I’m going to spend some more time with Charles Bukowski and then I’m going to get off
him. I’m going to get off him because I’m
unsure of Bukowski the person, whether he was a character I would choose to
admire or not. Nor am I sure if he is
the type of poet I want to aspire to.
Like, I’ve read the biography, Charles Bukowski (by Barry Miles, Virgin
Books), and I think I understand the shaping of his world view because of his
up-bringing and what life dealt him, but that doesn’t quite excuse the level of
contempt and disdain for other people that he appears to hold and that comes
through sometimes in his writing. This
view of mine was reinforced only recently when I looked at some you-tube clips
of Bukowski interviews and readings.
There’s one where he and Linda (fiancée, then), are sitting on a couch,
engaged in reality recorded conversation; Hank’s drinking and doing the typical
movements of a smoker lighting up and talking around a thin, rolled
cigarette. He’s OK, calm, talking about
how he believes he’s often taken advantage of because he reckons he’s too nice
a guy, etc. Linda hears what he says and
supports his ego, “…… why do you let these people do this to you?” There’s some to and fro conversation and Hank
goes down a line of wanting to get rid of Linda because she’s been out late
some nights, blah, blah, and she in turn tries to defend herself, when, out of
nowhere, Bukowski turns extremely nasty – he lashes out with his feet to
seriously kick Linda and he swears at her, threatens and calls her vile names –
an ugly scene. The change in mood is so
sudden it’s like eruption from a tormented chimpanzee. Why does he behave this way? It’s too easy to look at the clip and just
wipe the guy off as a prick! But that
would be wrong. I think the key is in
the fact that Linda and Hank went on and got married and she was his mate to
the end. Bukowski must have loved this
woman (emotionally) more than he had felt about a lot of others. I’m not a psychologist but I believe people
can hate, or appear to hate, only because they do not know how to love (from a
frustration of not knowing how to love) and having been given extreme low self
esteem in their childhood development. I
think this is the case with Bukowski. He
was not nurtured and shown how to love within his family, so as an adult, his
frustrated reaction in a situation where he feels love, is to turn it
completely around and perform self hurt and denial – ‘fuck you!’ means, ‘you’re
too good a person for a bastard like me (ergo: I love you)’.
I feel one
has to be careful of this bitterness and contempt Bukowski shows for his fellow
human being when one tries to copy his writing style. It may be your natural propensity to pay out
on society, but what contribution does it make to art, to get around
belly-aching personal prejudices? Sometimes
I’ve got to do the reality check and ask myself, ‘am I writing something of
substance here, or is this just belly-ache grumbling in notes from my personal
diary?’ I include Bukowski’s poem, ‘a
killer gets ready’, because I believe it passes the reality check. Hank does seem to hold a bitter contempt for
the man in uniform – a personal dislike.
But I think he says something more than, “there was this marine on the
train and didn’t he think he was something!”
To me, this is an anti-war poem. The
world can always have war because the vanities of any number of young men are
available to make it so bloody easy.
a killer gets ready
Charles Bukowski (1921
– 1994)
He was a good one
say 18, 19,
a marine
and everytime
a woman came down the train aisle
he seemed to stand up
so I couldn’t see
her
and the woman smiled at him
but I didn’t smile
at him
he kept looking at himself in the
train window
and standing up and taking off his
coat and then standing up
and putting it back
on
he polished his belt buckle with a
delighted vigor
and his neck was red and
his face was red and is eyes were a
pretty blue
but I didn’t like
him
and everytime I went to the can
he was either in one of the cans
or he was in front of one of the mirrors
combing his hair or
shaving
and he was always walking up and down the
aisles
or drinking water
I watched his Adam’s apple juggle the water
down
he was always in my
eyes
but we never spoke
and I remembered all the other trains
all the other buses
all the other wars
he got off at Pasadena
vainer than any woman
he got off at Pasadena
proud and dead
the rest of the trainride –
8 or 10 miles –
was perfect.
Something else I note in Bukowski’s, ‘a killer gets ready’ –
is how Hank was a good observer of people; he studies this marine quite closely
without engaging or giving himself away, and he matches what he observes to how
he feels about it. Bukowski’s ‘laureate of low-life’ (Time
magazine) and autobiographical style has influenced me to write my own protests
against what I’ve observed as thick-headed male behaviour. This one I called, ‘Oil Men’:
2008. The Arab world may be alcohol free and the
Moslem belief may keep women covered up, but drinking and womanising is OK for
the arrogant western white man working in the middle east - the scene inside a Dubai
Oil Men
They
were all big buggers,
solid
blocks of beef,
with
bulging biceps and barrel chests
that
threatened to bust open stitching
on
their Well Cat polo shirts
and
stone-washed denims.
Moving
like a pack of bull-dogs
they
oafed straight into the bar
brandishing
beer flushed faces
and
dangerous egos.
It’s
four o’clock in the afternoon,
but
they’ve got to a state
where
they’re all men,
standing
in a circle with their legs planted,
like
they’re pissing into a urinal,
holding
onto themselves firmly
with
hands thrust into the left pocket,
or
feeding it into some whore’s mouth
while
there’s loud back-slapping cheers,
and
glasses get dropped
and
break on the parquetry dance floor.
These
ones don’t look as though there’s family,
or
compassion,
the
slim, oriental good time girls
…….hide back in the shadows.
J.O. White
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