Gary Goude visited Bukowski's grave on Christmas Day, 1999, and his son Daniel videotaped him reading a poem in his honor. To see the video click here.

Green Hills Memorial Park at 27051 South Western Avenue in Rancho Palos Verdes, CA, 90275, is where Henry Charles "Hank" Bukowski is buried in Ocean View, Lot I, No. 875. Anti-Hero Artist Gary Goude, visited Buk's grave on October 23, 1994. This is what he wrote to me about it: Got up sick again yesterday but went to Buk's grave anyway. Took Daniel (his 15-year-old son) with me. The cemetery has thousands of dead bodies with thousands of flat grave markers. We walked around for two hours looking at hundreds of markers and did not spot Buk's. I tried to locate the grave by (Long Beach, CA, poet) Joan Jobe Smith's description, "Buk sits on a hill overlooking the Vincent Thomas Bridge." Shit, every goddamn grave there sits on a hill overlooking that bridge except for the cremated ones. They occupy a building at the back of the cemetery. Finally we went to the administration building and asked where he was. There was a nice looking babe at a desk in there. She had this practised look of gloom on her face. I asked her, "Could you tell me where a certain person is buried here?" She said, "Yes, but I will need the person's name." I said, "Bukowski. Charles Bukowski." She went into another room then came out and led us into a small room with this real old thin guy. He shook my hand and handed me a brochure about Green Hills Memorial Park, which was a sales promo thing about the importance of "planning for your future", which means they want to sell you a plot before you die and can't pay for one. Anyway, he pulled this old torn up map out of his desk and showed us where Buk was. He even has an address: 875-I, Ocean View. We went to his new address and found him.

Someone had been there and placed some yellow flowers. I gave him a pine cone I found nearby. Someone has been taking his grass and dirt so I left him alone. I'll go back when the weather is bad and I am drunk. Then I'll leave him some roses and take a picture of my drunk self at his grave. Where he is at is surrounded by big trees, but they are not taking care of his plot very well. The grass is dying, but the grass around him is doing OK. Maybe because they only buried him a few months ago the grass needs time to grow. Well, it was odd looking at his tombstone, especially after I had that dream and I read that poem on page 215 of LAST NIGHT OF THE EARTH POEMS.

Buk, I went over to your new place to see you. There on Ocean View. You were hard to find. You were alone, the way you like it. There were some yellow sun flowers on your grass. I sat there on your lawn for awhile then I knocked on your door, told you I had a six pack. "Hey, Bukowski, open the door. I've got some beer." You didn't answer and the sign on your door said, 'Don't Try.' I left the beer right there by those flowers. And said good bye."

Goude revisited the grave with his girlfriend, Jill Barnes, who's had her poetry published in THE NEW YORK QUARTERLY, on April 11th, 1999. Here's his report, along with the picture you see here (taken by Jill) of Gary laying his head next to Buk's grave marker: Last Sunday went to the grave. My girlfriend showed the OLD MAN her tattoo in honor of his bones, purple bones from the cover of his latest book, BONE PALACE BALLET, branded to her ankle. Buk's next door neighbor is the bones of a guy by the name of Pops Quackenbush, which proves that you never know where you are going to end up, or rather, you know you are going to end up as mulch but even if your name is Bukowski you'll be ground up with all the rest of humanity, thrown into the common grave of your lesser known brethren. In another century Mozart was tossed into a pit and dusted with lime and his work was stolen. Buk had his own Judas, who attended his funeral, and the only thing he could write about afterword was how impressed he was with the presence of actor and Buk friend Sean Penn at the graveside. And after that he summoned up the courage (funny how courage is easier to come by once the person you're dissecting is dead) to chastise Buk in some obscure little mag, saying that Buk had written "too much," that his early work was not good. Then another fellow, who Buk had trusted to write his biography, used that book to get a position as a university professor. If you read enough of his work, Buk will tell you that this would happen, his friends would suck the marrow right out of his dead bones, but that is what buzzards do.

Gary works in a factory in L.A. that makes parts for machines that seal beer can tops. He found out his co-workers' brother-in-law dug Buk's grave. Gary wrote here with this on Thanksgivings Day, 1994: That guy who dug his grave, Ernesto Alonso, also works in the crematorium. He told his brother-in-law, the guy I work with, that when a fat body burns, hot oil runs down this trough because the oven can't destroy all the fat. He heats his lunch on top of the cremation oven when he is working there. He dug and then shoveled the dirt onto Buk's casket. He knew who Buk was because of the rumor mill at the cemetery on the day of Buk's funeral and watched the funeral service from a distance and saw several "movie" people (Sean Penn was one of the pallbearers) there. That's all I have.

Gary also wrote a little ditty called 'A Literary Discussion' that will appeared in the THE NEW YORK QUARTERLY:

I was at Scribner's Books in Riverside, CA, the other day thumbing through Henry Miller's TROPIC OF CANCER. Two aisles down, in the poetry section, were two employees opening boxes of books and placing them on the shelves. One was a plump, round faced young woman and the other an equally youthful dough-faced young man. He pulled a Bukowski volume out of a box and giggled in a high pitched voice, holding the book up for the woman to see.

"How did HE ever get anything published? I heard that he was nothing but drunken bum and uneducated," he smirked.

The young woman laughed, looking at the copy of LOVE IS A DOG FROM HELL that the kid held; "Well, he certainly was not a REAL literary figure, like Frost or Sandburg, ha ha. Are you looking forward to going off to Oxford next year?"

The young man looked bored, answering, "Well, I've been there before. It's so mundane. So archaic, you know. But the scholarship will pay for my mom to come visit next summer."

I decided to purchase the Miller book and walked up to the register. The young boy rang it up with his soft hands then said to me: "Oh, yes, Henry Miller. A significant literary figure. A good choice." I was hung over and sick to my gut from my factory job and the cheap booze (bought at Price Club) I'd been drinking since the night before. I looked at the boy and said, "Yes, he is. I would have bought a BUKOWSKI book instead but I've read them all. By the way kid, why don't you take your fat little co-worker there into the back room and fuck her so that the next time I come in here you two will have something significant and literary to talk about." I barely glanced at his pink face as I turned and walked out of there, but I do remember that his pimples were all flamed up and ready to spit puss.

© 1994 Gary Goude