well, I’ve had 2 wild visits with you—the one in New Orleans and the one in Santa Fe, and if I can work this one out I hope that it goes smoother, to hell with dramatics. but Jon you are a tough guy to get along with, and what makes it worse is that I am a hard-head. I DON’T GET ALONG WITH ANYBODY. if I come down I think I will only stay a week, it will be about all I can afford—unless the horses are good to me. this is the weirdest system you ever heard of, yet it works like machinery—on paper. anyhow, if I come down I think it best if you let me look for my own room. I like a place where I can close a door. the New Orleans setup was all right except I was pretty jumpy. sick most of the time, and all those pages to sign. 3100 pages! jesus, you realize what a JOB that was? with silver ink? where’s my boyscout medal? yeah, it’s a shame Stuart doesn’t know how to handle Crucifix. I’m real disappointed in his methods, but he did ship me $200.00 when I needed it bad, so I can’t write that off. god, this time last year I was sitting on my bloody ass, right after the operation, and here we sit around now, all of us, still alive. [* * *]

[To Ann Menebroker]

April 7, 1967, 3:45 a.m.

Have been drunk for several many hours. trouble controlling pen. [* * *]

Your voice always sounds young as clear rivers crying clear things, no matter what you say, no matter what you say, I feel ice-joy cry in your voice.

But please don’t feel sad. I think that I am something that has just gotten into your head. I am neither that way or that true.

if you could see me now, baggy-bellied in torn shorts, old, drunk, trying to answer a letter in the half-light of my life, then you would know.

there is hardly anything literary about me nor many either, so there you go.

writing poems is such a chicken-shit game! if we were only more alive like they are more dead! then, sweets, we could finally write.

About this time Bukowski began his series of columns for Bryan’s new underground paper, Open City, under the series title “Notes of a Dirty Old Man.”

[To Carl Weissner]

April 28, [1967]

[* * *] right now I guess you are hurting worse than I am, but you we ARE ALL JUMPY, cool and tired and hardly caring but at the same time—AT THE EXACT SAME TIME—jumpy. I mean when I did not hear from you, I figured first that

a; you were sick

b; you had injured yourself

c; you had killed yourself