On Writing. Charles Bukowski

Christmas trees, please. This is no good. I want you to make me another drawing.” He walked on.

      A couple of weeks later he stood before the class. “Well, my company and the TEXACO executives have chosen our Christmas ad.” And he held it up. And as he did so, just a moment after he did so, I saw his eyes search me out. You know what he held up: A Christmas tree with a TEXACO emblem star at the top, only they had put a little service station man inside the tree . . . I didn’t say anything. I could have made him look bad. But I am not for arguing, bitching. I felt that he knew that I knew and that was sufficient. I dropped out of class and got drunk. Later, during the Xmas season, when we’d pass a Texaco station I’d tell Fry, “Look, baby, my drawing . . . aren’t you proud of me?”

      what I mean is if I wrote this novel on toilet paper somebody wd wipe his ass on it. I wrote the Ape thing as a short story some 15 years ago or so and IT NEVER CAME BACK EITHER. and no carbons. but I doubt John Collier copied it. He prob. has more talent than I and needn’t do such things. The ape story has done me good, though; I usually tell it to ladies in bed after everything else has been done and we are more or less relaxed. Fry thought the telling was wonderful, and another lady cried, “oh, I’m going to cry, I’m going to cry, it was so sad and beautiful.” and she cried. I guess the reason it didn’t come back (the story) was that I was broke and drinking at the time and was hand-printing my stuff in ink. I finally got so that I could print faster than I could write in longhand and whenever I wrote something down I printed it and people would say, “What the hell’s wrong with you? Don’t you know how to write?” I can’t answer that. I don’t know if I can write or not. But I’m sure laying on the bologna tonight . . . blue true bologna and a bellyfull.

      This Toilet Paper Review predates the version published in Screams from the Balcony (1993).

      [To John William Corrington]

      Late April 1962

      I got an idea, Willie. Let’s you and I put out an issue. Call it the The Toilet Paper Review. We won’t even need a duplicator. I will just get a roll and type it up in this typewriter. We will, just you and I, run all our old poems we can’t get rid of in The Toilet Paper Review. One copy to Trace, one copy to God, one copy for Sherman and one for Sherman’s whore who can take it. Anywhere. Anyhow.

       The Toilet Paper Review

      Edited by William Corrington and Charles Bukowski

      Vol. I, #I

      if ya wanna look at television

      we don’t give a shit.

      “I Kneel”

      By William Corrington

      these legs need to run

      but I kneel

      before female flowers—

      catch the scent of forgetfulness

      and grab it,

      sure,

      and evenings

      hours of evenings

      grey-headed evenings

      nod

      and afterwards

      “Sculpture”

      By Charles Bukowski

      Harry, the habit, and then we made

      this face, and then out of the Face

      came: fish, elms, butternut candy,

      and we went outside

      and we went outside

      and we—needle off, or

      break the tape, I can’t stand

      it anymore,

      I walked 18 blocks,

      came back, and the face

      had grown to the size of the room

      and I knew it was true:

      I was mad.

      “The Alley That Waits Us”

      By William Corrington

      I guess we must go on,

      loss after loss,

      we must go on,

      until the final loss,

      say in some alley,

      blood running down like a

      necktie ha ha, we are

      tricked and slapped to death,

      bargained out of any gain,

      any love, any rest,

      hands to walls, waa waaa!,

      traffic (grr!!) going by,

      filthy lovers making filthy

      lover’s vows, fish sick fish

      going out with the tide

      waa waaa!! mah head a

      falling now, we are almost

      into the black dream,

      never to be genius now,

      sun brings tulips, rain brings

      worms, God brings genius

      and disposes genius tulip

      worm so things begin again

      new things forever

      tiresome tiresome to think

      body flat now

      az small ratz run to my shoes

      run off again

      and I am seen by a small boy

      and he too

      runs runs

      but they will catch him

      like the tulips

      like Poppa

      like Belmonte

      like large stones that break

      into sand

      that cuts where there is blood,

      loss after loss

      wherever we

      are.

      (and we still don’t give a shit whether u look at T.V. or not. We need subscribers. Please help.)

      [To John William Corrington]

      May 1962

      [ . . . ] I received a letter from some woman today. She gives me Nietzsche: “what we do is never understood, but only praised and blamed.” And then she says, “This must be what you meant when you spoke of the bad influence of praise in your letter. But, think—to be praised AND to be understood! There, my Friend, is the only type of practical paradise for the writer or the painter or the composer . . .” “Very true—the artist must certainly go from one creation to the next, but none of them are entire new beginnings—nothing ever really has a new beginning. One creation evolves from another. One purpose turns into ten thousand others. When you find an inspired thought, in your head, surely you can not believe it is breathlessly new? It came from centuries of submerged creations of ideas. But I do not mean to get started on a long dragged out ‘essay’ . . .”

      Well, thank Christ for that.

      what a bunch of fucking preconceptions, and what a dismal harnessed outlook. These intelligent people jaggle my nuts. Each beginning to me (TO ME!!!) is a NEW BEGINNING. God yas. How else do I know whether I am dead or not? what wiggles. what gives. the