- poem inspired by...
Poem inspired by the last lines
of a Bukowski poem

of all the trips
to outer space and
of those few trips
to the moon and
of those forays
to the international space station,

didn't anybody ever
think about,
or attempt
to have,
a little zero gravity sacrifice to Venus,
a little intergalactic twatting,
a little cosmic dipping of the wick,
a little interstellar tube-snake boogie?

that would be:

one small orgasm for a man;
one fantastic Penthouse Forum for mankind.
© douglas william mowbray
______________________________
perhaps the poem bukowski would've written about me if we'd had an affair, with a title something like: i've seen eden and it's not all its cracked up to be

she was this feverishly
passionate
but most certainly disturbed
black
girl with overprotective parents white picket
fences and too many rainbows
in her heart and eyes. she cut
school twice
a week to come
visit me
sit at the foot of my bed and
talk.

she had quite a penchant for cheap
wine and dirty
poets
and also

she liked to chain
smoke.

try as she might to write
something of
relevance she could never
quite manage to put anything together
that didn't sound
helpless
poem-y
and
over-processed like bad junior high school
hair.

she would
insist that i read every single thing
she penned
believing blindly and without
question
that i would be frank
direct and honest
in my critique

and though her drivel would often split
my skull
s l o w l y from the back
forward
send waves of nausea sliding snakelike across my
bored indifferent abdomen make me
wish for two sharp objects with which to
puncture each of my eyeballs one
at a time
i would take the sad and jagged pages torn
from her marble English
notebook
read what she had written
silently
furrowing my brow and nodding
every so often pretending
to be riveted and telling her i was
riveted
or some other bullshit
and i knew at the time it was
probably not
the right thing to do but damn she gave
the best
head.
© eden 08.03.08
____________________
By: www.myspace.com/frombasetmentoahill 
Bukowski wrote
of a time when
you need to
throw art's
whore ass out
on the street.

Though i haven't
written anything
worth two shits
in awhile I can't bring
myself to do it.

When the whiskey
gets warm & everyone
else leaves me I find
it wasteful not to write
about the burn of my
stomach and throat.

This poem is mournfully
futile.

I guess I'll stop
writing it for now.
_________________
WOMEN
(For Charles Bukowski)

Their slight gestures hypnotize
Their gentle movements captivate
All that is needed is the slightest sway of a hip
or opening of the lips
A caress can blaze a trail
Her passion weaves a pattern trapping a man's soul in a web of desire.
Her vicious mind intent on
crippling the man she loves.
Her innate power is limitless, ignorance destroys it.

Copyrighted © 1996.
Publication at the Library of Congress.
Lady Monster
www. ladymonster. com

We remained apart for a week. Then one afternoon I was over at Lydia's place and we were on her bed, kissing. Lydia pulled away. "You don't know anything about women, do you?" "What do you mean?" "Well, I can tell from your poems and stories that you just don't know anything about women." "Tell me more." "Well, for a man to interest me he's got to eat my pussy. Have you ever eaten pussy?" "No." "You're over 50 and you've never eaten pussy?" "No." "It's too late." "Why?" "You can't teach an old dog new tricks." "Sure you can." "No, it's too late for you." "I've always been a slow starter." Lydia got up and walked into the other room. She came back with a pencil and a piece of paper. "Now, look, I want to show you something." She began to draw on the paper. "Now, this is a cunt. And here is something you probably don't know about-the clit. That's where the feeling is. The clit hides, you see, it comes out now and then and it's very sensitive. Sometimes it will hide from you and you have to find it, and you just touch it with the tip of your tongue..." "O.K.,"I said, "I've got it." "I don't think you can do it. I tell you, you can't teach an old dog new tricks." "Let's take our clothes off and lay down." We undressed and stretched out. I began kissing Lydia. I dropped from the lips to the neck, then down to the breasts. Then I was down to the bellybutton. I moved lower. "No you can't," she said. "Blood and pee come out of there, think of it, blood and pee..." I got down there and began licking. She had drawn an accurate picture for me. Everything was where it was supposed to be. I heard her breathing heavily, then moaning. It excited me. I got a hard-on. The clit came out but it waasn't exactly pink, it was purplish-pink. I teased the clit. Juices appeared and mixed with the cunt hairs. Lydia moaned and moaned. Then I heard the front door open and close. I heard footsteps. I looked up. A small black boy about 5 years old stood beside the bed. "What the hell do you want?" "You got any empty bottles?" he asked me. "No, I don't have any empty bottles," I told him. He walked out of the bedroom, into the front room, out the front door and was gone. "God," said Lydia, "I thought the front door was locked. That was Bonnie's little boy." Lydia got up and locked the front door. She came back and stretched out. It was about 4 PM on a sunday afternoon. I ducked back down.

