Poetry & Poets

don’ t ever get the idea I am a poet; you can see me
at the racetrack any day half drunk
betting quarters, sidewheelers and straight thoroughs,
but let me tell you, there are some women there
who go where the money goes, and sometimes when you
look at these whores these onehundreddollar whores
you wonder sometimes if nature isn’ t playing a joke
dealing out so much breast and ass and the way
it’ s all hung together, you look and you look and
you look and you can’ t believe it; there are ordinary women

I had just won $115 from the headshakers and
was naked upon my bed
listening to an opera by one of the Italians
and had just gotten rid of a very loose lady
when there was a knock upon the wood,
and since the cops had just raided a month or so ago,
I screamed out rather on edge —
who the hell is it? what you want, man?
I’ m your publisher! somebody screamed back,
and I hollered, I don’ t have a publisher,
try the place next door, and he screamed back,
you’ re Charles Bukowski, aren’ t you? and I got up and

I went over the other day
to pick up my daughter.
her mother came out with workman’ s
overalls on.
I gave her the child support money
and she laid a sheaf of poems on me by one
Manfred Anderson.
I read them.
he’ s great, she said.
does he send this shit out? I asked.
oh no, she said, Manfred wouldn’ t do that.
why?
well, I don’ t know exactly.
listen, I said, you know all the poets who
don’ t send their shit out.
the magazines aren’ t ready for them, she said,

I suppose so.
I was living in an attic in Philadelphia
It became very hot in the summer and so I stayed in the
bars. I didn’ t have any money and so with what was almost left
I put a small ad in the paper and said I was a writer
looking for work...
which was a god damned lie; I was a writer
looking for a little time and a little food and some
attic rent.
a couple days later when I finally came home
from somewhere
the landlady said, there was somebody looking for
you. and I said,

of course, I may die in the next ten minutes
and I’ m ready for that
but what I’ m really worried about is
that my editor-publisher might retire
even though he is ten years younger than
I.
it was just 25 years ago (I was at that ripe
old age of 45)
when we began our unholy alliance to
test the literary waters,
neither of us being much
known.

I got in the shower
and burned my balls
last Wednesday.

met this painter called Spain,
no, he was a cartoonist,
well, I met him at a party
and everybody got mad at me
because I didn’ t know who he was
or what he did.

My father’ s been dead for thirty years
but when he appears behind my shoulder
offering advice, or condemnation, or a quiet pride
in something I’ ve done that isn’ t even thistledown
or tiny shavings of balsa wood in the eyes of the world
— “Albie, grip in the middle and turn
with a steady pressure” — it’ s measurable,
if not the way the wind is in a sock,
or ohms, or net-and-gross, it registers the way
an absence sometimes does, and I listen to him
with a care I never exhibited when he was a presence,

We had gathered under a tent in the park
for some words before lunch and after separate mornings,
and when — twice — the poet said “capital,”
the lightning bolts that followed the noun
had me bolting too; I’ d always suspected
God’ s communist leanings, but now I regretted
how few exchanges we know
between craft and climate:

Catalpas blooming up and down Catalpa Street, car alarms blooming
up and down Waveland Avenue — an instant of nature without the narrative.
O face-in-your-morning-juice, swimmer-in-an-old-wool-suit,
we sit side by side on the steps smoking the same cigarette,
watching children who live alone, women married to the wrong men.

I

I hear you are whispering there O stars of heaven,
O suns — O grass of graves...
If you do not say anything how can I say anything?

Let us tunnel

the air
(as a mole’ s green galleries)
toward the ultimate

cornfield
— the square of gold, & green, & of tassle

that rustles back at us —

let us burrow in
to a susurration, the dense starlings,

of the real —
the huge
sunflowers waving back at us,

as we move

— the great grassy world

that surrounds us,
singing.