Absence of the Hero by Charles Bukowski, Edited with an introduction by David Calonne Read Free Book Online Page B

medallion. Tretykov Gallery, Moscow. About 1200. It’s a painting of the Yaroslav school which wasn’t in Moscow.
    I see, I see.
    â€”I keep seeing pictures of people stealing babies. What does it mean?
    I don’t know.
    â€”That’s St. George and the dragon.
    I see.
    â€”Look at the tiny little legs; that’s the Novgorod School. Late 14th century, kinda nice. That’s a cute dragon.
    Goodnight, dear.
    â€”Oh, LOOK, there’s God!
    Goodnight.
    â€”Plate 6. No, that’s Elijah. I’m sorry, it isn’t God.
    Goodnight.
    â€”Here’s somebody in a red teddy-bear suit. Hey, look at those wigs!
    The book sells for 95 cents, MQ 455, introduction by Victor Lasareff. Keep your wife away from it.

The Old Pro
    a kiss for a good and talented fucker
    getting old and older
    and only recognized by a few of the
    living, and so
    the closed eye in the sky
    marks us for our words—
    If you are lucky, you might see him, someday, if you hurry—this stocky myth, this ¼ immortal.
    If you are lucky you might see him in the streets of Athens , just after nightfall. He will be dressed in an old trenchcoat with buckle undone, belt dangling like a limp and lost elephant’s cock—he will be prowling the streets, owl-eyed, in search of his necessaries
    in search
    of the ghost, the god, the way, the luck.
    Harry Norse. Hal. American bum slipping through Europe, year after sad mangled year, slipping on through the shadows of dead cities. Cities bombed dead, rebuilt dead, lived dead. Dead cities, dead people, dead days, dead cats, dead volcanoes, living grief, living madness, living dullness, living butchery—all our lovely ladies grown old, roses shot to shit, the works. Hal. Writing poems and getting by. Just.
    He sleeps on a bed 6 inches off the ground and the fleas cry hallelujah as he waits for his check from Evergreen or the invisible hand slipping off the thighs of Mars. Meanwhile, he sleeps in fits and spurts, living under a temporarily inactive volcano (the rent’s cheaper there) which one of the best Greek geologists claims is on an eruption timetable of tomorrow morning. (You’ve met these Greeks in steambaths; they are not entirely to be ignored.)
    Sweet christ, you must know that a man will go further for any poem than for any woman ever born.
    Harold Norse. He can punch it out quietly. In style. Upside down. In grit. In fire. On fire. Tooth on tooth, hard. The smell of our butts. The cock of our shame. Light. Rabbit dream. The whole Bomb inside the head whistling Dixie.
    Norse. American bum:
    overheard
    on the bridge
    trucks are speeding under angels
    . . . . on the riverbank two people
    are breaking laws with their hips
    Most people, almost all people do not know how to write, say, including Shakespeare, who wrote such terrible stuff that he fooled the whole mob, top to bottom. Other bad writers who fooled nearly everybody were E.A. Poe, Ibsen, G.B. Shaw, William Faulkner, Tolstoy , and Gogol. Today they are fooled by Mailer and Pasternak. That men do not know how to write and not only get away with it but are also immortalized is no more surprising than the length of phonies who reach the top of the cream in all areas of life and enterprise. You can find them all the way from Washington to the back room of Sharkey’s.
    Hal can write. Umm. I once called him a “pro” but he took it a little wrong and spit back, “Jersey Joe.” That’s an old fighter of the past, that’s Wolcott. And I’ll always remember old Jersey Joe with a touch of heart, too. The way he could land the important one.
    Sometimes you’ve got to take a lot to land the important one. It’s all an act of Art. All good men have the act of Art in them. They can be plumbers or pimps but you can spot it soon enough. It’s a matter of grace and easiness and gut and Sight. I’ve met more good men in jails, in drunk tanks, in factories, at racetracks