“is that all you’ve got
to say?”
“yes.”
“eat shit!” she said and
hung up.
love dries up, I thought
as I walked back to the
bathroom, about as fast as
sperm.
one for old snaggle-tooth
I know a woman
who keeps buying puzzles
Chinese
puzzles
blocks
wires
pieces that finally fit
into some order.
she works it out
mathematically
she solves all her
puzzles
lives down by the sea
puts sugar out for the ants
and believes
ultimately
in a better world.
her hair is white
she seldom combs it
her teeth are snaggled
and she wears loose shapeless
coveralls over a body most
women would wish they had.
for many years she irritated me
with what I considered her
eccentricities—
like soaking eggshells in water
(to feed the plants so that
they’d get calcium).
but finally when I think of her
life
and compare it to other lives
more dazzling, original
and beautiful
I realize that she has hurt fewer
people than anybody I know
(and by hurt I simply mean hurt).
she has had some terrible times,
times when maybe I should have
helped her more
for she is the mother of my only
child
and we were once great lovers,
but she has come through
like I said
she has hurt fewer
people than
anybody I know,
and if you look at it like that,
well,
she has created a better world.
she has won.
Frances, this poem is for
you.
prayer for a whore in bad weather
by God, I don’t know what to
do.
they’re so nice to have around.
they have a way of playing with
the balls
and looking at the cock very
seriously
twisting it
tweaking it
examining each portion
as their long hair drops along
your belly.
it’s not the fucking and sucking
alone
that reaches into a man
and softens him,
it’s the extras,
it’s all the extras.
now it’s raining tonight
and there’s nobody about.
they are elsewhere
examining things
in new bedrooms
in new moods
or maybe in old
bedrooms.
anyhow, it’s raining tonight,
one hell of a dashing, pouring
rain . . .
very little to do.
I’ve read the newspaper
paid the gas bill
the electric co.
the phone bill.
it keeps raining.
they soften a man
and then let him swim
in his own juices.
I need an old-fashioned whore
at the door tonight
folding her green umbrella,
drops of moonlit rain on her
purse, saying, “shit, man,
you can get better music
than that on your radio . . .
and turn up the heat . . .”
it’s always when a man’s
horny with love and everything
else
that it just keeps raining
splattering
vomiting
rain
good for the trees and the
grass and the air . . .
good for things that can
live alone.
I would give anything
for a female’s hand on my balls
tonight.
they get to a man and
then leave him listening
to the rain.
I made a mistake
I reached up into the top of the closet
and took out a pair of blue panties
and showed them to her and
asked “are these yours?”
and she looked and said,
“no, those belong to a dog.”
she left after that and I haven’t seen
her since. she’s not at her place.
I keep going there, leaving notes stuck
into the door. I go back and the notes
are still there. I take the Maltese cross
cut it down from my car mirror, tie it
to her doorknob with a shoelace, leave
a book of poems.
when I go back the next night everything
is still there.
I keep searching the streets for that
blood-wine battleship she drives
with a weak battery, and the doors
hanging from broken hinges.
I drive around the streets
an inch away from weeping,
ashamed of my sentimentality and
possible love.
a confused old man driving in the rain
wondering where the good luck
went.
the 6 foot goddess (for S.D.)
I’m big
I suppose that’s why my women have seemed
small
but this 6 foot goddess
who deals in real estate
and art
and flies from Texas
to see me
and I fly to Texas
to see her—
well, there’s plenty of her to
grab hold of
and I grab hold of it
of her,
I yank her head back by the hair,
I’m real macho,
I suck on her upper lip
her cunt
her soul
I mount her and tell her,
“I’m going to shoot some white hot
juice into you. I didn’t fly all the
way to Galveston to play
chess.”
later we lay locked like human vines
my left arm under her pillow
my right arm over her side
I grip both of her hands,
and my chest
belly
balls
cock
tangle into her
and through us in the dark
pass white whooping rays
back and forth
back and forth
until I fall away
and we sleep.
she’s wild
but kind
my 6 foot goddess
makes me laugh
the laughter of the mutilated
who still need
love,
and her blessed eyes
run deep into her head
like inward fountains
far in
and
cool and good.
she has saved me
from everything that is
not here.
quiet clean girls in gingham dresses
all I’ve ever known are whores, ex-prostitutes,
madwomen. I see men with quiet,
gentle women—I see them in the supermarkets,
I see them walking down the streets together,
I see them in their apartments: people at
peace, living together. I know
that their
peace is only partial, but there is
peace, often hours and days of peace.
all I’ve ever known are pill freaks, alcoholics,
whores, ex-prostitutes, madwomen.
when one leaves
another arrives
worse than her predecessor.
I see so many men with quiet clean girls in
gingham dresses
girls with faces that are not wolverine or
predatory.
“don’t ever bring a whore around,” I tell my
few friends, “I’ll fall in love with her.”
“you couldn’t stand a good woman, Bukowski.”
I need a good woman. I need a good woman
more than I need this typewriter, more than
I need my automobile, more than I need
Mozart; I need a good woman so badly that I
can taste her in the air, I can feel her
at my fingertips, I can see sidewalks built
for her feet to walk upon,
I can see pillows for her head,
I can feel my waiting laughter of easy joy,
I can see her petting a cat,
I can see her sleeping,
I can see her slippers on the floor.
