The 'Not-So-Rough' Guide

Charles Bukowski died 15 years ago yesterday. During the early 1970s, I lived briefly in Denver, Colorado, where I imagined myself part of a “next wave” of beat writers working their way west from New York, via Denver, to Venice Beach in California. I panhandled on Colfax Avenue; I shoplifted groceries; I drank too much; I read my own poetry in bars for spare change; and from time to time, when I wasn’t imagining myself as Jack Kerouac, I imagined myself as Bukowski: I even wrote several poems in which I tried not just to channel his voice but to swallow the poet whole. One of my “Bukowski poems” is “published” here – about a woman who shrieked and stormed from the room during a reading I gave of a poem that mentioned a female body part. Following my poem are Bukowski’s “rules for writing.”

a conversation w/charles bukowski at the international house, denver

florence is wearing red lipstick,
sits with tired legs crossed,
handbag on lap.

“read a dirty poem!”

i hear bukowski
his mad eyes staring at me
through the window

i am introduced &
take my seat by the desk,
head hidden by the globe.

“read a dirty poem!”

bukowski has entered
unseen,
sits on my lap

“this is a filthy,
i mean,
erotic poem!”

he won’t let me speak

i become incensed,
roll my eyes &
tongue around the room.

florence returns my tongue,
pushes the globe aside
to see my face.
she asks me to read.

CUNT I SAY! CUNT! CUNT! CUNT!
THE CUNT IS HOLY: THE EYE OF GOD!

florence shows red teeth &
leaves through the window
with the globe.

bukowski smiles &
picks up my eyes.

(September, 1974)

so you want to be a writer?

if it doesn’t come bursting out of you
in spite of everything,
don’t do it.
unless it comes unasked out of your
heart and your mind and your mouth
and your gut,
don’t do it.
if you have to sit for hours
staring at your computer screen
or hunched over your
typewriter
searching for words,
don’t do it.
if you’re doing it for money or
fame,
don’t do it.
if you’re doing it because you want
women in your bed,
don’t do it.
if you have to sit there and
rewrite it again and again,
don’t do it.
if it’s hard work just thinking about doing it,
don’t do it.
if you’re trying to write like somebody
else,
forget about it.

if you have to wait for it to roar out of
you,
then wait patiently.
if it never does roar out of you,
do something else.

if you first have to read it to your wife
or your girlfriend or your boyfriend
or your parents or to anybody at all,
you’re not ready.

don’t be like so many writers,
don’t be like so many thousands of
people who call themselves writers,
don’t be dull and boring and
pretentious, don’t be consumed with self-
love.
the libraries of the world have
yawned themselves to
sleep
over your kind.
don’t add to that.
don’t do it.
unless it comes out of
your soul like a rocket,
unless being still would
drive you to madness or
suicide or murder,
don’t do it.
unless the sun inside you is
burning your gut,
don’t do it.

when it is truly time,
and if you have been chosen,
it will do it by
itself and it will keep on doing it
until you die or it dies in you.

there is no other way.