Charles Bukowski - The Roominghouse Madrigals: Early selected poems 1946-1966

EARLY SELECTED POEMS 1946-1966 A question put to me quite often is, Why do your out-of-print books cost so much? Well, they cost so much because thats what booksellers can get for them from collectors. I want to read your early poems but I dont even have some of my early books. Most of them were stolen by people I drank with. When Id go to the bathroom, they did their shit. It only reinforced my general opinion of humanity. And caused me to drink with fewer people.

At first, I made efforts to replace these books, and did, but when they were stolen all over again I stopped the replacement process and more and more drank alone. Anyhow, what follows are what we consider to be the best of the early poems. Some are taken from the first few books; others were not in books but have been taken from obscure magazines of long ago. The early poems are more lyrical than where I am at now. I like these poems but I disagree with some who claim, Bukowskis early work was much better. Some have made these claims in critical reviews, others in parlors of gossip.

Now the reader can make his own judgment, first hand. In my present poetry, I go at matters more directly, land on them and then get out. I dont believe that my early methods and my late methods are either inferior or superior to one another. They are different, thats all. Yet, re-reading these, there remains a certain fondness for that time. Coming in from the factory or warehouse, tired enough, there seemed little use for the night except to eat, sleep and then return to the menial job.

But there was the typewriter waiting for me in those many old rooms with torn shades and worn rugs, the tub and toilet down the hall, and the feeling in the air of all the losers who had preceded me. Sometimes the typewriter was there when the job wasnt and the food wasnt and the rent wasnt. Sometimes the typer was in hock. Sometimes there was only the park bench. But at the best of times there was the small room and the machine and the bottle. The sound of the keys, on and on, and shouts: HEY! KNOCK IT OFF, FOR CHRISTS SAKE! WERE WORKING PEOPLE HERE AND WEVE GOT TO GET UP IN THE MORNING! With broomsticks knocking on the floor, pounding coming from the ceiling, I would work in a last few lines.

I was not Hamsun eating his own flesh in order to continue writing but I had a fair amount of travail. The poems were sent out as written on first impulse, no line or word changes. I never revised or retyped. To eliminate an error, I would simply go over it thus: #########, and go on with the line. One magazine editor printed a group of my poems with all the ########s intact. At any rate, here are many of the poems from that wondrous and crazy time, from those distant hours.

The room steamed with smoke, dizzied with fumes, we gambled. I hope they work for you. And if they dont, well, #### ## ###. Charles Bukowski
San Pedro, 10-31-87

night has come like something crawling up the bannister, sticking out its tongue of fire, and I remember the missionaries up to their knees in muck retreating across the beautiful blue river and the machine gun slugs flicking spots of fountain and Jones drunk on the shore saying shit shit these Indians whered they get the fire power? and I went in to see Maria and she said, do you think theyll attack, do you think theyll come across the river? afraid to die? I asked her, and she said who isnt? and I went to the medicine cabinet and poured a tall glassful, and I said weve made 22,000 dollars in 3 months building roads for Jones and you have to die a little to make it that fastDo you think the communists started this? she asked, do you think its the communists? and I said, will you stop being a neurotic bitch. these small countries rise because they are getting their pockets filled from both sidesand she looked at me with that beautiful schoolgirl idiocy and she walked out, it was getting dark but I let her go, youve got to know when to let a woman go if you want to
keep her, and if you dont want to keep her you let her go anyhow, so its always a process of letting go, one way or the other, so I sat there and put the drink down and made another and I thought, whoever thought an engineering course at Old Miss would bring you where the lamps swing slowly in the green of some far night? and Jones came in with his arm around her blue waist and she had been drinking too, and I walked up and said, man and wife? and that made her angry for if a woman cant get you by the nuts and squeeze, shes done, and I poured another tall one, and I said, you 2 may not realize it but were not going to get out of here alive. you could hear, if you were real still, the water coming down between the god trees, and the roads we had built you could hear animals crossing them and the Indians, savage fools with some savage cross to bear. and finally there was the last look in the mirror as the drunken lovers hugged and I walked out and lifted a piece of straw from the roof of the hut then snapped the lighter, and I watched the flames crawl, like hungry mice up the thin brown stalks, it was slow but it was real, and then not real, something like an opera, and then I walked down toward the machine gun sounds, the same river, and the moon looked across at me and in the path I saw a small snake, just a small one, looked like a rattler, but it couldnt be a rattler, and it was scared seeing me, and I grabbed it behind the neck before it could coil and I held it then its little body curled around my wrist like a finger of love and all the trees looked with eyes and I put my mouth to its mouth and love was lightning and remembrance, dead communists, dead fascists, dead democrats, dead gods and back in what was left of the hut Jones had his dead black arm around her dead blue waist. I the cannoneer is dead, and all the troops; the conceited drummer boy dumber than the tombs lies in a net of red; and under leaves, bugs twitch antennae deciding which way to move under the cool umbrella of decay; the wind rills down like thin water and searches under clothing, sifting and sorry; clothing anchored with heavy bones in noonday sleep like men gone down on ladders, resting; yet an hour ago tree-shadow and man-shadow showed their outline against the sun yet now, not a man amongst them can single out the reason that moved them down toward nothing; and I think mostly of some woman far off arranging important jars on some second shelf and humming a dry, sun-lit tune. I the cannoneer is dead, and all the troops; the conceited drummer boy dumber than the tombs lies in a net of red; and under leaves, bugs twitch antennae deciding which way to move under the cool umbrella of decay; the wind rills down like thin water and searches under clothing, sifting and sorry; clothing anchored with heavy bones in noonday sleep like men gone down on ladders, resting; yet an hour ago tree-shadow and man-shadow showed their outline against the sun yet now, not a man amongst them can single out the reason that moved them down toward nothing; and I think mostly of some woman far off arranging important jars on some second shelf and humming a dry, sun-lit tune.

II outside, the quick storm turns the night slowly backwards and sends it shifting to old shores, and everywhere are bonesrib bones and light, and grass, grass leaning left; and we hump our backs against the wet like living things, and this one with me now holds my yearning like a packet slips it into her purse with her powders and potions pulls up a sheer stocking, chatters, touches her hair: its raining, oh damn it all, its raining ! and on the battlefield the rocks are wet and cool, the fine grains of rock glint moon-fire, and she curses under a small green hat like a crown and walks like a gawky marionette into the strings of rain.