Charles Bukowski
You Get So Alone at Times That It Just Makes Sense
for Jeff Copland
Contents
1813-1883
red Mercedes
retired
working it out
beasts bounding through time—
trashcan lives
the lost generation
no help for that
my non-ambitious ambition
education
downtown L.A.
another casualty
driving test
that’s why funerals are so sad
cornered
bumming with Jane
darkness
termites of the page
a good time
the still trapeze
January
sunny side down
the man in the brown suit
a magician, gone…
well, that’s just the way it is
the chemistry of things
rift
my friend, the parking lot attendant
miracle
a non-urgent poem
my first affair with that older woman
the freeway life
the player
p.o. box 11946, Fresno, Calif. 93776
poor Al
for my ivy league friends:
helping the old
bad times at the 3rd and Vermont hotel
the Master Plan
garbage
my vanishing act
let’s make a deal
16-bit Intel 8088 chip
zero
putrefaction
I’ll take it…
supposedly famous
the last shot
whorehouse
starting fast:
the crazy truth
drive through hell
for the concerned:
a funny guy
shoes
coffee
together
the finest of the breed
close to greatness
the stride
final story
friends within the darkness
death sat on my knee and cracked with laughter
oh yes
O tempora! O mores!
the passing of a great one
the wine of forever
true
Glenn Miller
Emily Bukowski
some suggestions
invasion
hard times
longshot
concrete
Gay Paree?
I thought the stuff tasted worse than usual
the blade
the boil
not listed
I’m not a misogynist
the lady in the castle
relentless as the tarantula
their night
huh?
it’s funny, isn’t it? #1
it’s funny, isn’t it? #2
the beautiful lady editor
about the PEN conference
everybody talks too much
me and my buddy
song
practice
love poem to a stripper
my buddy
Jon Edgar Webb
thank you
the magic curse
party’s over
no nonsense
escape
wearing the collar
a cat is a cat is a cat is a cat
marching through Georgia
gone
I meet the famous poet
seize the day
the shrinking island
magic machine
those girls we followed home
fractional note
a following
a tragic meeting
an ordinary poem
from an old dog in his cups…
let ’em go
trying to make it
the death of a splendid neighborhood
you get so alone at times that it just makes sense
a good gang, after all
this
hot
late late late poem
3 a.m. games:
someday I’m going to write a primer for crippled saints but meanwhile
help wanted
sticks and stones…
working
over done
our laughter is muted by their agony
murder
what am I doing?
nervous people
working out
how is your heart?
forget it
quiet
it’s ours
About the Author
Other Books by Charles Bukowski
Copyright
About the Publisher
1813-1883
listening to Wagner
as outside in the dark the wind blows a cold rain the
trees wave and shake lights go
off and on the walls creak and the cats run under the
bed…
Wagner battles the agonies, he’s emotional but
solid, he’s the supreme fighter, a giant in a world of
pygmies, he takes it straight on through, he breaks
barriers
an
astonishing FORCE of sound as
everything here shakes
shivers
bends
blasts
in fierce gamble
yes, Wagner and the storm intermix with the wine as
nights like this run up my wrists and up into my head and
back down into the
gut
some men never
die
and some men never
live
but we’re all alive
tonight.
red Mercedes
naturally, we are all caught in
downmoods, it’s a matter of
chemical imbalance
and an existence
which, at times,
seems to forbid
any real chance at
happiness.
I was in a downmood
when this rich pig
along with his blank
inamorata
in this red Mercedes
cut
in front of me
at racetrack parking.
it clicked inside of me
in a flash:
I’m going to pull that fucker
out of his car and
kick his
ass!
I followed him
into Valet parking
parked behind him
and jumped from my
car
ran up to his
door
and yanked at
it.
it was
locked.
the
windows were
up.
I rapped on the window
on his
side:
“open up! I’m gonna
bust your
ass!”
he just sat there
looking straight
ahead.
his woman did
likewise.
they wouldn’t look
at me.
he was 30 years
younger
but I knew I could
take him
he was soft and
pampered.
I beat on the window
with my
fist:
“come on out, shithead,
or I’m go
ing to start
breaking
glass!”
he gave a small nod
to his
woman.
I saw her reach
into the glove
compartment
open it
and slip him the
.32
I saw him hold it
down low
and snap off the
safety.
I walked off
toward the
clubhouse, it looked
like a damned good
card
that
day.
all I had to do
was
be there.
retired
pork chops, said my father, I love
pork chops!
and I watched him slide the grease
into his mouth.
pancakes, he said, pancakes with
syrup, butter and bacon!
