My first ex-wife, Julie, took a trip to England and I told her, "If you stop in any bookstores (which she said she was gonna do) please buy anything to do with Bukowski. T-shirts. Magazines. Books. Tapes, etc..." She came back with only a couple items -- reporting there just wasn't much Buk stuff there. What's interesting is that in the ritzy part of London, Regent's Park, she couldn't find any Buk stuff. One bookstore employee told her he didn't have any Bukowski books in stock and that, "Bukowski's not real popular right now." This comment from a yuppie motherfucker like him illustrates how out of touch with reality the upper crust is. These so-called arty folks, no matter the country, keep themselves so sheltered from anything beneath them that they don't even know who the greatest writer of all times is. I guess they think the best writing is fucking Shakespeare. Julie said it wasn't until she ventured into the crummy part of London, Camden Town, that she found people who knew who Buk was. "The brochure I had described this seedy area as a 'popular place with the early 20s crowd as evidenced by the antiquated clothing and weird hair color.'" One of the items she procured for me, bought at a place called Compendium (which bills itself as 'London's leading contemporary bookshop'), was a double cassette tape of Buk's spoken word stuff. It cost 12 pounds (about $15). On part of the cover art it says, "TAPE 1: Features 1 hour of radio/TV profiles of Bukowski from around the world!!! TAPE 2: Bukowski talks in depth about his life of Booze, Loose women, Job Madness, The Track, Writing and Fighting the world!!!" And on the inside it says, "2 Hours of Drunk Women, Fighting, The Track, Skid-Row, Shitty Jobs, Writing, etc..." But the best thing about the tape, even moreso than what's on them, is the cover art. Look at that cool ass mug of Bukowski. No artist name is given for it. But here's a cold one to the dude, or dudette, that drew this picture of Buk. It's a fucking classic piece of work, bay-bee. This other Buk cassette tape cover I've got scanned in (seen over there to the right) was from something I bought out of Rikki Hollywood's BUKOWSKI 'ZINE, a Buk fanzine from England. On the back cover of the tape it says, "4 GIGS OF CHARLES BUKOWSKI 1970-80 ON THIS TWIN TAPE. EARLY YEARS 1970, HAMBURG 1980, LOS ANGELES 1980, REDONDO BEACH 1980". The artwork of Buk is a lot less flattering on this tape than the other one. I mean, Jesus Christ, Buk NEVER looked like that. The artist, again unknown, musta been smoking crack when he/she drew it. Anyway, it's good to see that this stuff is out there and available for people to hear. Any product containing Buk material is all right with me. The word needs to get out about this great figure in literary history as much as possible. The market of mainstream crap needs to be flooded with Buk's stuff so people will have something real and tangible to latch onto instead of getting major doses of annoying celebrity autobiographies, Martha Stewart magazines and Oprah's Book Club.

william p. haynes/elliott has had his writings in small press mags for YEARS. I've got a lot of elliott's weird as fuck letters and poetry in my file cabinet because me and him kept up a correspondence for quite some time and I really think he's another one of America's great unknown wordsmiths. I lost contact with him after he wrote from Rolla, Missouri, a year or so ago saying he was gonna dig deep down and write a novel and he wouldn't be communicating until it was finished. Apparently, he's still working on it. He answered my request for a Buk tribute with this letter, and the poem that follows it: "Took a different approach to the tribute to BUKOWSKI. He will always be important to all small press poets cause not only was his work the best but he grabbed the system by the fuckin' balls and made it pay back on his terms which is something one in a million people get to do. I'm sure his next life will be even cooler than this one was. Hope he can still find a good beat up old typer."

