New Poetry by John D Robinson

WATCH-OUT

We opened up all the windows

of the moving car, the fly was

ignoring this and flew around

the vehicle, irritating and

annoying:

‘Kill it!’ I said as my wife

swiped at it across the steering-

wheel: the fucker was quick:

I saw it coming towards me, I

didn’t want to murder it:

I karate chopped it with my

right hand, stunning the

thing and knocking it

towards an open window,

instantly, I followed up with

a lightning left back hand

karate strike that knocked

the fly clean out of the car:

it was awesome, it took me

by surprise and I knew this

was a performance never to

happen again, I felt like a

codeine-hash stoned

Bruce Lee;

‘Did you see that?’ I asked

my wife,

‘See what?’ she said,

‘What I did with that fly’ I

said:

‘Fuck the fly!’ she said,

sadly ignorant of my

breath-taking artistry.

THE RUBBER

‘This is awful: can you

help me? I don’t like

this: shit! this doesn’t

help the moment’ I said:

‘Calm down’ she said

‘Let me put the damn

thing on’

with such poise, timing,

touch and sensuality she

put the durex on my

excitement:

it felt odd and alien and

looked hideous:

‘Don’t lose it now’ she

said moving in close and

making the right moves:

and then afterwards,

‘Look at this fucking

thing!’ I said as I peeled

it from my pecker and

then holding the thing up

in the air like a sordid

trophy and then tossing

the thing towards the

trash can, where many

lives can often end up.

BUK AND I

Back in the early 1980’s

I was published in an english

language text book for

german students:

also featured in this

publication was a poem by

Charles Bukowski:

I was paid $15:00 for my

poem:

I don’t know how much

Bukowski was paid for his:

anyhow, for a teenage

poet being between the

pages with Buk

was payment enough.

SHE WAS TAME

She was a little older than

my mother and she had

red-fire hair and she’d

sunbathe in her back

garden in black or purple

bra and panties:

I’d looked at her with

13 year old eyes and

marvelled at her flesh

and shapely curves and

my imagination would

torment me wildly and a

little later I’d hear her

screaming appalling abuse

at her husband and

children, horrid and vile

words that stained the

air and destroyed any

sense of sensuality:

my very first encounter

with a woman with the

body of Aphrodite with

the tongue of the fallen

angel but she was tame

compared to some of the

ladies I was later to meet

THE CONFRONTATION

I was hopeless at the work

and fucked things up; the

foreman cursed me and I

came back with some young

thoughtless comment:

I was grabbed and pulled

away and told to walk

off the site, whilst I still

could and that’s what I

did and my thoughts

played heavy on backing-

down: it’s a bitter taste

but sometimes it just

makes sense to give it up

to avoid a useless

confrontation and defeat,

a beating, the pain and

humiliation: to walk away

and get ready and stronger

and prepared for the

next asshole.

New Release: Charles Bukowski Storm for the Living and the Dead: Uncollected and Unpublished Poems, Edited by Abel Debritto (Ecco, 2017) Hardcover only, 272 pages.

Unsurprisingly, Ecco has unearthed more errant stubble from Buk’s spent writing ashes. This most recent internment by scholar Abel Debritto, will be released on 7 November 2017 in a hardcover edition. If previous Ecco publications are any indication, this book will probably be a further watering down of Bukowski’s work and perhaps another posthumous kick into the balls of his reputation as an artist.

We need to consider, however that Bukowski wrote so much undocumented material during his lifetime. He posted hundreds, perhaps thousands of poems to small publishers without keeping carbon copies or accurate records of what went where or to whom. Several hundreds of poems/ stories were never returned or were eventually lost or stolen. Has Debritto sourced some more of these?

A source within Bukowski.com reckons Storm for the Living and the Dead consists of 72 previously unpublished and 26 previously uncollected.

Black Sparrow Press editor John Martin published most of Bukowski’s best work during his lifetime but continued to edit and churn out more of his stuff over a dozen or so volumes for Ecco after Buk’s death in 1994.

Find here a 2013 BM review of the Best & Worst of ECCO books: https://georgedanderson.blogspot.com.au/2013/09/the-best-and-worst-of-charles-bukowskis.html

Debritto has edited recent publications, such as, Bukowski on Writing (2015), Bukowski on Cats (2015) and Bukowski on Love (2017). On Writing gathers together some of Bukowski’s previously uncollected letters about writing whereas the other two books collect Buk’s previously published work on the themes of cats and love. 

These are excellently researched books but not as interesting, nor in the same league as the City Lights publications, edited by David Stephen Calonne, such as, Portions From a Wine-Stained Notebook (2008), Absence of the Hero (2010), More Notes of a Dirty Old Man (2011) and The Bell Tolls For No One (2015). As reviewed in Bold Monkey, these books collect in a scholarly fashion the best of Bukowski’s previously uncollected poems, short stories and essays.

Debritto has also edited for Ecco Essential Bukowski Poetry (2016) which includes about 100 of Bukowski's 5000 or so poems and has published a critical study Charles Bukowski, King of the Underground: From Obscurity to Literary Icon (2013) which carefully documents Bukowski's rise to fame prior to quiting his post office job and writing his first novel Post Office. 
 

As a Bukowski tragic, I’ll certainly be having a close look at what Debritto has now uncovered in a decade or more of research. Should be interesting how he structures and sources Buk’s previously uncollected or unpublished work.

On another note, I wish John Martin would release his full take on Bukowski’s publishing career & relationship within my lifetime.

Ecco blurb:

About the Book 

A timeless selection of some of Charles Bukowski’s best unpublished and uncollected poems Charles Bukowski was a prolific writer who produced countless short stories, novels, and poems that have reached beyond their time and place to speak to generations of readers all over the world. Many of his poems remain little known, material that appeared in small magazines but was never collected, and a large number of them have yet to be published. 

In Storm for the Living and the Dead, Abel Debritto has curated the very finest of this material—poems from obscure, hard-to-find magazines, as well as from libraries and private collections all over the country—most of which will be new to Bukowski’s readers and some of which has never been seen before. In doing so, Debritto has captured the essence of Bukowski’s inimitable poetic style—tough and hilarious but ringing with humanity. Storm for the Living and the Dead is a gift for any devotee of the Dirty Old Man of American letters.

Buy the book here: https://www.harpercollins.com/9780062656513/storm-for-the-living-and-the-dead