So after a not-so-successful attempt at instilling the beginning of a love of poetry in the hearts of my little motorcycle EXILES with the poem “The Family” by Jacques Prevert (yeah, Jack the Pervert from my previous BUMMER II episode), I had to reach deep down into the dark recesses of my Poetry Arsenal. And the lethal weapon I pulled out (heh) was as ticklish as nitroglycerin: Bukowski!
A movie based on Charles Bukowsi’s life was aptly titled Barfly. Apparently, that’s pretty much what he was. Mickey Rourke played Hank, “Hank” being Charles’ popular nickname. Most of the film takes place in sleazy barrooms and hotel rooms with his sleazy girlfriend, Wanda (Faye Dunaway). Guess why. Right.
Hank lived his adult life as a functioning alcoholic.
Despite that life, he was a prolific and surprisingly successful writer. According to Wikipedia, “Bukowski published extensively in small literary magazines and with small presses beginning in the early 1940s and continuing on through the early 1990s. He wrote thousands of poems, hundreds of short stories and six novels, eventually publishing over sixty books during the course of his career. One of these works he titled Poems Written Before Jumping Out of an 8 Story Window,” (a title that hints at a darkness within the man). Songwriter Leonard Cohen once said of him, “He brought everybody down to earth, even the angels.”
The Wikipedia article further says, “Bukowski’s work addresses the ordinary lives of poor Americans, the act of writing, alcohol, relationships with women, and the drudgery of work. The FBI kept a file on him as a result of his column Notes of a Dirty Old Man in the LA underground newspaper Open City… In 1986 Time magazine called Bukowski a ‘laureate of American lowlife.’ Regarding his enduring popular appeal, Adan Kirsch of The New Yorker wrote, ‘the secret of Bukowski’s appeal … [is that] he combines the confessional poet’s promise of intimacy with the larger-than-life aplomb of a pulp fiction hero.’” So Bukowski, sleazy drunk that he was much of the time, enjoyed a global popularity, as the number of biographical texts dissecting the man will attest.
The first of his poems I selected for my EXILES (others were soon to follow) is “Me Against the World,” a seemingly appropriate motto for my boys. I’d discovered it serendipitously. One afternoon, browsing the Poetry Section of a Borders’ Book Store, I happened to pluck a random book from a display, flip it open to the middle like cutting a deck of cards and… Jesus, there it was. And it had already had me in its death grip after only the first six or seven lines. It felt as if I were to look into a mirror, I’d discover that I’d just suffered a metaphorical black eye! That was honestly a day I can’t forget.
Now I need to point out that this book was an anthology in the annual Best of American Poetry series, so “Me Against the World” wasn’t one of those elegant, cerebral pieces I apparently was expecting that day. I bought the book immediately. I’d become a Hank Bukowski fan immediately. I was taking my first step on a counterculturally sentimenal journey of a thousand Bukowski poems.
Back in the classroom, I opted to dramatically read the poem aloud first, before passing out the lyrics sheet. I wanted to grab their rapt attention the same way the poem had initially muckled onto mine in Borders. I began with the opening, “when I was a kid one of the questions asked was, would you rather eat a bucket of shit or drink a bucket of piss? I thought that was easy. ‘that’s easy,’ I said, ‘I’ll take the piss.’ ‘maybe we’ll make you do both,’ they told me.”
Now if you happen to be new to Bukowski, you are probably finding yourself as much in a state of shock as I was at first. Even nearly every one of those Exiles’ jaws had just landed in in their laps, not because the language came as a shock, but because the language had occurred spoken out loud by a high school English teacher in a public school classroom. It was an unusual moment indeed. But please, dear reader, please hold on and bear with me. You will be rewarded, I swear.
Back to the poem:
ME AGAINST THE WORLD
by Charles Bukowsky
when I was a kid one of the questions asked
was, would you rather eat a bucket of shit or
drink a bucket of piss? I thought that was easy.
“that’s easy,” I said, “I’ll take the piss.”
“maybe we’ll make you do both,” they told me.
I was the new kid in the neighborhood.
“oh yeah?” I said. “yeah!” they said. there were
four of them “yeah,” I said, “you and whose army?”
“we won’t need no army,” the biggest one said.
I slammed my fist into his stomach. then all
five of us were down on the ground fighting.
they got in each other’s way but there were
still too many of them. I broke free and started
running. “sissy! sissy!” they yelled. “going
home to mama?” I kept running.
they were right. I ran all the way to my house,
up the driveway and onto the porch and
into the house where my father was beating
up my mother. she was screaming. things were
broken on the floor. I charged my father
and started swinging. I reached up but
he was too tall, all I could hit were his legs.
then there was a flash of red and purple
and green and I was on the floor.
“you little prick!” my father said, “you
stay out of this!” “don’t you hit my boy!”
my mother screamed. but I felt good
because my father was no longer hitting
my mother. to make sure, I got up and
charged him again, swinging. there was
another flash of colors and I was
on the floor again. when I got up again
my father was sitting in one chair and
my mother was sitting in another chair
and they both just sat there looking at me.
I walked down the hall and into
my bedroom and sat on the bed.
I listened to make sure there
weren’t any more sounds of
beating and screaming out there.
there weren’t. then I didn’t know
what to do. it wasn’t any good outside
and it wasn’t any good inside. so I
just sat there.
then I saw a spider making a web
across a window. I found a match,
walked over, lit it, and burned
the spider to death.
then I felt better.
much better.
This gut-wrenching piece of creative writing still affects me, to this day. And believe me, did we ever have a great discussion, or what!? A discussion on the significance of this one, on them, and on me; a discussion on poetry, on creative writing. God, I was clam-happy at the end of that class period. Stories were triggered and told. I felt myself really starting to bond with these yahoos. And once again, I was left with the distinct feeling I’d won implicit “permission” to try one more poem. As long as it was written by this dude, good ol’ Hank Bukowski. Or somebody very much like him. You know. No Daffodils, no clouds. But I had a number of them waiting in the wings.
Stay tuned for a few more of my fave Bukowski hits coming up in my next episode, “Bummer IV.”
NEARING THE END OF THE LINE 