![]() they heard Beethoven's/9th last night and now they are listening to Brahms/2nd." and Bukowski's two favorite radio stations play classical music. Inside where the red dot selects the station.Īh, so. ![]() I haven't killed all the spiders in this placeīut I've gotten most of them. In fact, reading these poems - almost two hundred in number - becomes a walk down memory lane where one could survive in the slums back then when they were free of the more vicious products of America's current gun and drug (and zoning) laws.where the biggest worry was whether the spiders would take over, ![]() Mid-town Redevelopment and cocaine and heroin and crack and a bonanza of rifles, pistols, and AK-47s have, forever, changed the Bukowski homebase. We felt privileged that this crude brawler with his pustule- infested body and fearsome appearance and disgusting ways would, in the midst of yet another night of whoring and mayhem and throw-up, pause to pound on his faithful typewriter to give us more poems and prose out of the American Dream turned into a nightmare of and black eyes, yellowed underpants, and smegma.īut the fact is that Bukowski's world is one of artfully manufactured smelly social history, and, what's worse, at least for those who treasure his writing - one that no longer exists. Notes of a Dirty Old Man, Post Office, or Ham on Rye were an excellent introduction for us fey university types to the parts of America where the War on Poverty (and the rest of us) never managed to reach. Instead of blood, sweat and tears - Bukowski was upchuck, dirty socks, and broken condoms. Bukowski manages to plumb the fear that all of us have that what we think of as society is not working, that our hopes and dreams do not lead to a gated home in the suburbs with children in the schools, mom in the kitchen, dad at the office, and all's right with the world - but, instead, broken people slopping around in the lousiest parts of city center, drinking Wild Turkey, tattooed fat-bellied men trying to beat up on other tattooed, fat-bellied men or beating up their tattooed girlfriends or wives or whatever, chasing them around their filthy fourth-floor walk-up apartments late at night, reviling each other more and more noisily with each drink (taken straight from the bottle) until finally at four or five in the morning, exhausted with the labor of their wars, they throw up, fall into their beds and drift off into a drunken slumber where they snore until next afternoon where they rise up hotly out of the sweaty, jism-encrusted beds (no sheets no pillowcases) and, without bothering to shower or even wash their hands they pry open a can of Chicken- of- the- Sea tuna with a pocket-knife and pick it out and stuff it in their mouths and somehow score a case of Mickey's Wide-Mouth and embark yet again on a noisy window- breaking, door- smashing, furniture- wrecking, glass- strewn night of noise and vituperation and snittery.
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