I watched his lips heavy wetted with
all that.
coffee, he said, I like coffee so hot
it burns my throat!
sometimes it was too hot and he spit it
out across the table.
mashed potatoes and gravy, he said, I
love mashed potatoes and gravy!
he jowled that in, his cheeks puffed as
if he had the mumps.
chili and beans, he said, I love chili and
beans!
and he gulped it down and farted for hours
loudly, grinning after each fart.
strawberry shortcake, he said, with vanilla
ice cream, that’s the way to end a meal!
he always talked about retirement, about
what he was going to do when he
retired.
when he wasn’t talking about food he talked
on and on about
retirement.
he never made it to retirement, he died one day while
standing at the sink
filling a glass of water.
he straightened like he’d been
shot.
the glass fell from his hand
and he dropped backwards
landing flat
his necktie slipping to the
left.
afterwards
people said they couldn’t believe
it.
he looked
great.
distinguished white
sideburns, pack of smokes in his
shirt pocket, always cracking
jokes, maybe a little
loud and maybe with a bit of bad
temper
but all in all
a seemingly sound
individual
never missing a day
of work.
working it out
in this steamy a.m. Hades claps its Herpes hands and
a woman sings through my radio, her voice comes clambering
through the smoke, and the wine fumes…
it’s a lonely time, she sings, and you’re not
mine and it makes me feel so bad,
this thing of being me…
I can hear cars on the freeway, it’s like a distant sea
sludged with people
while over my other shoulder, far over on 7th street
near Western
is the hospital, that house of agony—
sheets and bedpans and arms and heads and
expirations;
everything is so sweetly awful, so continuously and
sweetly awful: the art of consummation: life eating
life…
once in a dream I saw a snake swallowing its own
tail, it swallowed and swallowed until
it got halfway round, and there it stopped and
there it stayed, it was stuffed with its own
self. some fix, that.
we only have ourselves to go on, and it’s
enough…
I go downstairs for another bottle, switch on the
cable and there’s Greg Peck pretending he’s
F. Scott and he’s very excited and he’s reading his
manuscript to his lady.
I turn the set
off.
what kind of writer is that? reading his pages to
a lady? this is a violation…
I return upstairs and my two cats follow me, they are
fine fellows, we have no discontent, we have no
arguments, we listen to the same music, never vote for a
president.
one of my cats, the big one, leaps on the back
of my chair, rubs against my shoulders and
neck.
“no good,” I tell him, “I’m not going
to read you this
poem.”
he leaps to the floor and walks out to the
balcony and his buddy
follows.
they sit and watch the night; we’ve got the
power of sanity here.
these early a.m. mornings when almost everybody
is asleep, small night bugs, winged things
enter, and circle and whirl.
the machine hums its electric hum, and having
opened and tasted the new bottle I type the next
line. you
can read it to your lady and she’ll probably tell you
it’s nonsense. she’ll be
reading Tender Is the
Night.
beasts bounding through time—
Van Gogh writing his brother for paints
Hemingway testing his shotgun
Celine going broke as a doctor of medicine
the impossibility of being human
Villon expelled from Paris for being a thief
Faulkner drunk in the gutters of his town
the impossibility of being human
Burroughs killing his wife with a gun
Mailer stabbing his
the impossibility of being human
Maupassant going mad in a rowboat
Dostoevsky lined up against a wall to be shot
Crane off the back of a boat into the propeller
the impossibility
Sylvia with her head in the oven like a baked potato
Harry Crosby leaping into that Black Sun
Lorca murdered in the road by the Spanish troops
the impossibility
Artaud sitting on a madhouse bench
Chatterton drinking rat poison
Shakespeare a plagiarist
Beethoven with a horn stuck into his head against deafness
the impossibility the impossibility
Nietzsche gone totally mad
the impossibility of being human
all too human
this breathing
in and out
out and in
these punks
these cowards
these champions
these mad dogs of glory
moving this little bit of light toward
us
impossibly.
trashcan lives
the wind blows hard tonight
and it’s a cold wind
and I think about
the boys on the row.
I hope some of them have a bottle
of red.
it’s when you’re on the row
that you notice that
everything
is owned
and that there are locks on
everything.
this is the way a democracy
works:
you get what you can,
try to keep that
and add to it
if possible.
this is the way a dictatorship
works too
only they either enslave or
destroy their
derelicts.
we just fo
rget
ours.
in either case
it’s a hard
cold
wind.
the lost generation
have been reading a book about a rich literary lady
of the twenties and her husband who
drank, ate and partied their way through
Europe
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