Dear Mr.Chinaski, You don't know me but I'm a cute bitch. I've been going with Sailors and one truck driver but they don't satisfy me. I mean, we fuck and there's nothing more. There's no substance to these sons of bitches. I'm 22 and have a 5 year old daughter, Aster. I live with a guy but there's no sex, we just live together. His name is Rex. I'd love to come see you. My mom could watch Aster. Enclosed is a photo of me. Write me if you feel like it. I've read some of your books. They are hard to find in bookstores. What I like about our writing is that you are so easy to understand. And you're funny too. yours, Tanya

Lydia met me at the airport. She was horny as usual. "Jesus Christ!" she said. "I'm hot! I play with myself but it doesn't do any good." We were driving back to my place. "Lydia, my leg is still in terrible shape. I just don't know if I can handle it with this leg." "What?" "It's true. I don't think I can fuck with my leg the way it is." "What the hell good are you then?" "Well, I can fry eggs and do magic tricks." "Don't be funny. I'm asking you, what the hell good are you?" "The leg will heal. If it doesn't they'll cut it off. Be patient."" "If you hadn't been drunk you wouldn't have fallen and cut your leg. It's always the bottle!" "It's not always the bottle, Lydia. We fuck about 4 times a week. For my age, that's pretty good." "Sometimes I think you don't even enjoy it." "Lydia, sex isn't everything! You are obsessed. For Christ's sake, give it a rest." "A rest until your leg heals? How am I supposed to make it meanwhile?" "I'll play scrabble with you." Lydia screamed. The car began to swerve all over the street. "YOU SON-OF-A-BITCH! I'LL KILL YOU!" She crossed the double yellow line at high speed, directly into oncoming traffic. Horns sounded and cars scattered. We drove on against the flow of traffic, cars approaching us peeling off to the left and right. Then just as abrubtly Lydia swerved back across the double line into the lane we had just vacated. Were are the police? I thought. Why is it that when Lydia does something the police become nonexistant? "All right," she said. "I'm taking you home and that's it. I've ahd it. And I'm going to sell my house and move to Phoenix. Glendoline lives in Phoenix now. My sisters warned me about living with an old fuck like you." We drove the remainder of the way without talking. When we reached my place I took out my suitcase, looked at Lydia, said, "Goodbye." She was crying without making a sound, her whole face was wet. Suddenly she drove off toward Western Avenue. I walked into the court. Back from another reading. . . . I checked the mail and then phoned Katherine who lived in Austin, Texas. She seemed truly glad to hear from me, and it was good to hear that Texas accent, that high laughter. I told her that i wanted her to come visit me, that I'd pay air fare both ways. We'd go to the racetrack, we'd go to Malibu, we'd. . .whatever she wanted. "But, Hank, don't you have a girlfriend?" "No, none. I'm a recluse." "But you're always writing about Women in your poems." "That's past. This is present." "But what about Lydia?" "Lydia?" "Yes, you told me all about her." "What did I tell you?" "You told me how she beat up two other women. Would you let her beat me up? I'm not very big, you know." "It can't happen. She moved to Phoenix. I tell you, Katherine, you are the exceptional women I've been looking for. Please trust me." "I'll have to make arrangements. I have to get somebody to take care of my cat." "All right. But I want you to know that everything is clear here." "But Hank, don't forget what you told me about your women." "Told you what?" "You said, 'they always come back.'" "That's just macho talk." "I'll come," she said. "As soon as I get things straight here I'll come and let you know the details.

She was the managers secretary. Her name was Carmen- but despite the Spanish name she was a blonde and she wore tight knitted dresses, high spiked heels, nylons, garter belt, her mouth was thick with lipstick, but, oh, she could shimmy, she could shake, she wobbled while bringing the orders up to the desk, she wobbled back to the office, all the boys watching every move, every twitch of her buttocks; wobbling, wiggling, wagging. I am not a ladies man. To be a lady's man you have to make with the sweet talk. I've never been good at sweet talk. But, finally, with Carmen pressing me, I led her into one of the boxcars we were unloading at the rear of the warehouse and I took her standing up in the back of one of those boxcars. It was good, it was warm; I thought of blue sky and wide clean beaches, yet it was sad- there was a definite lack of human feeling that I couldn't understand or deal with. I had the knit dress up around her hips and I stood there pumping it to her, finally pressing my mouth to her heavy mouth thick with it's scarlet lipstick and I came between two unopened cartons with the air full of cinders and with her back pressed against the filthy splintering boxcar in the merciful dark. I was too sick to get up at 4:30 am- or according to our clock 7:27 and one half. I shut off the alarm and went back to sleep. A couple of hours later there was a loud noise in the hall. "What the hell is it?" asked Jan. I got out of bed. I slept in my shorts. The shorts were stained- we wiped with newspapers that crumpled and softened with our hands- and I often didn't get all of it cleaned off. My shorts were also ragged and had cigarette burns in them were the hot ashes had fallen ino my lap. I went to the door and opened it. There was thick smoke in the hall. Firemen in large metal helmets with numbers on them. Firemen dragging long thick hoses. Firemen dressed in asbestos. Firemen with axes. The noise and confusion was incredible. I closed the door. "What is it?" asked Jan. "It's the fire department." "Oh," she said. She pulled the covers up over her head, rolled on her side. I got beside her and slept.

