Read Beerspit Night and Cursing Online
Authors: Charles Bukowski and Sheri Martinelli
Beerspit Night and Cursing (43 page)
[
This appeared in
A&P
#5 (January 1961) immediately following Clarence Major’s review of
Flower, Fist and Bestial Wail
and three other books. Major’s subsequent review, promised in the first paragraph, never appeared
.]
Targets
#4—
A Signature of Charles Bukowski
(arrived too late to airmail to Mr. Major so the typist must do it & she is not going to “cock” Mr. Bukowski “up with kisses.” As a matter of fact she is reviewing one poem only & the rest will be reviewed by Mr. Major next issue of the
Anagogic & Paideumic Review
).
Page 19:
Horse on Fire
wherein Mr. Bukowski has Mr. Ezra Pound saying:
“one of the greatest love poems ever written”
He did
NOT
say
that
; he said “
AMONG
the best love poems in the language”
Mr. Bukowski has Mr. Pound described:
“many kinds of traitors of which the political are the least.”
Mr. Pound was
not
guilty of any political treason. Mr. Pound’s
own
statement:
“
W H A T I WD HAVE BEEN GUILTY OF IF I HAD NOT SPOKEN
”
(Of Misprision of Treason/
European
’59)
covers his conduct.
It was a grim jest to call Mr. Pound a “traitor” & it is a traitorous act to release him in the care of his wife, a British lady, however correct she may be & of high class & the best dressed lady in the world (I mean the tie dots matching the hat feather & glove stripe—that degree of knowing. Whispering in the artist’s ear: “that lipstick’s the
WRONG
colour for that dress”)
but
Ezra
is
an American & he ought to be free to come to us if he wants & he cannot because it needs his wife to bring him & she’s “
been
here” & that was enough for her.
We’d need reform ourselves overnight to be good enough for a lady who wore a black silk top-coat/ a river-mist grey knit fez-hat glittering with silver sequins/ a jewel’d ring matching the colour of her strip’d scarf & grey’d tone’d stockings of silk matching her grey’d tone’d silk gloves/ a scarf pin whose colour fit the colour of her eyes & underneath a dress of forest green to match her shoes that she’s put black narrow ribands under th arch & tied criss-cross up her ankles, ballet fashion…on the hottest day of the hottest town in the midi—the swamptown heat of Washington D.C. traveling to St. Liz on a bus full of half-naked red-skins—Mrs. Dorothy Shakespear Pound was a miracle of civilisation & all by herself; without writing any Cantos “you’ve
no
idea how these tawrsome paradises bowre me” she could have raised our general cultural level & uplifted our society from “it’s goddamn’d dry on these rocks” [Canto 93/643] on toward a proper civilisation.
The look of pain in Allen Ginsberg’s eyes when the typist said: “he read me Dante translating as he went along & Guido the same & Ovid’s
Metamorphosis
and his own
Cantos
starting from XX to spare me Hell”…Allen needs to have his Dante read to him. We all need him: Mr. Major needs him:
“all of us who do not know what it means to ever have had a Guru or a means to go into ourselves quietly & find the beautiful boundless area of what we call Heaven—we find Hell every time.”
What good did it do to release him from St. Liz & sign him over to our British cousins?
A recording of an artist reading his poetry is
not
it. That is for the mass mind &
ALL
they got; but any who are of the caste of artists—the muse worshippers ought to stand in the Presence of the Throne & be Knighted. There is a power; there is a living reality & you aint going to get it from any recording of a human voice—the monkey mind is forever concerned with mass production.
The typist has uncovered evidence of enough intelligence alive & at work in the U.S. to warrant saying: there
are
men here who are men in their own right & they shd be in the presence of the living reality of a Dante walking the earth. They are being
cheated
of their right to equality—what good does it do to make the grocer’s clerk equal when our best men must resort to plastic recordings of something that is theirs by right of proximity—our best red-skin poets forced down to the factory level. It is a political & ethical crime to cheat a boy of sensitivity & intelligence as Peter Orlofsky of his cultural heritage as a fellow republican & citizen of a free nation. Poor Pete, beautiful of mind & body & ignorant as a goldfish—his inborn love of arts & letters is pitiful in its poverty but persistent beauty: “Sheri, today I was at Sutro Park & I saw a ‘painted ship upon a painted ocean’” & “wheredja get th’ blues?” (forget-me-nots plucked in Sutro Park for Diana striding white in moon ray) How are we
EVER
going to reach the level of Europe & the Orient? Our one international success has been sold into slavery. O! Go down Moses & pull our Ezra up so’s Pete can sing: “Leafdi Diana, leove Diana, Heye Diana…” [Canto 91/632-33] & Michael Grieg can test his dry, double distill’d wit upon the master of wit & Rob’t Stock can see first-hand the out-go-er sea-farer & know its likeness to the in-go-er sea-rougher…remove the eyes of pain from Allen Ginsberg—hasn’t he had
ENOUGH
Hell?