I know that she exists
but where is she upon this earth
as the whores keep finding me?
tonight
“your poems about the girls will still be around
50 years from now when the girls are gone,”
my editor phones me.
dear editor:
the girls appear to be gone
already.
I know what you mean
but give me one truly alive woman
tonight
walking across the floor toward me
and you can have all the poems
the good ones
the bad ones
or any that I might write
after this one.
I know what you mean.
do you know what I mean?
pacific telephone
you go for these wenches, she said,
you go for these whores,
I’ll bore you.
I don’t want to be shit on anymore,
I said,
relax.
when I drink, she said, it hurts my
bladder, it burns.
I’ll do the drinking, I said.
you’re waiting for the phone to ring,
she said,
you keep looking at the phone.
if one of those wenches phones you’ll
run right out of here.
I can’t promise you anything, I said.
then—just like that—the phone rang.
this is Madge, said the phone. I’ve
got to see you right away.
oh, I said.
I’m in a jam, she continued, I need ten
bucks—fast.
I’ll be right over, I said, and
hung up.
she looked at me. it was a wench,
she said, your whole face lit up.
what the hell’s the matter with
you?
listen, I said, I’ve got to leave.
you stay here. I’ll be right back.
I’m going, she said. I love you but you’re
crazy, you’re doomed.
she got her purse and slammed the door.
it’s probably some deeply-rooted childhood fuckup
that makes me vulnerable, I thought.
then I left my place and got into my Volks.
I drove north up Western with the radio on.
there were whores walking up and down
both sides of the street and Madge looked
more vicious than any of them.
hunchback
moments of damnation and moments of glory
tick across my roof.
the cat walks by
seeming to know everything.
my luck has been better, I think,
than the luck of the gladiola,
although I am not sure.
I have been loved by many women,
and for a hunchback of life,
that’s lucky.
so many fingers through my hair
so many hands grasping my balls
so many shoes tilted sideways across my bedroom
rug.
so many eyes looking,
indented into a skull that will carry all those
eyes into death,
remembering.
I have been treated better than I should have
been—
not by life in general
or the machinery of things
but by women.
and the other
(by women): me
standing in the bedroom alone
doubled
hands holding the gut—
thinking
why why why why why why?
women gone to men like pigs
women gone to men with hands like dead branches
women gone to men who fuck badly
women gone to things of men
women gone
gone
because they must go
in the order of
things.
the women know
but more often chose out of
disorder and confusion.
they can kill what they touch.
I am dying
but not dead.
mermaid
I had to come into the bathroom for something
and I knocked
and you were in the tub
you had washed your face and your hair
and I saw your upper body
and except for the breasts
you looked like a girl of 5, of 8
you were gently gleeful in the water
Linda Lee.
you were not only the essence of that
moment
but of all my moments
up to there
you bathing easily in the ivory
yet there was nothing
I could tell you.
I got what I wanted in the bathroom
something
and I left.
yes
no matter who I’m with
people always say,
are you still with her?
my average relationship lasts
two and one half years.
with wars
inflation
unemployment
alcoholism
gambling
and my own degenerate nervousness
I think I do well enough.
I like reading the Sunday papers in bed.
I like orange ribbons tied around the cat’s neck.
I like sleeping up against a body that I know well.
I like black slips at the foot of my bed
at 2 in the afternoon.
I like seeing how the photos turned out.
I like to be helped through the holidays:
4th of July, Labor Day, Halloween, Thanksgiving,
Christmas, New Year’s.
they know how to ride these rapids
and they are less afraid of love than I am.
they can make me laugh where professional comedians
fail.
there is walking out to buy a newspaper together.
there is much good in being alone
but there is a strange warmth in not being alone.
I like boiled red potatoes.
I like eyes and fingers better than mine that can
get knots out of shoelaces.
I like letting her drive the car on dark nights
when the road and the way have gotten to me,
the car radio on
we light cigarettes and talk about things
and now and then
become silent
.
I like hairpins on tables.
I like knowing the same walls
the same people.
I dislike the insane and useless fights which always
occur
and I dislike myself at these times
giving nothing
understanding nothing.
I like boiled asparagus
I like radishes
green onions.
I like to put my car into a car wash.
I like it when I have ten win on a six to one
shot.
I like my radio which keeps playing
Shostakovich, Brahms, Beethoven, Mahler.
I like it when there’s a knock on the door and
she’s there.
no matter who I’m with
people always say,
are you still with her?
they must think I bury them in
the Hollywood Hills.
2nd. street, near Hollister, in Santa Monica
my daughter is 13 years old
and the other afternoon
I drove to her court to take her
to lunch
and there was a beautiful woman
sitting on the porch
and I thought, well, she’ll get
up and tell Marina that
I’m here.
and the beautiful woman stood up
and walked toward me.
it was my daughter.
she said, “Hi!”
I answered as if everything were
commonplace and we drove off
together.
the trashing of the dildo
one week I had 6 different women
in 6 different beds
(I took a Thursday night off to rest up)
and I only failed
sexually