Voices
1
my moustache is pasted-on
and my wig and my eyebrows
and even my eyes...
then something stuns me...
the lampshades swing, I hear
simmering and magic and
incredible sounds.
2
I know I went mad, almost as
an act of theory:
the lost are found
the sick are healthy
the non-creators are the
creators.
3
even if I were a comfortable, domesticated
sophisticate I could never drink the
blood of the masses and
call it wine.
4
why did I have to lift that pretty girl’s
car by the bumper because the jack got stuck?
I couldn’t straighten up
and they took me away like a pretzel and straightened
me but I still couldn’t move...
it was the hospital’s fault, the doctors’ fault.
then those two boys dropped me on the way to
the x-ray room... I hollered LAWSUIT!
but I guess it was that girl’s fault—
she shouldn’t have shown me all that leg
and haunch.
5
listen, listen, SPACESHIT LOVE, TORN IN DRIP OUT,
SPACESHIT LOVE, LOVE, LOVE; KILL, LEARN TO USE A
WEAPON; OPEN AREAS, REALIZE, BE DIVINE, SPACESHIT
LOVE, IT’S approaching...
6
I did a take-off of E.H. in my first novel,
been living green ever since. I’m probably
the best journalist America ever had, I can
bullshit on any subject, and that counts for
something. you admire me much more
than the first man you meet on the street
in the morning, basically, though, it’s a
fact, I’ve lived during an era of no writers
at all, so I’ve earned a position
because nothing else appeared. o.k.,
it’s a bad age. I suppose I am number
one. But it’s hardly the same as when we
had giants turning us on. forget it:
I’m living green.
7
I was a bad writer, I killed N.C. because I made
more of him than there was, and then the ins
made more of my book than there was. there have
been only 3 bad writers in acceptable American
literature. Drieser, of course, was the worst.
then we had Thomas Wolfe, and then we had me. but
when I try to choose between me and Wolfe, I’ve
got to take Wolfe. I mean as the worst. I like
to think of what Capote, another bad writer said
about me: he just typewrites. sometimes even
bad writers tell the truth.
8
my problem, like most, is artistic preciousness. I
exist, full of french fries and glory
and then I look around, see the Art-form, pop into
it and tell them how fine I am and what I think.
this is the same tiresomeness that has almost destroyed art for centuries. I
made a record once of
myself reading my poems to a lion at the zoo. he really
roared, as if he were in pain, all the poets play
this record and laugh when they get drunk.
9
remember my novel about jail where
photos of heroes and lovers floated against the
rock walls?
I got famous. I came over here.
I got hot for the black motorcyclists of Valley
West and Bakersfield
who took my fame and jammed it
and made me suck their loneliness and dementia
and their dream of Cadillac white soul and
Cadillac black soul
and they creamed up my ass
and into my nostrils and into my ears
while I said, Communism, Communism
and they grinned and knew I didn’t mean it.
Other works by Charles Bukowski...
