“There is a time to stop reading, there is a time to STOP trying to WRITE, there is a time to kick the whole bloated sensation of ART out on its whore-ass.” Charles Bukowski

CUPCAKE CRUMBS

IN HER YOUNGER DAYS: FROM MY JOURNALS, 28 February 1976

I think i’m coming back again. have felt so awfully close to losing myself these past months. even now i hope i’m not lying to myself about straightening out. This afternoon i ran suddenly, after the usual late, depressive Tues. night sleep, the hour of indecision, the hungry cats & the pathetic shopping—cat food, beer & sardines (added herring to this trip. also dreamed last night i couldn’t give someone a damn 7-Up, & he died, so I bought some of that)—was about to take a shower & decided fuck it, i would run the track. the pain in my legs these past three days had been almost unbearable. Even frightened me a little. And last night, after the bourbon & the usual deadened sleep on the sofa, i thought there’s no chance. i still can’t see any light, but at least i ran, at least i’m at the studio and starting on “bleed-proof.” And tonight C. takes me to dinner & treats me well. Woke up with that dreadful stomach pain, but the running scared it away for awhile—Wrote a crazed letter to Buk the other night:

Hank, is it? Okay—it sounds okay. Only closer—i can hardly write. All of the absurdities, as well as the incidentals have been closing in & fuck Brahms, Chopin all that. Down means bourbon & Sinatra. i’m so sick of it all—sick of even trying to explain to the one person who would probably not understand, least understand? I am 28. i look 16 sometimes. i feel a hundred often. i was once in love because he liked Sinatra. i was once in love because he didn’t love me. i need a hole or a cave or arms to crawl away into but can’t because of precedent.

i love your voice. i am not of the character of Cupcakes. I am not any of those gory romantic things and even tonight destroyed the last living fingernail with bourbon gusto. I’m afraid of you and absolutely sure I’ll be my normal cynical self. i need you for a friend & i’m scared to death to ask again. i love your poetry. factotum bored me. tomorrow i’ll most likely be fired from job. tonight i thought of a title for a new canvas—“Bleed-Proof”—orig? eh? there’s this poet here.—young—full of Yeats—and our paths cross constantly & he can’t relate to a yellow legal pad so what the hell kind of poet can he be?

But i did come up with a title tonight! something! tomorrow i’ll write you a sober & full of youthful convictions letter. tonight I’m a hundred years old—drunk, aching—a little hungry. do you mind awfully if i don’t measure up to this C.Cakes O’Brien person?

(written the night of the G. horror & seeing S. again)

Lent Jack London $78ºº tues jan 27—(paid for his back rent—evicted the night before)

now, even now the confusion works so hard at taking over.

PHOTOPGRAPH ABOVE: PHOTOGRAPHER UNKOWN