O Ezra who art in Italy—tho’ scandalized be thy name—our renaissance is come & thy word got through in the United States as it did in Europe—Give us this day our daily Ezra & fo’give him his sins as we forgive those who sin’d agin’ him & o let Ezra lead us into Ovid’s temptations & deliver us into delushus evils of the flesh for Pete Orlofsky’s sake & Ez we do have a Kingdom of Kulch & Ez we do have a Power of sorts & if we are let we’ll bring glory—O National Treasure which cannot be changed on th’ market…so long’s we exist as a nation…ah!
men
! (wot bug jobs they are.)
Mr. Bukowski’s been told but Mr. Bukowski will persist in his un-doing—that sort of art work on cover, to a very busy person doing research up there ahead of us in the 21st onward centuries, will signify to our busy future scholar that Mr. Bukowski’s book aint worth readin’ because its Art Work’ll serve as a sign post saying:
LATE LATE VICTORIAN ERA SCHOOL OF PICKARSSS-O
& the ugly kind of drawing will disqualify Mr. Bukowski’s poetry from being read by those who come after us & Mr. Bukowski
HAS GOT A SUBJECT MATTER: A POINT OF VIEW HOWEVER DOWNWARD IT IS CAST: A POINT OF PERCEPTION & WORDS OF MULTI-COLOR THAT HE USES TO INDICATE THE INNER SPACE WHERE THE MOON REALLY IS.
IF
Mr. Ezra Pound had read
his
Charles Bukowski he would
NOT
have
EVER
attempted to “save th’ United State of Murka.”
The printing of
Targets
is elegant & its only
real
art work. Egg-shell white with black print is the cover/ inside cover is sea-foam white & a half-page handsomely prints Mr. Bukowski’s signature so we may judge his character in his brush strokes. The half-page colour is brown-egg-shell tan & sits on the inner pages whose colour is gold diluted to its thinnest yellow & little decorations of strange nature exist on each page.
Mr. Bukowski: “Write it
so’z a man on th’ West Coast a
Africa could
understand ut”;
The “man on the West Coast of Africa” looking at his English-African Dictionary trying to translate—wd want to know
WHAT MEANS “DECORATIONS OF STRANGE
” etc—well, the first one is a goat with eyes under his horn’s root & a tongue like a mechanical part from an automobile carburator & polka dots under his eyes & ears like Babylonian wedge marks/ his horns are like a clown’s hat & his fur has lightening crossing it & he’s big’s a U.S. 25¢ piece of silver. A silly-strange but effective decoration/ I mean when the Aztecs use this kind of fantastic animal it hath an arcane meaning but this arcane animal is meaningless in any religious or artistic sense & is a silly but effective dec.
The little horse used on page with
Horse on Fire
is not a serious horse & I will not take him seriously/ Mr. Bukowski is warning Mr. Pound that:
“self appraisal of poetry & love has proved more fools than rebels”
which is harsh but correct with this exception:
IF WE CANNOT EVALUATE OUR OWN SELVES’ WORTH WHO IN THE HELL IS GOING TO DO IT WHILST WE WALK THIS EARTH
?
DOES MR. BUKOWSKI WANT MR. POUND TO WAIT SEVERAL AGES TO HEAR SOME DRY BONE UP THERE SAY WHAT MR. HOT BLOOD RIGHT NOW KNOWS TO BE TRUE? THAT IT
IS
“AMONG THE BEST LOVE POEMS IN THE LANGUAGE” (CANTO
90)
MR. POUND HAS THE MAP OF LOVE POETRY INSIDE HIS HEAD & KNOWS IMMEDIATELY WHERE A LOVE POEM STANDS IN RELATION TO THE RACE OF LOVE POETRY
.
Mr. Bukowski says: “and he proceeded to write the
Cantos
full of dead languages…”
Doesn’t Mr. Bukowski understand that “Our Man on the West Coast of Africa” hath a love of culture? Cannot Mr. Bukowski imagine him seated in the boring heat & dither calmly translating the
Cantos
from his various dictionaries & when he gets to the Egyptian hieroglyphics of Kati’s that the princess Ra Set got into the book—Our Man will be caused to write a letter to an European Egyptologist or mayhap an American Egyptologist & peace on earth, at least among the cultured, shall be the rule of the day. Language is important. The Hebrew language kept the Jews together as a clan more than any one
MAN
could ever do; men come & go but the symbol is eternal. Dr. Lovell says the “Torah” of the Jews was also the “Tara” of the Irish. Mr. E. P. Walker asks “what does the word ‘tara’
mean
to a contemporary of the Irishry?”