It began as a mistake. It was Christmas season and I learned from the drunk up the hill, who did the trick every Christmas, that they would hire damned near anybody, and so I went and the next thing I knew I had this leather sackon my back and was hiking around at my leisure. What a job, I thought. Soft! They only gave you a block or two and if you managed to finish, the regular carrier would give you another block to carry, or mabye you'd go back in and the soup would give you another, but you just took your time and pushed those Xmas cards in the slots. I think it was my second day as a Christmas temp that this big woman came out and walked around with me as I delivered letters. What I meant by big was that her ass was big and her tits were big and that she was big in all the right places. She seemed a bit crazy but I kept looking at her body and I didn't care. She talked and talked and talked. Then it came out. Her husband was an officer on an island far away and she got lonely, you know, and she lived in this little house in back all by herself. "What little house?" I asked. She wrote the adress on a piece of paper. "I'm lonely too," I said, "I'll come by and we'll talk tonight." I was shacked but the shackjob was gone half the time, off somewhere, and I was lonely all right. I was onely for that big ass standing beside me. "All right," she said, "see you tonight." She was a good one all right, she was a good lay but like all lays after the third or fourth night I began to lose interest and didn't go back. But I couldn't help thinking, god, all these mailmen do is drop their letters and get laid. This is the job for me, oh yes yes yes. So I took the exam, passed it, took the physical, passed it, and there I was- a substitute mail carrier. It began easy. I was sent to West Avon Station and it was just like Christmas except I didn't get laid. Every day I expected to get laid but I didn't. But the soup was easy and I strolled around doing a block here and there. I didn't even have a uniform, just a cap. I wore my regular clothes. The way my shackjob Betty and I drank there was hardly money for clothes. Then I was transferred to Oakford station. The soup was a bullneck named Johnstone. Help was needed there and I understood why. Johnstone liked to wear dark-red shirts- that meant danger and blood. There were seven subs, Tom Moto, Nick Pelligrini, Herman Stratford, Rosey Anderson, Bobby Hansen, Harold Wiley and me, Henry Chinaski. Reporting time was 5 a.m. and I was the only drunk there. I always drank until past midnight, and there we'd sit, at 5 a.m. in the morning, waiting to get on the clock, waiting for some regular to call in sick. The regulars usually called in sick when it rained or during a heatwave or the day after a holiday when the mail load was doubled. There were 40 or 50 different routes, mabye more, each case was different, you were never able to learn any of them, you had to get your mail up and ready before 8 a.m. for the truck dispatches, and Johnstone would have us start casing the routes 30 minutes late- spinning in his chair in his red shirt- "Chinaski take route 539!" We'd start a halfhour short but were still expected to get the mail up and out and be back on time. And once or twice a week, already beaten, fagged and fucked we had to make the night pickups, and the schedule on the board was impossible- the truck wouldn't go that fast. You had to skip four or five boxes on the first run and the next time around they were stacked with mail and you stank, you ran with sweat jamming it into the sacks. I got laid all right. Johnstone saw to that. The subs themselves made Johnstone possible by obeying his impossible orders, I couldn't see how a man of such obvious cruelty could be allowed to have his position. The regulars didn't care, the union man was worthless, so I filled out a 30- page report on one of my days off, mailed one copy to Johnstone and took the other down to the federal building. The clerk told me to wait. I waited and waited and waited. I waited an hour and 30 minutes, then was taken in to see the little grey-haired man with eyes like cigarette ash. He didn't even ask me to sit down. He began screaming at me as I entered the door. "You're a wise son of a bitch, aren't you?" "I'd rather you didn't curse me, sir!" "Wise son of a bitch, you're one of those sons of bitches with a vocabulary and you like to lay it around!" He waved papers at me. And screamed: "MR. JOHNSTONE IS A FINE MAN!" "Don't be silly. He's an obvious sadist," I said. "How long have you been with the Post Office?" "Three weeks." "MR. JOHNSTONE HAS BEEN WITH THE POST OFFICE FOR 30 YEARS!" "What does that have to do with it?" "I said, MR. JOHNSTONE IS A FINE MAN!" I believe the poor fellow actually wanted to kill me. He and Johnstone must have slept together. "All right," I said, "Johnstone is a fine man. Forget the whole fucking thing." Then I walked out and took the next day off. Without pay, of course.

