

  as our feet cut patterns of life,

  dog-life, man-life,

  lazy indolent life, gull-life

  and running, and the sharks

  out beyond the rocks

  thrashing for our silly blood.

  The High-Rise of the New World

  it is an orange

  animal

  with

  hand grenades

  fire power

  big teeth and

  a horn of smoke

  a colored man

  with cigar

  yanks at

  gears and the damn thing never gets

  tired

  my neighbor

  …an old man in blue

  bathing trunks

  …an old man

  a fetid white obscene

  thing—

  the old man

  lifts apart some purple flowers

  and peeks through the fence at the

  orange animal

  and like a horror movie

  I see the orange animal open its

  mouth—

  it belches it has teeth fastened onto a giraffe’s

  neck—

  and it reached over the fence and it gets the

  old man in his blue

  bathing trunks

  neatly

  it gets him

  from behind the fence of purple flowers

  and his whiteness is like

  garbage in the air

  and then

  he’s dumped into a

  shock of lumber

  and then the orange animal

  backs off

  spins

  turns

  runs off into the Hollywood Hills

  the palm trees the

  boulevards as

  the colored man