Charles
Bukowski - alguns poemas:
To the whore who took my poems
Man in the sun
Death of an idiot
You
Ruin
Hell is a lonely place
Traffic report
The trash can
to the whore who took my poems
some say we should keep personal remorse from the
poem,
stay abstract, and there is some reason in this,
but jesus;
twelve poems gone and I don't keep carbons and you have
my
paintings too, my best ones; it's stifling:
are you trying to crush me out like the rest of them?
why didn't you take my money? they usually do
from the sleeping drunken pants sick in the corner.
next time take my left arm or a fifty
but not my poems;
I'm not Shakespeare
but sometime simply
there won't be any more, abstract or otherwise;
there'll always be money and whores and drunkards
down to the last bomb,
but as God said,
crossing his legs,
I see where I have made plenty of poets
but not so very much
poetry.
From
Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame
Selected poems 1955 - 1973
Black Sparrow Press, 1986.
First published in:
It Catches My Heart in Its Hands, 1963.
topo
man in the sun
she reads to me from the New Yorker
which I don't buy, don't know
how they get in here, but it's
something about the Mafia
one of the heads of the Mafia
who ate too much and had it too easy
too many fine women patting his
walnuts, and he got fat sucking at good
cigars and young breasts and he
has these heart attacks - and so
one day somebody is driving him
in his big car along the road
and he doesn't feel so good
and he asks the boy to stop and let
him out and the boy lays him out
along the road in the fine sunshine
and before he dies he says:
how beautiful life can be, and
then he's gone.
sometimes you've got to kill 4 or 5
thousand men before you somehow
get to believe that the sparrow
is immortal, money is piss and
that you have been wasting
your time.
From
Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame
Selected poems 1955 - 1973
Black Sparrow Press, 1986.
First published in:
Crucifix in a Deathhand, 1965.
topo
death of an idiot
he spoke to mice and sparrows
and his hair was white at the age of 16.
his father beat him every day and his mother
lit candles in the church.
his grandmother came while the boy slept
and prayed for the devil to let loose his hold upon
him
while his mother listened and cried over the
bible.
he didn't seem to notice young girls
he didn't seem to notice the games boys played
there wasn't much he seemed to notice
he just didn't seem interested.
he had a very large, ugly mouth and the teeth
stuck out
and his eyes were small and lusterless.
his shoulders were slumped and his back was bent
like an old man's.
he lived in our neighborhood.
we talked about him when we got bored and then
went on to more interesting things.
he seldom left his house. we would have liked to
torture him
but his father
who was a huge and terrible man
tortured him for
us.
one day the boy died. at 17 he was still a
boy. a death in a small neighborhood is noted with
alacrity, and then forgotten 3 or 4 days
later.
but the death of this boy seemed to stay with us
all. we kept talking about it
in our boy-men's voices
at 6 p.m. just before dark
just before dinner.
and whenever I drive through that neighborhood now
decades later
I still think of his death
while having forgotten all the other deaths
and everything else that happened
then.
From
Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame
Selected poems 1955 - 1973
Black Sparrow Press, 1986.
First published in:
Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame, 1974.
topo
you
you're a best, she said
your big white belly
and those hairy feet.
you never cut your nails
and you have fat hands
paws like a cat
your bright red nose
and the biggest balls
I've ever seen.
you shoot sperm like a
whale shoots water out of the
hole in its back.
beast beast beast,
she kissed me,
what do you want for
breakfast?
topo
ruin
William Saroyan said, "I ruined my
life by marrying the same woman
twice."
there will always be something
to ruin our lives,
William,
it all depends upon
what or which
finds us
first,
we are always
ripe and ready
to be
taken.
ruined lives are
normal
both for the wise
and
others.
it is only when
that life
ruined
becomes ours
we realize
then
that the suicides, the
drunkards, the mad, the
jailed, the dopers
and etc. etc.
are just as common
a part of existence
as the gladiola, the
rainbow
the
hurricane
and nothing
left
on the kitchen
shelf.
From
Septuagenarian Stew - Stories and Poems
Black Sparrow Press, 1990.
topo
hell is a lonely place
he was 65, his wife was 66, had
Alzheimer's disease.
he had cancer of the
mouth.
there were
operations, radiation
treatments
which decayed the bones in his
jaw
which then had to be
wired.
daily he put his wife in
rubber diapers
like a
baby.
unable to drive in his
condition
he had to take a taxi to
the medical
center,
had difficulty speaking,
had to
write the directions
down.
on his last visit
they informed him
there would be another
operation: a bit more
left
cheek and a bit more
tounge.
when he returned
he changed his wife's
diapers
put on the tv
dinners, watched the
evening news
then went to the bedroom, got the
gun, put it to her
temple, fired.
she fell to the
left, he sat upon the
couch
put the gun into his
mouth, pulled the
trigger.
the shots didn't arouse
the neighbors.
later
the burning tv dinners
did.
somebody arrived, pushed
the door open, saw
it.
soon
the police arrived and
went through their
routine, found
some items:
a closed savings
account and
a checkbook with a
balance of
$1.14
suicide, they
deduced.
in three weeks
there were two
new tenants:
a computer engineer
named
Ross
and his wife
Anatana
who studied
ballet.
they looked like another
upwardly mobile
pair.
From
Septuagenarian Stew
Black Sparrow Press, 1990.
topo
traffic report
here in Los Angeles
on the freeways
it's like the Wild West
again.
many of the drivers carry guns
and if you cut them off
or irritate them in any manner
with your driving,
they simply pull up, point their
guns and begin
firing.
life has gotten to be too much
for many of us out
here,
the razor's edge is always
up
and any slight, slight as it might
be
becomes the ultimate and final
challenge.
many wait for it, many even hope
for it.
but out of it all, something else
has emerged:
far more polite driving habits.
who the hell wants to catch a
.32 caliber bullet in order to gain
3 car lengts in
heavy traffic?
me?
I'm so polite I'd make a nun
puke.
I prefer to die by my own
hand.
From
Betting on the Muse - Poems and Stories
Black Sparrow Press, 1996.
topo
the trash can
this is great, I just wrote two
poems I didn't like.
there is a trash can on this
computer.
I just moved the poems
over
and dropped them into
the trash can.
they're gone forever, no
paper, no sound, no
fury, no placenta
and then
just a clean screen
awaits you.
it's always better
to reject yourself before
the editors do.
especially on a rainy
night like this with
bad music on the radio.
and now--
I know what you're
thinking:
maybe he should have
trashed this
misbegotten one
also.
ha, ha, ha,
ha.
From
Betting on the Muse - Poems and Stories
Black Sparrow Press, 1996.
topo