It is a
SOUND
& it brings a rush of emotion; wild battle cries & hilaritas of dealing directly with one’s foes; when the Irishry cannot die fighting & wildly singing or laughing…then it is their proud disdain of the “dog’s life” that they’ll die drinking & be in their imagined world of wild strange sounds like “
TARA
” & I do hope that answers Mr. Walker’s question.
Mr. Bukowski wd rather Mr. Pound write about “straight things in bird-light the terror of a mouse…” I have
NO
idea what Our Man on the West Coast of Africa wd translate that as because we have no “bird light” far’s I know. Of course “mouse terror” is world-wide/ This is a good place as any to record: the cat plays with the mouse because he forces his captured victim to teach him more about how to catch other mice/ the female wd do her cause well to play with the male like that/ free him & see which way he runs & then she’d know better how to catch another male—of course they
CAN
run faster/ there’s a danger!
Mr. Bukowski says: “the terror of a mouse reaches dormitory levels”
One has no idea what that signifies here
OR
on the West Coast of Africa.
Mr. Bukowski records: “and reading Canto 90 he put the paper down Ez did (both their eyes were wet)”
Canto 90 when properly read hath power to wet the eye from the terrible blast of its heated force rising upward.
The Cantos
will be more intelligible to Our man than Mr. Bukowski’s poem on the subject.
The back drawing on the cover is the female form divine seen through a pair of eyes that wobbled & done by a pair of hands that shook. The drawing a rivoting machine wd make cd it draw. NYC hog-wash: “but don’t you think Botticelli is
TOO
beautiful?” No, one did
NOT
but one does think this set of drawings on Bukowski’s book are
TOO UGLY
& that is much worse than being too beautiful. Those collecting
CONTEMPORARY AMERICANA
are advised to snatch up this book—the price is 50¢ & one orders them from
EDITORS/TARGET
: Casabuelo, Sandia Park/N.M. or Bukowski: 1623 N. Mariposa Ave/Los Angeles 27/Calif.
SM
[
The first four poems appeared in
A&P #5
(January 1961); “Poem for Liz” and the series of drawings appeared in #6 (September 1961)
]
I GET ALL THE BREAKS
I burnt my hand, he said, trying to light a cigarette
with an ox’s tail, and so your book won’t be out
for a couple of more weeks yet, but you’ve been
very patient; of course, I’m having trouble with my
printer and it’s possible that
O SO MORE GREESE
by Ricardo Willinsi and
DAWN BOWN GRITTING
by
Alan Roach will be out before yours; printer only
mailed half your pages (postal regulations) and
when the other half came, they were wrong sequenced
so I had to send them back, then had auto accident
but sent my brother down with your covers and
Villinsi’s, and any day now you should be getting
something in the mail. I know that 2 years
have been a long time and you’ve been very patient
and I’m going to be proud to have your book
in my series, but, of course, unless sales increase
I may have to drop the entire project, although
I do hope to get yours out. As you may know,
this is a one-man operation coming out of my own
pocket, my own time and effort, and, if you’ll reflect,
you will realise that we have been more than
hospitable to you.
POEM FOR MY LITTLE DOG WHO ALSO GROWLS QUITE WELL
:
dog walking intestine through days of dog dream
not hearing the scheming of cornhusks in Nebraska
or a dirty river with a big name,
or a dirty name for love,
not seeing angels with diamonds on their wings
winking at clouds,
not reading about Dostoievsky
the guy who kept trying to figure out
new ways to beat roulette;
not bothered with trying to like Dylan Thomas
when you really don’t,
or a wife who wants to all night;
my dog, you have never stared at alligators
trying to find your name,
or watched the roaches walk the walls all night,
falling from the ceiling onto your whore—
a fat scream—while you tried to figure
Hemmingway’s bulls, right or wrong,
or trying to play it smart:
marrying rich, trying to hang onto cold bedsheets
that freeze in your hands like dead knowledge;
friend dog, I walk you now,
you and I, alone,
pattering up the leave-torn sidewalks,
and although you haven’t read Kafka,
and until you do—
no woman will share
our bone.
