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Love is a Dog From Hell

a gold pocket watch

Charles Bukowski


my grandfather was a tall German
with a strange smell on his breath.
he stood very straight
in front of his small house
and his wife hated him
and his children thought him odd.
I was six the first time we met
and he gave me all his war medals.
the second time I met him
he gave me his gold pocket watch.
it was very heavy and I took it home
and wound it very tight
and it stopped running
which made me feel bad.
I never saw him again
and my parents never spoke of him
nor did my grandmother
who had long ago
stopped living with him.
once I asked about him
and they told me
he drank too much
but I liked him best
standing very straight
in front of his house
and saying, "hello, Henry, you
and I, we know each
other."
 
the girls at the green hotel

Charles Bukowski


are more beautiful than
movie stars
and they lounge on the
lawn
sunbathing
and one sits in a short
dress and high
heels, legs crossed
exposing miraculous
thighs.
she has a bandanna
on her head
and smokes a
long cigarette.
traffic slows
almost stops.

the girls ignore
the traffic.
they are half
asleep in the afternoon
they are whores
they are whores without
souls
and they are magic
because they lie
about nothing.

I get in my car
wait for traffic to
clear,
drive across the street
to the green hotel
to my favorite:
she is
sun-bathing on the
lawn nearest the
curb.

"hello," I say.
she turns eyes like
imitation diamonds
up at me.
her face has no
expression.

I drop my latest
book of poems
out the car
window.
it falls
by her side.

I shift into
low,
drive off.

there'll be some
laughs
tonight.
 
LOVE IS A DAWG FROM HELL

dog

Charles Bukowski


a single dog
walking alone on a hot sidewalk of
summer
appears to have the power
of ten thousand gods.

why is this?
 
after the reading:

Charles Bukowski


"...I've seen people in front of
their typewriters in such a bind
that it would blow their intestines
right out of their assholes if they
were trying to shit."

"ah hahaha hahaha!"

"...it's a shame to work that
hard to try to write."

"ah hahaha hahaha!"

"ambition rarely has anything to
do with talent. luck is best, and
talent limps along a little
bit behind luck."

"ah haha."

he rose and left with an 18 year old virgin, the most
beautiful co-ed of them
all.
I closed my notebook
got up and limped a
little bit behind
them.
 
Christmas eve, alone

Charles Bukowski


Christmas eve, alone,
in a motel room
down the coast
near the Pacific--
hear it?

they've tried to do this place up
Spanish, there's
tapestry and lamps, and
the toilet's clean, there are
tiny bars of pink
soap.

they won't find us
here:
the barracudas or the ladies or
the idol
worshippers.

back in town
they're drunk and panicked
running red lights
breaking their heads open
in honor of Christ's
birthday. that's nice.

soon I'll finish this 5th of
Puerto Rican rum.
in the morning I'll vomit and
shower, drive back
in, have a sandwich by 1 p.m.,
be back in my room by
2,
streched on the bed,
waiting for the phone to ring,
not answering,
my holiday is an
evasion, my reasoning
is not.
 
LOVE IZ A DAWG FROM HELL

the end of a short affair

Charles Bukowski


I tried it standing up
this time.
it doesn't usually
work.
this time it seemed
to...

she kept saying
"o my God, you've got
beautiful legs!"

it was all right
until she took her feet
off the ground
and wrapped her legs
around my middle.

"o my God, you've got
beautiful legs!"

she weighed about 138
pounds and hung there as I
worked.

it was when I climaxed
that I felt the pain
fly straight up my
spine.

I dropped her on the
couch and walked around
the room.
the pain remained.

"look," I told her,
"you better go. I've got
to develop some film
in my darkroom."

she dressed and left
and I walked into the
kitchen for a glass of
water. I got a glass full
in my left hand.
the pain ran up behind my
ears and
I dropped the glass
which broke on the floor.

I got into a tub full of
hot water and epsom salts.
I just got stretched out
when the phone rang.
as I tried to straighten
my back
the pain extended to my
neck and arms.
I flopped about
gripped the sides of the tub
got out
with shots of green and yellow
and red light
flashing in my head.

the phone kept ringing.
I picked it up.
"hello?"

"I LOVE YOU!" she said.

"thanks," I said.

"is that all you've got
to say?"

"yes."

"eat shit!" she said and
hung up.

love dries up, I thought
as I walked back to the
bathroom, even faster
than sperm.
 
this then--

Charles Bukowski


it's the same as before
or the other time
or the time before that.
here's a cock
and here's a cunt
and here's trouble.

only each time
you think
well now I've learned:
I'll let her do that
and I'll do this,
I no longer want it all,
just some comfort
and some sex
and only a minor
love.

now I'm waiting again
and the years run thin.
I have my radio
and the kitchen walls
are yellow.
I keep dumping bottles
and listening
for footsteps.

