typing in the dark, in my new room of self-exile. i like this. a small room, well appointed, a clean floor on which to write, a window i can open or close, endless music at my disposal, a neat row of freshly purchased books on the table, and a strict and serious seat on which to sit. no luxury until my ass blisters act up and i whip out the SORABJI monogrammed pillow that crazy NoCal lady sent me years ago.
new books: complete known poetry of marianne moore (sweet mouth. attraction for me begins with the mouth); a thomas merton reader; new and collected poems of czeslaw milosz. and the book not new to my shelves but new to me today was the screed from pages 308-309 of “the pleasures of the damned” collected bukowski poetry.
I'm not going to die easy; I've sat on your suicide beds in some of the worst holes in America, penniless and mad I've been, I mean, insane, you know; big tears, each one the size of your bastard hearts, flowing down, roaches crawling into my shoes, one dirty 40-watt lightbulb overhead and a room that smelled like piss; while your rich your falsely famous laughed in safe stale places far away, you gave me a suicide bed and two choices, no three: starve, go mad, or kill yourself. for now enjoy your trips to Paris where you consort with great painters and dupes, but I am getting ready for your eyes and your brain and your dirty dishwater souls; you men who have created a pigpen for millions to choke soundlessly in -- from India to Los Angeles from Paris to the tits of the Nile -- you're fucked up you rich you warty you insecure you pricky damned imbecile pasty white idiots with your starched shirts and your starched wives and, and yes, your starched lives, get away get away get away go to Paris while you can while I let you. the jolly damned man with the hoe (see Markham) didn't answer the call but your children will be raped and your pigs will be eaten and the skies will burn black with crows and your cries, as you answer for centuries of unbearable indignity and bullshit. you will be dealt with we know you now we've known you forever; the might of the timorous flies forth like a tremendous and beautiful swan, no shit, friend, look up look up look up look up the jolly damned man with the hoe is now flying over Milwaukee grinning more lovely than the sun more graceful than all the ugly wounds more real than you or I or anything.
i opened that big Bukowski book this weekend and landed on that poem, then noticed it for its tears the size of your bastard hearts (I’ve shed some of those). i read it today as a requiem for wall street. it will be read different ways depending where your pisses and biles happen to be directed on whatever day of the life.
nothing to report this day. just reading. just walking around the apartment, looking out the window, looking at the wall, looking at the couch. just looking around. not crossing them but pressing my feets flat to the floor, my palms to the table. blew my nose a few times. brushed my teeth. took a shit/wiped my ass. drank coffee/shit again/wiped my ass again. went to midtown 181 to get my mail. played eyes with and (out of routine habit) imagined cunnilingus with a puffy-lipped, randy looking woman on the subway who looked me in the eyes before i did the same. got home, listened to Penderecki, Marshall Tucker Band, Joan Baez, Arvo Pärt, Staples Singers.
