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Back Screams From the Balcony
Chapters (26)
  1. Cover
  2. CHARLES BUKOWSKI
  3. SCREAMS FROM THE BALCONY
  4. EDITED BY SEAMUS COONEY
  5. Contents
  6. EDITOR’S NOTE
  7. • 1958 •
  8. • 1959 •
  9. • 1960 •
  10. • 1961 •
  11. • 1962 •
  12. • 1963 •
  13. • 1964 •
  14. • 1965 •
  15. • 1966 •
  16. • 1967 •
  17. • 1968 •
  18. • 1969 •
  19. AFTERWORD
  20. SEARCHABLE TERMS
  21. Acknowledgments
  22. About the Author
  23. BY CHARLES BUKOWSKI AVAILABLE FROM ECCO
  24. Copyright
  25. About the Publisher
  26. About the Publisher

[To Douglas Blazek]

October 10, 1965

been playing with the little girl for an hour and a half on the rug after work and now I am like a burned city, but, shit, so? & Thursday at 12:30 p.m. I swing onto the CHIEF #20 for Lamay, New Mexico with 2 pints of scotch and then a bus on into Santa Fe, 7 a.m. Friday morning if I do not die or fall off the cliff of myself before then, and I have bummed for years until this crotch of a life grabbed me on this job for 8 years, my god, but a little space again, a shot of light, and then back, or a shot of agony—I do not make it with people, I can’t help it. and I can’t sleep on trains, I can’t even sleep on a bed. the only way to sleep is to drink yourself senseless.

you get people together and they sit around in a room and look at each other and try to think of things to say; it’s ugly and senseless. or somebody gets on the make. or somebody vomits in the back porch. or somebody screws the dog. I am not all there in conversation; sometimes I think I am made of some kind of hard and unfriendly stone. most things disgust me; I don’t know what I want. then I begin thinking that I am insane, that I can’t see what they see, that I can’t understand what they understand; that they are naturally warm and that I am a dribbling fake. and then, in the next flash, I suddenly think that they are damned fools and I don’t give a damn what they think. all my strings fight in discord; my cock is trying to screw my brain, or the other way. then I look down and my belly is flopping out, my sides are flopping out; my zipper is coming undone, China crawls in a teacup like a worm; everybody looks handsome and clean and there is dirt under my fingernails and a stink rises from my soul. a bad fix all the time—perhaps a little exaggerated but not too much.

now the kid is crawling under my feet and the woman says PEEK A BOO! I SEE YOU!!!

no, I don’t want a steady stay in N.M. those things don’t work. the battle I have here now is killing me but that one would kill me faster. I have to go by instinct. actually I am not trying to write mainly poems or a novel. actually poems are only toothpicks that hold me up a little. [* * *]