SCALED LIKE A FISH
casuistics and memory, a magdalen hospital
swinging on the end of beads; scaglia and dream,
odd dream: birds and pistols; and so I think we write
now in order to capsize self and reality down to reason.
reason and finally, disintegration; the salina of our tears
really has dried; families have fallen like a brush before a roller,
maps have been torn down like posters:
quick little men
in offices of gold
drink down cups
half-poisoned, peering
at walls of clouds and
rockets like the sides
of elephants that will
not forget; and Nothing
nods Its head and smiles,
scaled like a fish, put
in a Sunday pocket, patted,
forgotten;—yet the stress
is gone and the halfcrazy
dead knit the earth, but
but wait, Miss Smith, god damm it, where’s the report from Holcomb?
and figs grow in the valley, sticky as love, and each of us,
day-drowned, sits in a cafe, a nightcap in a blue necktie,
drink it like you mean it; Holcomb was drunk, didn’t
send in report; Miss Smith cried; you will either
have to give her a raise, fire her or reach be-
neath her dress; the bombers are nearly over
Brazil now; boys still steal watermelons
later to become nothing but seeds, but
suffuse the discophora: at half-past
nine, some night, some morning, it
will rain a good one, cups all
spilled over the old maps,
Miss Smith, scaled like a
fish I reach beneath
your dress. I say::
don’t cry, it’s
only 8:30.
A DISORGANISED POEM ON A DISORGANISED DAY, WITH WOMEN RUNNING IN AND OUT AND THE PRICE OF BEER UP 2¢ A CAN
.
los angeles…Sunday mostly, gloom necktie, rot grass,
unenchanted lake,
and she has just taken the towel from
her magic hips and hung it across the screen door
like a drape, and it is dark and it is Doomday,
5 o’clock.
there is more fucking in the graves.
monolete lorda all the big guys built bigger than God
meant them to be
bringing in the music
while the eggs fry in their simple pans.
birds fall out of sky heavy with golden rock.
tend the mizzen, sing: o ye, o ye go damm.
girls so keep running in and out of doors downstairs
changing bathing suits, putting little blue ribbons
in their hair, donning china kimonoes, and there are
little dogs whirling like fleas, one or two roses
hang the fence, and an old man sits on the edge of his
chair like a cliff, afraid to fall.
rondo brilliant with Peter Haydn doing Mendy,
dog feet running grass and keys/ door slams,
birds everywhere bleep bleep they have atom bomb
dreams that struss their feathers.
(I died for you many a night feeding my love
my goofy love into your writhing
when I should have held a poem in my hand
like a sword
and cut you in half)
now they are torturing a little girl and fighting over
a dog: fucks of the future to drive a man crazy
to burn his hair when he sleeps and write his name
on the bottom of a vase…Cleopatras, your blue ribbons:
cheesbait for micemen/ I am cracking another beer like a walnut.
turkeyneck and lorca, poet smiling upon his fingernails
on Melrose Ave., weak lights, fat cats of blackbirds,
shoes always old, cops always young, spiders filled with
blood and moonlight…a poem is love even when it hates,
and Mr. Phillin, I want to tell you:
a poet has one fist of steel and one fist
of love/ manolete on the horn before the crowd,
the sunshine coming out red…
even the flies and pebbles are stunned,
and the bull
the bull is manolete now and this poem hopes it finds some undead.
POEM FOR LIZ
:
the bumblebee of our meaning
is less than a stack of
potatoe chips,
and growling and groaning
through barbs
searchlights shining into eyes,
I think of the good whore
who wouldn’t even
god damm easy take money
and when you slipped it into her purse
would find it
and slap it back
like the worst of insults,
but she saved you from the law
and your own razor
only meant to shave with
to find her dead later
in a three dollar and fifty cent a week room,
stiff as anything you can stiffen,
never having complained
starved and laughing
only wanting one more drink
and one less man
only wanting one small child
as any woman would
coming across the kitchen floor toward her,
everything done up in ribbons and sunshine,
and when the man next to the barstool
that sat next to mine
heard about Liz
he said,
“Too bad, god damm, she was a fine piece.”
No wonder a whore is a whore.
Liz, I know, and although I’d like to see you
now
I’m glad
you’re dead.
NO TITLE
: by Charles Bukowski
I
This is a picture of a man adriving home at 4:30 PM. He usually arrives at 6:30 PM. It can be any man. Any 2 men & a woman. Or any 2 women & a man. Or it can be 3 women. Or 3 men. But, for Christ’s sake, let’s keep it simple—as of above.
If the drawing is poor: he is carrying flowers in his left hand. If he is poor he probably didn’t buy them, but stealing flowers makes sense because they usually die quicker than people.
II
Now, an intelligent man, in a situation, ah, such as this…what does he do? Rant? Kill? Quote from Shelly? Hell, no, he covers the sight from his mind & endures. Art is long, life is short. Huh?
III
Contemplation is the birth of the mind’s tragedy in the vise…vice? who said likker was quicker? sometimes these fks seem to last hours!
IV
The congratulatory palm to the victor. When the swallows came over Capistrano, it was nothing like this…Lie is an intransitive verb & means to
recline; lay
is an intransitive verb & means to put down. The principle parts of Woman are: lie, lay, lain, lay, laid,
LAID
. Women & intransitive verbs are a great deal alike; you might as well shake hands with any sentence they bring upon you.