ME & BUK
Never could write like Bukowski
different streets different drugs and times
but he turned me on to Tchaikovsky's Overture 1812
and the Waltz from Swan Lake
The street was a whore/mother
who taught us both and bled us
fed us to our typers to survive
to write what it was like to suck
on her big fat tits
and the orbits my friends send me come
at a bad time because twenty years ago
I had me a bleeder and Doc said probably
upper abdominal cancer but there was
the bars and the whores and I never
bothered but a week and a half ago
the fucker opened up again and Robert's
words hit me hard about wanting to see
Bukowski go out at the typer cause I was
thinking the same about myself every time
I shit and bleed between poems
So this is my tribute to Bukowski
who ended up dying at San Pedro
When I die I'll be spittin' blood
out my asshole all over the card table
chair by the SMITH CORONA my head slumped
over the 1510 and a poem that only lowlifes
would like with the word; 'FUCK' in it at least
a half a dozen times for no other reason than I
enjoy the sound of it

FUCK, FUCK, FUCK, FUCK, FUCK

C Ra McGuirt puts out The Penny Dreadful Review. His litmag's No. 10 issue was dedicated to Bukowski. It's a great document. TPDR was a classic small press litmag. Jake Berry wrote in Taproot Reviews #5: "Imagine Edgar Allan Poe, the Marquis de Sade, and Charles Bukowski growing up in the streets together in the later half of the 20th century and publishing a mag and you'll get a sense of what's going on here. Bondage and pagan imagery combined with sex, death, and dementia poetry (the only three categories that matter--the beginning, end, and what goes on in between). The quotes from Crowley's Book Of Lies seem to fit perfectly here. Editor C Ra McGuirt is a wickedly brilliant intelligence and has assembled what amounts to a blunt instrument of subterfuge, and with streetwise surreality perhaps holds closer to the original meaning of genius as an inhabiting spirit." And McGuirt is the classic small press poet. He has his own style. He has his own way of thinking. And he gets it down on the page and when you read it you realize this man is a genius. I've got two Buk poems from him for you. Enjoy.

left justify in lower case
and you pay for the rest
of your life...
(for cap)

my partner popped another beer
and said:

you wanna be Bukowski.

bullshit, I said.
i'm too suburban.

shit, he said. you saw the flick
he got back his tax refund

well sure, I said, and putting on

Mickey Rourke as The Man,
I drawled:

'six months in a toy factory...
you don't know how men suffer for children'

that's just my point, said Cap. you think he
was totally out of the world,
and he wasn't.

well shit, i said. we all need our
beer money, and hank could fill out
a 1040.. .why not?

Christ, i wonder when MINE
is coming?

think you could buy the
next sixpack?

i bought the first, he said.

let's walk.

we walked for more beer.

EUOLOGY FOR A
DIRTY OLD MAN
(Charles Bukowskl
1920 - 1993)

Henry Chinaski will never die.
Charles Bukowski will always be.
Hank is alive, & Buk is here,
in the flesh & on the page.

in our hearts & on our shelves.
locked in glass. loaned out & lost.
returned with stains & broken spines.
taped together more than twice.
replaced in time, & read again
to bits and pieces. read to laugh
at pain, & for the grace & guts
to go another round with love,
or trade our gloves for solitude.

you made us mad. you made us see
that agony was crazy joy,
& taught us that the worst of times
of empty grief & silent walls
were worthy stories to be told
simply by the living through.

you never came with guarantees
or comfort, & you let us know
that we all die alone at last,
yet, you brought us back to life
by accident & absurdity,

& told us dumb luck counted too.

the luck was ours. you shared your years
and words with us, & now it's hard
to think about drinking without you--
stay & have just one more beer...
ah, Buk, don't go. we need you, man.

well, if you must, we understand,
that you have other things to be...

brother Hank, thanks for coming,
& please be careful

going home.

William Bryan Massey III is the self-described 'white trash garage poet of Cowtown'. In his south Fort Worth garage, surrounded by strewn beer cans, chewed up cigar stubs, used glue sticks, a red-and-white box of kitchen matches, inkless pens, dented scissors and a beat up ol' typewriter, he has a tattered copy of a Bukowski book but I can't at this moment recall which one it is. But it's there and it's been there ever since I've known this Cleburne, Texas-raised, raggamuffin mofo. He writes some of the best shit you can get your hands on to read. Send a dollar to Genuine Lizard Press, POB 2044, Fort Worth TX 76113 and Bryan will forward you his catalog of self-published books and artwork.

the fish in the trinity all have
blue gill but i don't think that
i care

a publisher friend called & said,
"the ole wart face has died, no
more cool meat shit."

