CHARLES BUKOWSKI

I Am Visited by an Editor and a Poet
 
by Charles Bukowski
 
 
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.