I cut the middle fingernail of the middle
finger
right hand
real short
and I began rubbing along her cunt
as she sat upright in bed

spreading lotion over her arms
face
and breasts
after bathing.
then she lit a cigarette:
“don’t let this put you off,”
an smoked and continued to rub
the lotion on.
I continued to rub the cunt.

“You want an apple?” I asked.
“sure,” she said, “you got one?”
but I got to her-
she began to twist
then she rolled on her

it sits outside my window now
like and old woman going to market;
it sits and watches me,
it sweats nervously
through wire and fog and dog-bark
until suddenly
I slam the screen with a newspaper
like slapping at a fly
and you could hear the scream
over this plain city,
and then it left.
the way to end a poem
like this
is to become suddenly
quiet.
-Love

I am in this low-slung sports car
painted a deep, rich yellow
driving under an Italian sun.
I have a British accent.
I’m wearing dark shades
an expensive silk shirt.
there’s no dirt under my
fingernails.
the radio plays Vivaldi
and there are two women with
me
one with raven hair
the other a blonde.
they have small breasts and
beautiful legs
and they laugh at everything I
say.
as we drive up a steep road
the blonde squeezes my leg
and nestles closer
while raven hair
leans across and

here I am in the ground my mouth
open and I can’t even say
mama, and
the dogs run by and stop and piss
on my stone; I get it all
except the sun
and my suit is looking bad
and yesterday the last of my left arm
gone
very little left, all harp-like without music.
at least a drunk in bed with a cigarette
might cause 5 fire engines and 33 men.
I can’t do any thing.
but p.s. – Hector

majestic, majic
infinite
my little girl is
sun
on the carpet-
out the door
picking a flower, ha!
an old man,
battle-wrecked,
emerges from his
chair
and she looks at me
but only sees
love,
ha!, and I become
quick with the world
and love right back
just like I was meant
to do.
-Marina by Charles Bukowski

a girlfriend came in
built me a bed
scrubbed and waxed the kitchen floor
scrubbed the walls
vacuumed
cleaned the toilet
the bathtub
scrubbed the bathroom floor
and cut my toenails and
my hair.
then
all on the same day
the plumber came and fixed the kitchen faucet
and the toilet
and the gas man fixed the heater
and the phone man fixed the phone.
noe I sit in all this perfection.
it is quiet.
I have broken off with all 3 of my girlfriends.
I felt better

“what?” they say, “you got a computer?”
it’s like I have sold out to
the enemy.
I had no idea so many
people were prejudiced
against computers.
even two editors have
written me letters about
the computer.
one disparaged the
computer in a mild and
superior way.
the other seemed
genuinely pissed.
I am aware that a
computer can’t create
a poem.
but neither can a
typewriter. yet, still, once or
twice a week
I hear: “what?
you have a
computer? you?”
yes, I do
and I sit up here
almost every
night,
sometimes with
beer or

was a truly amazing man
he pretended to be
rich
even though we lived on beans and mush and weenies
when we sat down to eat, he said,
“not everybody can eat like this.”
and because he wanted to be rich or because he actually
thought he was rich
he always voted Republican
and he voted for Hoover against Roosevelt
and he lost
and then he voted for Alf Landon against Roosevelt
and he lost again
saying, “I don’t know what this

when I look back now
at the abuse I took from
her
I feel shame that I was so
innocent,
but I must say
she did match me drink for
drink,
and I realized that her life
her feelings for things
had been ruined
along the way
and that I was no mare than a
temporary
companion;
she was ten years older
and mortally hurt by the past
and the present;
she treated me badly:
desertion, other
men;
she brought me immense
pain,
continually;
she lied, stole;
there was desertion,
other men,
yet we had our

I read last Saturday in the
redwoods outside of Santa Cruz
and I was about 3/4’s finished
when I heard a long high scream
and a quite attractive
young girl came running toward me
long gown and divine eyes of fire
and she leaped up on the stage
and screamed: “I WANT YOU!
I WANT YOU! TAKE ME! TAKE
ME!”
I told her, “look, get the hell
away from me.”
but she kept tearing at my
clothing and throwing herself
at me.
“where were you,”

he’s a dandy
small moustache
usually sucking on a cigar
–
he tends to lean into cars as he
transacts business
first time I met him, he said,
“hey! ya gonna make a
killin’?”
“maybe,” I answered.
next meeting it was:
“hey, Ramrod! what’s
happening?”
“very little,” I told
him.
next time I had my girlfriend with me
and he just
grinned.
next time I was
alone.
“hey,” he asked, “where’s the young
chick?”
“I left her at home….”
“Bullshit! I’ll bet she dumped you!”
and the next time he really leaned into

