I see you drinking at a fountain with tiny blue hands, no, your hands are not tiny they are small, and the fountain is in France where you wrote me that last letter and I answered and never heard from you again. you used to write insane poems about ANGELS AND GOD, all in upper case, and you knew famous artists and most of them were your lovers, and I wrote back, it’ all right, go ahead, enter their lives, I’ not jealous because we’ never met. we got close once in New Orleans, one half block, but never met, never touched. so you went with the famous and wrote about the famous, and, of course, what you found out is that the famous are worried about their fame –– not the beautiful young girl in bed with them, who gives them that, and then awakens in the morning to write upper case poems about ANGELS AND GOD. we know God is dead, they’ told us, but listening to you I wasn’ sure. maybe it was the upper case. you were one of the best female poets and I told the publishers, editors, “ her, print her, she’ mad but she’ magic. there’ no lie in her fire.” I loved you like a man loves a woman he never touches, only writes to, keeps little photographs of. I would have loved you more if I had sat in a small room rolling a cigarette and listened to you piss in the bathroom, but that didn’ happen. your letters got sadder. your lovers betrayed you. kid, I wrote back, all lovers betray. it didn’ help. you said you had a crying bench and it was by a bridge and the bridge was over a river and you sat on the crying bench every night and wept for the lovers who had hurt and forgotten you. I wrote back but never heard again. a friend wrote me of your suicide 3 or 4 months after it happened. if I had met you I would probably have been unfair to you or you to me. it was best like this.
Boston photo dump. 1. Some Sam Adams samplings. 2. Possibly one of my favorite spots we hit up, Bukowski Tavern. 3. Oz, the incredibly nice man running the doors, and a favorite regular of his. 4. Oz again. This guy was the best and gave us some tips of truly awesome spots to check out. 5. Neon. 6. Inside of Bukowski Tavern. 7. Bukowski Tavern bar and patrons. 8. Self explanatory. 9. Trumpet player for the incredible funk band that I unfortunately never got the name of at Wally’s Cafe Jazz Club. 10. Full band. #boston #berkley #samadams #bukowski #bukowskiquotes #bukowskitavern #deadauthorsclub #wallyscafe #jazz #funk #charlesbukowski #bostonbars #ricoh #ricohgr #ricohgr2 #blackandwhite #bnw #streetphotography #beer (at Bukowski Tavern Boston)
he was 65, his wife was 66, she had Alzheimer’s disease.
he had cancer of the mouth. there were operations, radiation treatments which decayed the bones in his jaw which then had to be wired.
daily he put his wife in rubber diapers like a baby.
unable to drive in his condition he had to take a taxi to the medical center, had difficulty speaking, had to write the directions down.
on his last visit they informed him there would be another operation: a bit more left cheek and a bit more tongue.
when he returned he changed his wife’s diapers put on the tv dinners, watched the evening news then went to the bedroom, got the gun, put it to her temple, fired.
she fell to the left, he sat upon the couch put the gun into his mouth, pulled the trigger.
the shots didn’t arouse the neighbors.
later the burning tv dinners did.
somebody arrived, pushed the door open, saw it.
soon the police arrived and went through their routine, found some items:
a closed savings account and a checkbook with a balance of $1.14. suicide, they deduced.
in three weeks there were two new tenants: a computer engineer named Ross and his wife Anatana who studied ballet.
“I have the feeling that something is missing, I don’t know if it’s you or more alcohol, so if you don’t come back I’ll get beer, and if you come back please bring beer.
I know, I hate that vice too, and sometimes beer too.”
“I was drawn to all the wrong things: I liked to drink, I was lazy, I didn’t have a god, politics, ideas, ideals. I was settled into nothingness; a kind of non-being, and I accepted it. I didn’t make for an interesting person. I didn’t want to be interesting, it was too hard. What I really wanted was only a soft, hazy space to live in, and to be left alone.”
