i wanted to overthrow the government but all i brought down was somebody's wife
by Charles Bukowski
30 dogs, 20 men on 20 horses and one fox
and look here, they write,
you are a dupe for the state, the church,
you are in the ego-dream,
read your history, study the monetary system,
note that the racial war is 23,000 years old.
well, I remember 20 years ago, sitting with an old Jewish tailor,
his nose in the lamplight like a cannon sighted on the enemy; and
there was an Italian pharmacist who lived in an expensive apartment
in the best part of town; we plotted to overthrow
a tottering dynasty, the tailor sewing buttons on a vest,
the Italian poking his cigar in my eye, lighting me up,
a tottering dynasty myself, always drunk as possible,
well-read, starving, depressed, but actually
a good young piece of ass would have solved all my rancor,
but I didn’t know this; I listened to my Italian and my Jew
and I went out down dark alleys smoking borrowed cigarettes
and watching the backs of houses come down in flames,
but somewhere we missed: we were not men enough,
large or small enough,
or we only wanted to talk or we were bored, so the anarchy
fell through,
and the Jew died and the Italian grew angry because I stayed
with his
wife when he went down to the pharmacy; he did not care to have
his personal government overthrown, and she overthrew easy, and
I had some guilt: the children were asleep in the other bedroom
but later I won $200 in a crap game and took a bus to New Orleans
and I stood on the corner listening to the music coming from bars
and then I went inside to the bars,
and I sat there thinking about the dead Jew,
how all he did was sew on buttons and talk,
and how he gave way although he was stronger than any of us
he gave way because his bladder would not go on,
and maybe that saved Wall Street and Manhattan
and the Church and Central Park West and Rome and the
Left Bank, but the pharmacist’s wife, she was nice,
she was tired of bombs under the pillow and hissing the Pope,
and she had a very nice figure, very good legs,
but I guess she felt as I: that the weakness was not Government
but Man, one at a time, that men were never as strong as
their ideas
and that ideas were governments turned into men;
and so it began on a couch with a spilled martini
and it ended in the bedroom: desire, revolution,
nonsense ended, and the shades rattled in the wind,
rattled like sabers, cracked like cannon,
and 30 dogs, 20 men on 20 horses chased one fox
across the fields under the sun,
and I got out of bed and yawned and scratched my belly
and knew that soon very soon I would have to get
very drunk again.
The Japanese Wife
by Charles Bukowski
O lord, he said, Japanese women,
real women, they have not forgotten,
bowing and smiling
closing the wounds men have made;
but American women will kill you like they
tear a lampshade,
American women care less than a dime,
they’ve gotten derailed,
they’re too nervous to make good:
always scowling, belly-aching,
disillusioned, overwrought;
but oh lord, say, the Japanese women:
there was this one,
I came home and the door was locked
and when I broke in she broke out the bread knife
and chased me under the bed
and her sister came
and they kept me under that bed for two days,
and when I came out, at last,
she didn’t mention attorneys,
just said, you will never wrong me again,
and I didn’t; but she died on me,
and dying, said, you can wrong me now,
and I did,
but you know, I felt worse then
than when she was living;
there was no voice, no knife,
nothing but little Japanese prints on the wall,
all those tiny people sitting by red rivers
with flying green birds,
and I took them down and put them face down
in a drawer with my shirts,
and it was the first time I realized
that she was dead, even though I buried her;
and some day I’ll take them all out again,
all the tan-faced little people
sitting happily by their bridges and huts
and mountains—
but not right now,
not just yet.
vegas
by Charles Bukowski
there was a frozen tree that I wanted to paint
but the shells came down
and in Vegas looking across at a green sunshade
at 3:30 in the morning,
I died without nails, without a copy of the Atlantic Monthly,
the windows screamed like doves moaning the bombing of Milan
and I went out to live with the rats
but the lights were too bright
and I thought maybe I'd better go back and sit in a
poetry class:
a marvelous description of a gazelle
is hell;
the cross sits like a fly on my window,
my mother’s breath stirs small leaves
in my mind;
and I hitch-hiked back to L.A. through hangover clouds
and I pulled a letter from my pocket and read it
and the truckdriver said, what’s that?
and I said, there's some gal up North who used to
sleep with Pound, she's trying to tell me that H.D.
was our greatest scribe; well, Hilda gave us a few pink
Grecian gods in with the chinaware, but after reading her
I still have 140 icicles hanging from my bones.
