the lucky ones

stuck in the rain on the freeway, 6:15 p.m.,
these are the lucky ones, these are the
dutifully employed, most with their radios on as loud
as possible as they try not to think or remember.

this is our new civilization: as men
once lived in trees and caves now they live
in their automobiles and on freeways as

the local news is heard again and again while
we shift from first gear to second and back to first.

there's a poor fellow stalled in the fast lane ahead, hood
up, he's standing against the freeway fence
a newspaper over his head in the rain.

the other cars force their way around his car, pull out into
the next lane in front of cars determined to shut them off.

in the lane to my right a driver is being followed by a
police car with blinking red and blue lights - he surely
can't be speeding as

suddenly the rain comes down in a giant wash and all the
cars stop and

even with the windows up I can smell somebody's clutch
burning.

I just hope it's not mine as

the wall of water diminishes and we go back into first
gear; we are all still
a long way from home as I memorize
the silhouette of the car in front of me and the shape of the

driver's head or
what
I can see of it above the headrest while
his bumper sticker asks me
HAVE YOU HUGGED YOUR KID TODAY?

suddenly I have an urge to scream
as another wall of water comes down and the
man on the radio announces that there will be a 70 percent
chance of showers tomorrow night 

letter in the later days to a dear friend

A long 2-page letter, dated 1-2-79, to Lou Webb. Bukowski is catching up with Louise Webb, discussing his own issues as well. Also, with two original black and white photos of Charles Bukowski and his future wife, Linda Lee, at the beach, both captioned in ink on the versos, one dated July 1977 and other July 1978, laid in. Includes the original mailing envelope. Letter measures 11x8½".

Note: The woman in the photo on the right in the main image is Bukowski's daughter Marina Louise Bukowski; she was named Louise in honor of Gypsy Lou Webb.

fountains of blood

In 1955, at the age of 35, Bukowski was rushed to the charity ward of the Los Angeles County hospital, hemorrhaging at the bright red climax to a ten-year drinking bout. He was “dying, hemorrhaging out of my mouth and ass continually … all that cheap wine and hard living coming through and out – fountains of blood.”

 

After receiving 13 pints of blood and glucose at the charity ward, Bukowski embarked on a new life: “I found a place on Kingsley Drive, got a job driving a truck and bought an old typewriter. And each night after work I’d get drunk. I wouldn’t eat, just knock out eight or ten poems … I was writing poems but I didn’t know why.”

Plot: Ocean View #875

Charles Bukowski is buried in the Green Hills Memorial Park, Rancho Palos Verdes, Los Angeles County, California, USA.

"There's nothing to mourn about death any more than there is to mourn about the growing of a flower. What is terrible is not death but the lives people live or don't live up until their death. They don't honor their own lives, they piss on their lives. They shit them away. Dumb fuckers. They concentrate too much on fucking, movies, money, family, fucking. Their minds are full of cotton. They swallow God without thinking, they swallow country without thinking. Soon they forget how to think, they let others think for them. Their brains are stuffed with cotton. They look ugly, they talk ugly, they walk ugly. Play them the great music of the centuries and they can't hear it. Most people's deaths are a sham. There's nothing left to die."
—The Captain Is Out to Lunch and the Sailors Have Taken Over the Ship, 1998

Bukowski’s Red Garter

Home..

East Hollywood property long enough to attempt to build a case for the designation as Historic Landmark of the DeLongpre Avenue bungalow where USPS worker Henry Charles Bukowski became, at 49, a full-time writer. 

 

The Canadian Press: “The poet’s widow, Linda Lee Bukowski, said she did not think her husband would have appreciated seeing a fuss made over the house he rented. “He was not the kind of person whose ego needed a large edifice in his memorium,” she said. Linda Bukowski added she was sickened by earlier proposals that the house serve as a residence for writers and artists. “That would be repulsive to Hank,” she said, using the writer’s nickname. “It would be against all his natural human ways to have little writers and poets in bungalows together, little Bukowskis running around.” 

The Long Beach Press Telegram: “As Linda Bukowski said, “The De Longpre address was but one of many that Hank rented and wrote in during his years in L.A. Indeed the novel `Post Office’ was written there, but so many more books were written at (another) address … After that, the rest of his work was written in San Pedro, in the home where he lived until his last precious breath, and where I still reside with nine cats.” But as has been noted, you aren’t going to sell many literary tour bus tickets to San Pedro.”

Richard Schave of www.esotouric.com: “Esotouric’s “Haunts of a Dirty Old Man” bus tour on the anniversary of (Bukowski) passing included a stop for donuts and coffee at Pink Elephant Liquor, though many opted for beer in a paper bag instead. “


Victoria Gureyeva, owner of the property at the time the application was filed: “This man loved Hitler. He may be a great writer — I’m not a critic. But that’s what libraries are for. This is my house, not Bukowski’s. I will never allow the city of Los Angeles to turn it into a monument for this man. He never acknowledged his Jewish side. The rumor is that Hitler’s mother was part Jewish. Now we have Bukowski — Hitler number two.”

John Martin, publisher, Black Sparrow Press (and the man who gave an income to Bukowski so he could leave his post office job and write full-time): “(The Nazi claim) is ridiculous. Bukowski wasn’t a Nazi, he was a contrarian. Anything he could say to get people’s goat, he’d say — especially when he was young.”

The House

They are building a house
half a block down
and I sit up here
with the shades down
listening to the sounds,
the hammers pounding in nails,
thack thack thack thack,
and then I hear birds,
and thack thack thack,
and I go to bed,
I pull the covers to my throat;
they have been building this house
for a month, and soon it will have
its people…sleeping, eating,
loving, moving around,
but somehow
now
it is not right,
there seems a madness,
men walk on top with nails
in their mouths
and I read about Castro and Cuba,
and at night I walk by
and the ribs of the house show
and inside I can see cats walking
the way cats walk,
and then a boy rides by on a bicycle
and still the house is not done
and in the morning the men
will be back
walking around on the house
with their hammers,
and it seems people should not build houses
anymore,
it seems people should not get married
anymore,
it seems people should stop working
and sit in small rooms
on 2nd floors
under electric lights without shades;
it seems there is a lot to forget
and a lot not to do,
and in drugstores, markets, bars,
the people are tired, they do not want
to move, and I stand there at night
and look through this house and the
house does not want to be built;
through its sides I can see the purple hills
and the first lights of evening,
and it is cold
and I button my coat
and I stand there looking through the house
and the cats stop and look at me
until I am embarrassed
and move North up the sidewalk
where I will buy
cigarettes and beer
and return to my room.

Charles Bukowski (1920-1994)

Bluebird

Charles Bukowski

there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say, stay in there, I'm not going
to let anybody see
you.
there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I pour whiskey on him and inhale
cigarette smoke
and the whores and the bartenders
and the grocery clerks
never know that
he's
in there.
there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say,
stay down, do you want to mess
me up?
you want to screw up the
works?
you want to blow my book sales in
Europe?
there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too clever, I only let him out
at night sometimes
when everybody's asleep.
I say, I know that you're there,
so don't be
sad.
then I put him back,
but he's singing a little
in there, I haven't quite let him
die
and we sleep together like
that
with our
secret pact
and it's nice enough to
make a man
weep, but I don't
weep, do
you?