the dog in my neighborhood bark
at anything, mostly nothing.

standing in the shower letting the
water beat me like small hot BB pellets
i was getting hard & started to jack-off
when the whole body went limp
i watched the drops of hot water
roll down & around & fall off
the under edge of my beer belly
sucking down the drain not so
much unlike death
never to be seen
again.

i'll miss you you ugly ole
bastard.

ron androla, the poet laureate of Erie, Pennsylvannia (the home of Lake Effect Snow -- a hurricane and snowstorm combined) and maker of spoof chaps with crazymanpoet Paul Weinman, wrote me the following letter in May of 1993: "have you ever met bukowski? in about '83, '84, that canadian film-director whose name i can't recall Ron Mann) came & showed the POETRY IN MOTION (i think) documentary (Best Documentary, Chicago Film Festival, 1982), with bukowski as 'main character'...funny, 'cause jack micheline was in the audience before anybody but me knew he was there! he was a bit pissed he wasn't included in the film, sd some shit about bukowski tho told me 'this is just between me & you' so i will not go into the details of the cut...but bukowski's there with his bottles of heineken...guzzling for the camera..." Here's two of ron's Buk-laced poems:

being careless

spending twenty bucks
to mail out todd moore & bukowski
spoof chapbooks to a wide array of
people out there in poetry world

is more a grin
than literature, is less shocking
than a newspaper in america
i hope

in the early 80s

i wrote to mr. bukowski
for poems to my new magazine, i wrote to
many poets & word spread fattening up
my mailbox with arrays of literature & art.
i published 4 issues until i burned out.
even got a review in the xmas eve issue of
the l. a. times. i do not regret the work.
it was fun. decay of joy came about the same time
this guy named david spicer sent me submissions
with a cover-letter splattered with blood
(from his anus, he explained). then a girl
killed herself. then we moved. ah,
small press history!

John Jenkinson drove a cab for years in Wichita, Kansas, before escaping this past summer to Denton, Texas, and the campus of the University Of North Texas to become what he says is a "scholar." Well, I'm here to tell you John ain't no fucking scholar. He's a regular cuppa Joe just like us but if he ends up a English prof he will spread the word of Bukowski to his students or I will personally kick his ass. So let's cheer him on in the world of academia 'cause he'll need it being around those smarmy assholes. Jenkinson also does a little tiny litmag called POCKET ROCKET. He also did a double-book of poems called FACTS OF LIFE/USEFUL PARDONS, featuring on one side 8 of my poems and on the other side 9 of my ex-wife Crista's poems. John included this tidbit with the poem of his that is presented here: "Well, whether you take it or not, it at least got me insulted & labeled a misogynist at a poetry reading in a local bar by a snippy lesbian. Shit, I've eaten more pussy than she ever dreamed of." Okay, on with the poetry:

charles bukowski addresses the creative writing class

i drank every kind of booze all damn night
crawled back to my tenement dump
sometimes got lucky & screwed some
overweight over-the-hill slut with scabies
& piss-yellow false teeth, got to work
hungover & puking just in time
to get fired. forty years of it
and you're a success.

Before moving to Texas, Jenkinson, on a couple of occassions, came down from Wichita to visit his family in Denton and also zip down to Fort Worth to stay over at my place for some beer and laughs. One of those times we went over to Dallas and hit all the half price book stores that inundate the city. At Paperbacks Plus near Lakewood they had a small room containing a shelf jam-packed with dusty, obscure chapbooks. John and I rummaged through them all and I found a litmag I'd never heard of, ORO MADRE, that had Bukowski cover art! His little "BUK" signature is in the bottom right hand corner. See it? And the price for this one of a kind article? $1! They had two copies and I gobbled up both of them. Inside this litmag -- dated 1983, Vol. 2 No. 1 -- are a Bukowski poem, about the love poems of the Cat, and another Buk drawing (seen over there -->). There's also poems from Gerald Locklin, Buk's English prof friend from Long Beach State, and Tony Moffeit. And there's an ad for ALL'S NORMAL HERE, A Charles Bukowski Primer from ORO MADRE's editor, Lon Glazier. Does anyone out there have this Buk chap? I'm sure it's rare and expensive by now. Just like this issue of ORO MADRE is.