I'm not going all the way to L.A., the truckdriver said.
it's all right, I sad, the calla lilies nod to our minds
and someday we’ll all go home
together.
in fact, he said, this is as far
as we go.
so I let him have it; old withered whore of time
your breasts taste the sour cream of dreaming . . .
he let me out
in the middle of the desert;
to die is to die is to die,
old phonographs in cellars,
joe di maggio,
magazines in with the onions . . .
an old Ford picked me up
45 minutes later
and, this time,
I kept my mouth
shut.
a 340 dollar horse and a hundred dollar whore
by Charles Bukowski
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
and then there is something else that wants to make you
tear up paintings and break albums of Beethoven
across the back of the john; anyhow, the season
was dragging and the big boys were getting busted,
all the non-pros, the producers, the cameraman,
the pushers of Mary, the fur salesman, the owners
themselves, and Saint Louie was running this day:
a sidewheeler that broke when he got in close;
he ran with his head down and was mean and ugly
and 35 to 1, and I put a ten down on him.
the driver broke him wide
took him out by the fence where he’d be alone
even if he had to travel four times as far,
and that’s the way he went it
all the way by the outer fence
traveling two miles in one
and he won like he was mad as hell
and he wasn’t even tired,
and the biggest blonde of all
all ass and breast, hardly anything else
went to the payoff window with me.
that night I couldn’t destroy her
although the springs shot sparks
and they pounded on the walls.
later she sat there in her slip
drinking Old Grandad
and she said
what’s a guy like you doing
living in a dump like this?
and I said
I’m a poet
and she threw back her beautiful head and laughed.
you? you . . . a poet?
I guess you’re right, I said, I guess you’re right.
but still she looked good to me, she still looked good,
and all thanks to an ugly horse
who wrote this poem.
wax job
by Charles Bukowski
man, he said, sitting on the steps
your car sure needs a wash and wax job
I can do it for you for 5 bucks,
I got the wax, I got the rags, I got everything
I need.
I gave him the 5 and went upstairs.
when I came down 4 hours later
he was sitting on the steps drunk
and offered me a can of beer.
he said he’d get the car the next
day.
the next day he got drunk again and
I loaned him a dollar for a bottle of
wine. his name was Mike
a world war II veteran.
his wife worked as a nurse.
the next day I came down and he was sitting
on the steps and he said,
you know, I been sitting here looking at your car,
wondering just how I was gonna do it,
I wanna do it real good.
the next day Mike said it looked like rain
and it sure as hell wouldn’t make any sense
to wash and wax a car when it was gonna rain.
the next day it looked like rain again.
and the next.
then I didn’t see him anymore.
a week later I saw his wife and she said,
they took Mike to the hospital,
he’s all swelled-up, they say it’s from the
drinking.
listen, I told her, he said he was going to wax my
car, I gave him 5 dollars to wax my
car.
he’s in the critical ward, she said,
he might die . . .
I was sitting in their kitchen
drinking with his wife
when the phone rang.
she handed the phone to me.
it was Mike. listen, he said, come down and
get me, I can’t stand this
place.
I drove on down there, walked into the
hospital, walked up to his bed and
said, let’s go Mike.
they wouldn’t give him his clothes
so Mike walked to the elevator in his
gown.
we got on and there was a kid driving the
elevator and eating a popsicle.
nobody’s allowed to leave here in a gown,
he said.
you just drive this thing, kid, I said,
we’ll worry about the gown.
Mike was all puffed-up, triple size
but I got him into the car somehow
and gave him a cigarette.
I stopped at the liquor store for 2 six packs
then went on in. I drank with Mike and his wife until
11 p.m.
then went upstairs . . .
where’s Mike? I asked his wife 3 days later,
you know he said he was going to wax my car.
Mike died, she said, he’s gone.
you mean he died? I asked.
yes, he died, she said.
I’m sorry, I said, I’m very sorry
it rained for a week after that and I figured the only
way I’d get the 5 back was to go to bed with his wife
but you know
she moved out 2 weeks later
an old guy with white hair moved in there
and he had one blind eye and played the French Horn.
there was no way I could make it with
him.