It was like a wood drill, it might have been a wood drill, I could smell the oil burning, and they'd stick that thing into my head into my flesh and it would drill and bring up blood and puss, and I'd sit there the monkey of my soul-string dangling over the edge of a cliff. I was covered with boils the size of small apples. It was ridiculous and unbelievable. Worst case I ever saw, said one of the docs, and he was old. They'd gather around me like some freak. I was a freak. I'm stilla freak. I rode the streetcar back and forth to the charity ward. Children on streetcars would stare and ask their mothers, "What's wrong with that man? Mother, what's wrong with that man's face?" And the mother woould SHUUSSSHHH!!! That shuussshhh was the worst condemnation, and they'd continue to let the little bastards and bastardesses stare from over the backs of their seats and I'd look out the window and watch the buildings go by, and I'd be drowning, slugged and drowning, nothing to do. The doctors for lack of anything called it Acne Vulgaris. I'd sit for hours on a wooden bench while waiting for my wood drill. What a pity story, eh? I remember the old brick buildings, the easy and rested nurses, the doctors laughing, having it made. It was there that I learned the fallacy of hospitals-that the doctors were kings and the patients were shit and the hospitals were there so the docotors could make it in their strached white superiority, they could make it with their nurses too:-Dr. Dr. Dr. pinch my ass in the elvator, forget the stink of cancer, forget the stink of life. We are not the poor fools, we will not die; we drink our carrot juice, and when we feel bad we can take a pop, a needle, all the dope we need. Cheep, cheep, cheep, life will sing for us, Big-Time us. I'd go in and sit down and they'd put the drill into me. ZIRRRR ZIRRRR ZIRRRR, ZIR, the sun meanwhile raising dahlias and oranges and shining through nurses' dresses driving the poor freaks mad. Zirrrrrrr, zirrr, zirr. "Never saw anybody go under the needle like that!" "Look at him, cold as steel!" Again, a gathering of nurse-fuckers, a gathering of men who owned big homes and had time to laugh and to read and go to plays and buy paintings and forget how to think, forget how to feel anything. White starch and my defeat. The gathering. "How do you feel?" "Wonderful." "Don't you find the needle painful?" "Fuck you." "What?" "I said-fuck you." "He's just a boy. He's bitter. Can't blame him. How old are you?" "Fourteen." "I was only praising you for courage, the way you took the needle. you're tough." "Fuck you." "You can't talk to me that way." "Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you." "You ought to bear up better. Supposing you were blind?" "Then I wouldn't have have to look at your goddamned face." "The kid's crazy." "Sure he is, leave him alone." That was some hospital and I never realized that 20 years later I'd be back, again in the charity ward. Hospitals and jails and whores: these are the universities of life. I've got several degrees.

K. was an ex-showgirl and she used to show me the clippings and photos. She'd almost won a Miss America contest. I met her in an Alvarado St. bar, which is about as close to getting to skid row as you can get. She had put on weight and age but there was still some sign of a figure, some class, but just a hint and little more. We'd both had it. Neither of us worked and how we made it I'll never know. Cigarettes, wine and a landlady who believed our stories about coming up but none right now. Mostly we had to have wine. We slept most of the day but when it began to get dark we had to get up, we felt like getting up: K: "Shit, I c'd stand a drink." I'd be still be on the bed smoking the last cigarette. Me: "Well, hell, go down to Tony's and get us a couple of ports." K: "Fifths?" Me: "Sure, fifths. And no Gallo. And none of that other, that stuff gave me a headache for two weeks. And get two packs of smokes. Any kind." K: "But there's only 50 cents here!" Me: "I know that! Cuff him for the rest; whatsamata, ya stupid?" K: "He says no more-" Me: "He says, he says-who is this guy? God? Fast-talk him. Smile! Wiggle your can at him! Make his pecker rise! Take him in the back room if necessary, only get that WINE!" K: "all right, all right" Me: "And don't come back without it." K. said she loved me. She used to tie ribbons around my cock and then make a little paper hat for the head. If she came back without the wine or with only one bottle, then I'd go down like a madman and snarl and bitch and threaten the old man until he gave me what I wanted, and more. Sometimes I'd come back with sardines, bread, chips. It was a particularly good period and when tony sold the business we started on the new owner who was harder to beard but who could be had. It brought out the best in us.

I remember jacking-off in the closet after putting on my mother's high-heels and looking at my legs in the mirror, slowly drawing a cloth up over my legs, higher and higher as if peeking up the legs of a woman, and being interrupted by two friends coming into the house-"I know he's in here somewhere." My self putting on clothes and then one of them opening the closet door and finding me. "You son of a bitch!" I screamed and chased them both out of the house and heard them talking as they walked away: "What's wrong with him? What the hell's wrong with him?"