I was fairly drunk when it
began and I took out my bottle and used it
along the way. I was reading a week or two after
Kandel and I did not look quite as
pretty but
I brought it off and we
ended up at the Webbs, 6, 8, 10 of
us, and I drank scotch, wine, beer, tequila
and noticed a nice one sitting next to me –
one tooth missing when she smiled,
lovely, and I

I sit here on the 2nd floor
hunched over in yellow
pajamas
still pretending to be
a writer.
some damned gall,
at 71,
my brain cells eaten
away by
life.
rows of books
behind me,
I scratch my thinning
hair
and search for the
word.
-Now by Charles Bukowski

ah, christ, what a CREW:
more
poetry, always more
POETRY.

if it doesn’t come, coax it out with a
laxative. get your name in LIGHTS,
get it up there in
8 1/2 x 11 mimeo.
keep it coming like a miracle.
ah christ, writers are the most sickening
of all the louts!
yellow-toothed, slump-shouldered,
gutless, flea-bitten and
obvious . . . in tinker-toy rooms
with their flabby hearts
they tell us
what’s wrong with the world-
as if we didn’t know that a cop’s club
can crack

there are worse things than
being alone
but it often takes decades
to realize this
and most often
when you do
it’s too late
and there’s nothing worse
than
too late.
-Oh Yes by Charles Bukowski

they talk down through
the centuries to us,
and this we need more and more,
the statues and paintings
in midnight age
as we go along
holding dead hands.
and we would say
rather than delude the knowing:
a damn good show,
but hardly enough for a horse to eat,
and out on the sunshine street where
eyes are dabbled in metazoan faces
i decide again
that in theses centuries
they have done very well
considering the nature of their
brothers:
it’s more than good
that some of

I laugh sometimes when I think about
say
Céline at a typewriter
or Dostoevsky…
or Hamsun…
ordinary men with feet, ears, eyes,
ordinary men with hair on their heads
sitting there typing words
while having difficulties with life
while being puzzled almost to madness.
Dostoevsky gets up
he leaves the machine to piss,
comes back
drinks a glass of milk and thinks about
the casino and
the roulette wheel.
Céline stops, gets up, walks to the
window, looks out, thinks, my last patient
died today, I won’t

never
even in calmer times
have I ever
dreamed of
bicycling through that
city
wearing a
beret
and
Camus
always
pissed
me
off.
– Paris by Charles Bukowski

To end up alone
in a tomb of a room
without cigarettes
or wine-
just a lightbulb
and a potbelly,
grayhaired,
and glad to have
the room.
-Poem For My 43rd Birthday by Charles Bukowski

by God, I don’t know what to
-Prayer In Bad Weather by Charles Bukowski

Each man must realize
that it can all disappear very quickly:
the cat, the woman, the job,
the front tire,
the bed, the walls, the
room; all our necessities
including love,
rest on foundations of sand –

and any given cause,
no matter how unrelated:
the death of a boy in Hong Kong
or a blizzard in Omaha …
can serve as your undoing.
all your chinaware crashing to the
kitchen floor, your girl will enter
and you’ll be standing, drunk,
in the center of

he sat naked and drunk in a room of summer
night, running the blade of the knife
under his fingernails, smiling, thinking
of all the letters he had received
telling him that
the way he lived and wrote about
that-
it had kept them going when
all seemed
truly
hopeless.
-Question And Answer by Charles Bukowski

the vultures at the zoo
(all three of them)
sit very quietly in their
caged tree
and below
on the ground
are chunks of rotten meat.
the vultures are over-full.
our taxes have fed them
well.
we move on to the next cage.
a man is in there
sitting on the ground
eating
his own shit.
i recognize him as
our former mailman.
his favorite expression had been:
“have a beautiful day.”
that day i did.

little dark girl with
kind eyes
when it comes time to
use the knife
I won’t flinch and
I won’t blame you,
as I drive along the shore alone
as the palms wave,
the ugly heavy palms,
as the living does not arrive
as the dead do not leave,
I won’t blame you, instead
I will remember the kisses
our lips raw with love
and how you gave me
everything you had
and how I
offered you what was left of me,
and I will remember your

I have just spent one-hour-and-a-half
handicapping tomorrow’s card.
when am I going to get at the poems?
well, they’ll just have to wait
they’ll have to warm their feet in the
anteroom
where they’ll sit gossiping about me.
“this Chinaski, doesn’t he realize that
without us he would have long ago
gone mad, been dead?”

“he knows, but he thinks he can keep
us at his beck and call!”

“he’s an ingrate!”
“let’s give him writer’s block!”
“yeah!”
“yeah!”
“yeah!”
the little poems kick up their