Mike Halchin has put out 30 issues of Driver's Side Airbag, one of the best contemporary litmags going, since starting the litmag in the early 90s. He's also published books of poetry, fiction and non-fiction by yours truly (a book of short stories called Spiked Slurpee), Nick DiSpoldo, Ben La Rosa, Robb Allan, C.F. Roberts, Cheryl Townsend, Cynthia Hendershot and others. He also puts out a great review 'zine called Bleeding Velvet Octopus. Mike has something to say about Bukowski and media schmucks :

MY INNER BUKOWSKI COULD KICK YOUR INNER CHILD'S ASS
ok, good ol' charles. he’s had by some respects a storybook triumph over adversity, from a childhood and early adult years of shit jobs and fucked-up relationships, to his current status as world-famous writer. but even with the fame, he still kept it together instead of “giving the people what they want” as is often said in the “entertainment industry - as in "i’m in... the industry. why aren’t you in... the industry?"

whining about how they can’t control the “artists” - i.e. prepackage‘em into a palatable yet bland mass of goo to absolute indifference, then dropping the band because they aren’t “moving enough product.” in other words, bukowski never went “hollywood” because he didn’t care what the fuckin’ public wanted, it was what he wanted. a lot of these “alternative” bands could learn a lot from this instead of signing to the first major label that buys ‘em dinner and after they’re signed they get buried under the whitney houston and barry manilow albums (or whatever cash cow you prefer).

buk knew how to mainline his own soul, as opposed to these half-wit ripoffs bombarding me with their pale imitations, thinking if they cannibalize from someone like buk, that publication is guaranteed. unfortunately, this seems to be true in the small press to some extent, where the name game is almost as bad in the mainstream shithouse magazines and book publishers. and some of these people are probably the same ones who’d send buk these weak-ass threats saying “you suck like a vacuum cleaner! i hope you get stranded in the desert and the vultures drink your piss before you have the chance! by the way, here’s some of my poetry...” like ol’ charles would say “you know, they’re right! i should quit wasting my time writing books and sell real-estate on my car phone!” but he’d just laugh and put it in the circular file. i remember reading how a girlfriend of his was part of some writing group - none of them knew how to get published and yet they’d have these damn meetings to tell each other how great they were apparently. reminds me of this seminar at a local bookstore which was for those “who would be an artist for any price” or in this case, $450. a fool and their money... but in l.a., where scams are even more prolific than STDs on a hooker, this is no surprise. or where people get off by trying to put one over on someone -- especially in, you guessed it, the entertainment industry. but i won’t dive back into that pit since i currently have some food in my stomach and would like to keep it there.

