#louts

Colorful, it is let me see the real peacock.

ah, christ, what a CREW: more poetry, always more P O E T R Y .

if it doesn't come, coax it out with a laxative. get your name in LIGHTS, get it up there in 8 1/2 x 11 mimeo.

keep it coming like a miracle.

ah christ, writers are the most sickening of all the louts! yellow-toothed, slump-shouldered, gutless, flea-bitten and obvious . . . in tinker-toy rooms with their flabby hearts they tell us what's wrong with the world- as if we didn't know that a cop's club can crack the head and that war is a dirtier game than marriage . . . or down in a basement bar hiding from a wife who doesn't appreciate him and children he doesn't want he tells us that his heart is drowning in vomit. hell, all our hearts are drowning in vomit, in pork salt, in bad verse, in soggy love. but he thinks he's alone and he thinks he's special and he thinks he's Rimbaud and he thinks he's Pound.

and death! how about death? did you know that we all have to die? even Keats died, even Milton! and D. Thomas-THEY KILLED HIM, of course. Thomas didn't want all those free drinks all that free ****- they . . . FORCED IT ON HIM when they should have left him alone so he could write write WRITE!

poets.

and there's another type. I've met them at their country places (don't ask me what I was doing there because I don't know).

they were born with money and they don't have to dirty their hands in slaughterhouses or washing dishes in grease joints or driving cabs or pimping or selling pot.

this gives them time to understand Life.

they walk in with their cocktail glass held about heart high and when they drink they just sip.

you are drinking green beer which you brought with you because you have found out through the years that rich ****s are tight- they use 5 cent stamps instead of airmail they promise to have all sorts of goodies ready upon your arrival from gallons of whisky to 50 cent cigars. but it's never there. and they HIDE their women from you- their wives, x-wives, daughters, maids, so forth, because they've read your poems and figure all you want to do is **** everybody and everything. which once might have been true but is no longer quite true.

and- he WRITES TOO. POETRY, of course. everybody writes poetry.

he has plenty of time and a postoffice box in town and he drives there 3 or 4 times a day looking and hoping for accepted poems.

he thinks that poverty is a weakness of the soul.

he thinks your mind is ill because you are drunk all the time and have to work in a factory 10 or 12 hours a night.

he brings his wife in, a beauty, stolen from a poorer rich man. he lets you gaze for 30 seconds then hustles her out. she has been crying for some reason.

you've got 3 or 4 days to linger in the guesthouse he says, "come on over to dinner sometime." but he doesn't say when or where. and then you find out that you are not even IN HIS HOUSE.

you are in ONE of his houses but his house is somewhere else- you don't know where.

he even has x-wives in some of his houses.

his main concern is to keep his x-wives away from you. he doesn't want to give up a damn thing. and you can't blame him: his x-wives are all young, stolen, kept, talented, well-dressed, schooled, with varying French-German accents.

and!: they WRITE POETRY TOO. or PAINT. or ****.

but his big problem is to get down to that mail box in town to get back his rejected poems and to keep his eye on all the other mail boxes in all his other houses.

meanwhile, the starving Indians sell beads and baskets in the streets of the small desert town.

the Indians are not allowed in his houses not so much because they are a ****-threat but because they are dirty and ignorant. dirty? I look down at my shirt with the beerstain on the front. ignorant? I light a 6 cent cigar and forget about it.

he or they or somebody was supposed to meet me at the train station.

of course, they weren't there. "We'll be there to meet the great Poet!"

well, I looked around and didn't see any great poet. besides it was 7 a.m. and 40 degrees. those things happen. the trouble was there were no bars open. nothing open. not even a jail.

he's a poet. he's also a doctor, a head-shrinker. no blood involved that way. he won't tell me whether I am crazy or not-I don't have the money.

he walks out with his cocktail glass disappears for 2 hours, 3 hours, then suddenly comes walking back in unannounced with the same cocktail glass to make sure I haven't gotten hold of something more precious than Life itself.

my cheap green beer is killing me. he shows heart (hurrah) and gives me a little pill that stops my gagging. but nothing decent to drink.

he'd bought a small 6 pack for my arrival but that was gone in an hour and 15 minutes.

"I'll buy you barrels of beer," he had said.

I used his phone (one of his phones) to get deliveries of beer and cheap whisky. the town was ten miles away, downhill. I peeled my poor dollars from my poor roll. and the boy needed a tip, of course.

the way it was shaping up I could see that I was hardly Dylan Thomas yet, not even Robert Creeley. certainly Creeley wouldn't have had beerstains on his shirt.

anyhow, when I finally got hold of one of his x-wives I was too drunk to make it.

scared too. sure, I imagined him peering through the window- he didn't want to give up a damn thing- and leveling the luger while I was working while "The March to the Gallows" was playing over the Muzak and shooting me in the **** first and my poor brain later.

"an intruder," I could hear him telling them, "ravishing one of my helpless x-wives."

I see him published in some of the magazines now. not very good stuff.

a poem about me too: the Polack.

the Polack whines too much. the Polack whines about his country, other countries, all countries, the Polack works overtime in a factory like a fool, among other fools with "pre-drained spirits." the Polack drinks seas of green beer full of acid. the Polack has an ulcerated hemorrhoid. the Polack picks on fags "fragile fags." the Polack hates his wife, hates his daughter. his daughter will become an alcoholic, a prostitute. the Polack has an "obese burned out wife." the Polack has a spastic gut. the Polack has a "rectal brain."

thank you, Doctor (and poet). any charge for this? I know I still owe you for the pill.

Your poem is not too good but at least I got your starch up. most of your stuff is about as lively as a wet and deflated beachball. but it is your round, you've won a round. going to invite me out this Summer? I might scrape up trainfare. got an Indian friend who'd like to meet you and yours. he swears he's got the biggest pecker in the state of California.

and guess what? he writes POETRY too!

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O, We Are The Outcasts

Charles Bukowski  1920-1994

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