I hope that death contains
less than this.
 
clean old man

Charles Bukowski


here I'll be
55 in a
week.

what will I
write about
when it no
longer stands
up in the morning?

my critics
will love it
when my playground
narrows down to
tortoises
and shellstars.

they might even
say
nice things about
me

as if I had
finally
come to my
senses.
 
something

Charles Bukowski


I'm out of matches.
the springs in my couch
are broken.
they stole my footlocker.
they stole my oil painting of
two pink eyes.
my car broke down.
eels climb my bathroom walls.
my love is broken.
but the stockmarket went up
today.
 
lOVE IS A DOG FROM HELL
LIFTING IT'S LEG ON MY HEART
UNTIL SATAN 'S CHOKE COLLAR
MAKES THAT OLD DOG HOLLER
AS i START TO FUCK IT AND YELL
 
don't touch the girls

Charles Bukowski

she's up seeing my doctor
trying to get some diet pills;
she's not fat, she needs the speed.
I go down to the nearest bar and wait.
at 3:30 in the afternoon of a tuesday.
they have a dancer.

there's only one other man in the bar.

she works out
looking at herself in the mirror.
she's like a monkey
dark
Korean.

she's not very good,
skinny and obvious
and she sticks her tongue out at me
then at the other man.

times must be truly hard, I think.

I have a few more beers then get up to leave.
she waves me over.
"you go?" she asks.
"yes," I say, "my wife has cancer."

I shake her hand.

she points at the sign behind her:
DON'T TOUCH THE GIRLS.

she points to the sign and says,
"the sign says, 'DON'T TOUCH THE GIRLS'."

I go back to the parking lot and wait.
she comes out.
"did you get the pills?" I ask.
"yes," she says.
"then it's been a sucessful day."

I think of the dancer walking across my
kitchen. I can't visualize it. I am going
to die alone
just the way I live.

"take me to my place," she says,
"I've got to get ready for night school."

"sure," I say and drive her on in.
 
rain or shine

Charles Bukowski


the vultures at the zoo
(all 3 of them)
sit very quietly in their
caged tree
and below
on the ground
are chunks of rotting 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 reconize him as
our former mailman.
his favorite expression
had been:
"have a beautiful day."

that day, I did.
 
defeat

Charles Bukowski

listening to Bruckner on the radio
wondering why I'm not half mad
over the latest breakup with my
latest girlfriend

wondering why I'm not driving the streets
drunk
wondering why I'm not in the bedroom
in the dark
in the grievous dark
pondering
ripped by half-thoughts.

I suppose
that at last
like the average man :
I've known too many women
and of instead of thinking,
I wonder who's fucking her now?
I think
she's giving some other poor son of a bitch
much trouble right now.

listening to Bruckner on the radio
seems so peaceful.

too many women have gone through.
I am at last alone
without being alone.

I pick up a Grumbacher paint brush
and clean my fingernails with the hard sharp end.

I notice a wall socket.

look, I've won.
 
junkies

Charles Bukowski


"she shoots up in the neck," she told
me. I told her to stick it into my
ass and she tried and said, "oh oh,"
and I said, "what the hell's the matter?"
she said, "nothing, this is New York
style," and she jammed it in again and said,
"oh shit." I took it and put it into
my arm, I got part of it.
"I don't know why people
fuck with this stuff, there's not that
much to it. I think they're all losers
and the want to lose real bad. there's
no other way, it's like they can't
get where they're going or want to go
and there's no other way.
this has got to be it.
she shoots up in the neck."

"I know," I said. "I phoned her, she
could hardly talk, said it was
laryngitis. have some of this wine."

it was white wine and 4:30 a.m. and her
daughter was sleeping in the bedroom. she
had cable tv with no sound and
a large screen young John Wayne watched
us, and we neither kissed nor
love and I left at 6:15 a.m.
after the beer and wine were gone
so her daughter wouldn't awaken for
school and find me sitting in
bed with her mother
with John Wayne and the night gone
and not much chance for anybody--
 
the 2nd novel

Charles Bukowski

they'd come around and
they'd ask
"you finished your
2nd novel yet?"

"no."

"whatsamatta? whatsamatta
that you can't
finish it?"

"hemorrhoids and
insomnia."

"maybe you've lost
it?"

"lost what?"

"you know."



now when they come
around I tell them,
"yeh. I finished
it. be out in Sept."

"you finished it?"

"yeh."

"well, listen, I gotta
go."

even the cat
here in the courtyard
won't come to my door
anymore.

it's nice.
 
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