one of the funnier moments i remember concerning bukowski was when i went to a bar in chicago with a few friends. this guy and his girlfriend come in, and they start talking to my friends and myself. couldn’t been more than ten minutes before he name-dropped bukowski. probably because i mentioned that i wrote poems or something. then he says he’s a painter and takes out a photo of one of his paintings -- now how many people carry that around with them? it was basically a georgia o’keefe ripoff. the reek off this guy made me think he had some business cards that said “Wile E. Coyote - Genius.” apparently he and his signficant other were new in town and looking for interesting places to check out so i told ‘em about qvimby’s qveer store. why i was nice to this guy i didn’t know; later i concluded that it was just an excuse for me to ogle his girlfriend (hee hee). one of my first thoughts was, why in the hell is she wasting her time with some deluded schmuck like this? probably one of those “you don’t know him like i do” bullshit-isms. then he probably kills her in some drug-induced fit of paranoia, like Sammy Town from Fang. there was an article in a local weekly about Sam, ending with a Fang reunion and the crowd singing all the words, like some miraculous comeback against the odds. and he’s treated as some fuckin’ hero for being tanked on heroin and strangling his girlfriend. just goes to show the lengths the public is willing to go for voluntary amnesia. take kathie lee gifford’s sweatshop escapade where she supposedly knew nothing about kids making her damn clothes for Wal-Mart and getting paid 12 cents a day. then here the slave labor queen is on Barbara Walters' “Ten most interesting people of 1997” list! gimme a fuckin’ break. what you need to qualify for this list -- a pulse and no personality? and is anybody not surprised, even disgusted at all the fawning over allen ginsberg’s death? as tony bledsoe said, “beat this.” i don’t remember this kind of outpouring when buk left. whenever i saw ginsberg in tv interviews, talk shows, whatever he always seemed to have this self-satisfied look of “you all must worship me. if you don’t i’ll just say i’m misunderstood, which makes me even more brilliant and worthy of your undying admiration.” the local PBS station fell right into his trap, tiptoeing around any challenging questions, with allen thinking he’s E.F. Hutton until proven otherwise. it’s like these small press writers, musicians, actors, and other johnny-come-too-fasts who keep cranking out the same shit over and over. it keeps selling, so why should they try to improve on what they’ve fooled themselves into thinking is perfection? buk wasn’t the self-promoter ginsberg was; in fact i can’t remember buk was interviewed on the tube. probably due to a similar attitude about readings when buk said, “you’ve seen poetry readings. Those guys, the self-love just drips off them...I don’t sit down to write a poem just to stand up and read it for people. What the hell does it mean? It must be the ego, right? It’s stilly... also there’s something about the word ‘poet’ that is very precious. You say, ‘I’m a short story writer, I’m a novelist,’ then you say, ‘I’m a poet,’ the girls cross their legs a little higher when they hear the word ‘poet’.”

Back to buk’s death; the mainstream media missed the boat as usual, lumping him in with the beat poets (same thing happened to burroughs). then you have another category buk gets thrown into, the “meat” poets. what the fuck is that? some people don’t even know that buk wrote novels, for shit’s sake. then again, the mainstream media gets confused easily, so they feel compelled to box it up, stamp a price on it, then serve it up to the lemmings who say, “thank you, may i have another?” (i.e., “generation xers” ((the biggest media scam of them all)), “women in rock” ((how can you compare bonnie raitt to kathleen hanna just on the basis of gender?))). whatever happened to cynicism? what percentage of tv news can actually be believed? what kind of revolutionary messages do you really think you’ll hear from the mouths of tom brokaw, peter jennings, et al? they do what they’re told and get paid well for it. what the fuck do they care about the truth? journalistic integrity my ass. they’d probably go on camera saying lee harvey oswald was the lone gunman.

Berkeley's Telegraph Avenue's icon for losers, Ace Backwords (his whereabouts to me became unknown a couple of years ago) used to put out a classic 'zine called Twisted Image. It mostly contained his comic strips, along with interviews, rants, etc...In 1989 he came out with this strip featuring Bukowski:

L.A. poet/photographer extraordinaire Justice Howard had this next piece published in both Bukowski & Serial Killers #2 and in Michael Hathaway's Chiron Review. It's one of my favorite poems with regards to the well-earned Buk image/legend and how lesser beings try in vain to capture that same sullied, boozing atmosphere in their own patheticly inferior lives and poetry.

Plumbers of the Liquid Word or: How to be a Good Poet
Yes, well
there are these literary types
who just
pretend to be
and then others
who call themselves poets
who have never driven over 55
taken home a stray dog
had raw passion atop a red 56 'Vette
or fell in lust with a stranger,
awoke beside him not knowing his name
or ever just acted on impulse
or heart pulse
and they think they can WRITE
when they haven't even LIVED
well the first thing they tell you
in Writing 101
is "to write about what you know"
and if you haven't experienced
any of life's faster paced embroilments
you can just forget about it
that's why Bukowski's so memorable
because he's been to the bottom of the barrel
and he writes about the dead fish that float to the top
and the whales that eat the smaller fish
in the oceans of his concrete
and that's WHY he's a good writer
'cause he's lived it.
people ask me to read all of their stuff
and tell them how to become a good poet
and I tell them to get out and LIVE
to turn the throttle and give her hell,
white-linin' it down the freeways of life
and THEN write about it
poets who don't do this
are reminiscent of a man
who wants to be a plumber
and work on toilets
but has never taken a shit in his life.