I Am Visited by an Editor and a Poet

I had just won $115 from the headshakers and

was naked upon my bed

listening to an opera by one of the Italians

and had just gotten rid of a very loose lady

when there was a knock upon the wood,

and since the cops had just raided a month or so ago,

I screamed out rather on edge—

who the hell is it? what you want, man?

I’m your publisher! somebody screamed back,

and I hollered, I don’t have a publisher,

try the place next door, and he screamed back,

you’re Charles Bukowski, aren’t you? and I got up and

peeked through the iron grill to make sure it wasn’t a cop,

and I placed a robe upon my nakedness,

kicked a beercan out of the way and bade them enter,

an editor and a poet.

only one would drink a beer (the editor)

so I drank two for the poet and one for myself

and they sat there sweating and watching me

and I sat there trying to explain

that I wasn’t really a poet in the ordinary sense,

I told them about the stockyards and the slaughterhouse

and the racetracks and the conditions of some of our jails,

and the editor suddenly pulled five magazines out of a portfolio

and tossed them in between the beercans

and we talked about Flowers of Evil, Rimbaud, Villon,

and what some of the modern poets looked like:

J.B. May and Wolf the Hedley are very immaculate, clean fingernails, etc.;

I apologized for the beercans, my beard, and everything on the floor

and pretty soon everybody was yawning

and the editor suddenly stood up and I said,

are you leaving?

and then the editor and the poet were walking out the door,

and then I thought well hell they might not have liked

what they saw

but I’m not selling beercans and Italian opera and

torn stockings under the bed and dirty fingernails,

I’m selling rhyme and life and line,

and I walked over and cracked a new can of beer

and I looked at the five magazines with my name on the cover

and wondered what it meant,

wondered if we are writing poetry or all huddling in

one big tent

clasping assholes.

Copyright Credit: “I Am Visited by an Editor and a Poet" from The Roominghouse Madrigals: Early Selected Poems 1946-1966 by Charles Bukowski. Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1965, 1968, 1988 by Charles Bukowski. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.

Source: The Roominghouse Madrigals: Early Selected Poems 1946-1966 (Black Sparrow Press, 1988)