hank lays down some hard earned.
at hollywood park, after studying the form.
scream from the balcony*. illustration by ib, 1994.
Well. It seems my hosting server is playing up again.
This prevents me from uploading any material - music, that is - which is bad news for you, dear siblings, since I have no option but to improvise. Or compromise. However you want to play it.
A bit of busking is required.
I read a piece somewhere recently where a young man concluded he was jinxed. Every time he wrote somebody famous, that person would mysteriously die. He cited several supporting instances - some celebrities I have more time for than most - but my memory fails me. He was jinxed all right. A regular Jonah. I know that for sure because the curse of that Old Testament sailor, the son of Amittai, is nothing new to me. I recognised straight away just where he was coming from, the poor bastard. It is just as well I am not a wedding planner by profession. There would be a procession of demented divorcees beating a path to my door.
I will allude to just the one example here - there have been many - since that is all this post requires. Any more and you will be nodding off before you have even stuck a fork into your Sunday dinner. Or lifted a glass.
The illustration above was completed with the intention of mailing it to Bukowski. I even got so far as flicking through some dog-eared Black Sparrow editions for a c/o address and transferred it onto the manilla envelope I'd saved for that purpose. Well, I reasoned, If I'm finally going to write the old bastard I might as well make it a gift of sorts. I felt the standard fan-faretheewell-letter contemptibly beneath me. Anyway, if 'The Poet Laureate of Skid Row' declined to return any word I could console myself with a crumb of self-righteous indignation at least. I had waited until he was far too infamous. The worm of procrastination had eventually turned. A type-written reply from a mini-skirted secretary may sting as much as a rejection slip, but it was only to be expected. So as not to come across as too much in awe, the text I included in the illustration was from a letter Buk wrote to poet, Douglas Blazek - a regular correspondent at the time - in 1965, subsequently published in "Screams From The Balcony"; If you look closely at the upper left of the picture above, you will see I even managed to misspell Blazek's name.
I hoped that was sufficient a clue.
I was on the way to the Post Office when I passed a kiosk selling magazines and periodicals peppered through the daily rags. A headline caught my eye:
"Literary Bum Bukowski Dead at 73."
Fuck it.
I picked up some pace and headed off to the nearest bar. I may have been desperate but I wasn't dumb enough to waste good money on postage.
Ha
"Missed the first three races
Seven more to go
Plus the Belmont Stakes
On the big screen
tv
The horses I bet
In the fourth and the fifth
Finished
Last
Sonja laughed
Ha
Ha
Ha
Ha
Ha
I left her smoking by the rail
Went inside to watch
Denis of Cork win
The Belmont Stakes
He didn't
In the sixth
My luck changed
As Triola, 14-1,
Stalked the pace
Then prevailed
That's when I bought
Bukowski a beer
And drank it and
A few more
For him
Because he has been dead a long time"
- Ha, Mr. Beer N. Hockey, 2008.
Poem courtesy of Dope City Free Press.
