Из Чарльза Буковски - чернокожие поэты

                Чарльз Буковски


                чернокожие поэты


                молодые
                чернокожие поэты
                стучат в мою дверь -      
                "вы Буковски?"
                "да. входите."
                они сидят и глазеют по сторонам
                на разгромленную комнату
                и на
                меня.
                они дают мне свои стихи.
                я их
                читаю.
                "нет" - говорю я и протягиваю им
                обратно.
                "вам не нравится
                это?"
                "нет."
                " 'рой Джонс приехал повидаться с нами на нашем
                семинаре."
                "ненавижу
                семинары" - говорю я.
                "... Лерой Джонс, Рэй Брэдбери, куча крутых
                парней... они сказали что эти вещи были
                хорошими."
                "приятель, это плохая поэзия. они пудрят вам
                задницы."
                "ещё есть серьёзный кинорежиссёр. он придумал такую
                идею: мастерская писателей Уоттса."
                "о, боже. неужто не понимаете? они щекочут вам
                ж...пы. вы должны были сжечь весь город
                дотла! меня это достало!"
                "вы просто не рубите в
                стихах..."
                "да, это рифмы полные банальностей. вы пишите плохие
                стихи."
                "слушай, ублюдок,я был на радио, меня печатали в L.A.
                Times!"
                "ой-ли?"
                "ну, с тобою случалось
                такое?"
                "нет."
                "o.k., ублюдок, ты не видел моих последних
                стихов!"
                я полагаю что нужды в этом нет. и бестолку
                говорить вам что я не против чёрных
                потому что когда происходит такое
                вся эта тема становится
                отвратительной.


Примечание: Джонс (Jones), Лерой
(p. 7.X.1934, Ньюарк, Нью-Джерси)
   с 1976 г. выступает под мусульманским именем Имаму Амири Барака, - поэт, драматург, прозаик, эссеист, культуролог. Выходец из семьи священников и учителей, окончил университет Говарда (1954), служил в армии (1954–1957). В период подъема негритянского движения в 60-е гг. выдвинулся как его активист, один из неутомимых глашатаев сепаратизма, теоретик и пропагандист «черного искусства» и «черной эстетики»(Из "Википедии".)

                from: "Mockingbird Wish Me Luck"

      
 
                30.10.19



the black poets

the black poets
young
come to my door—
“you Bukowski?”
“yeh. come in.”
they sit and look around at the
destroyed room
and at
me.
they hand me their poems.
I read
them.
“no,” I say and hand them
back.
“you don’t like
them?”
“no.”
“’roi Jones came down to see us at our
workshop…”
“I hate,” I say,
“workshops.”
“…Leroi Jones, Ray Bradbury, lots of big
boys…they said this stuff was
good…”
“it’s bad poetry, man. they are powdering your
ass.”
“there’s this big film-writer too. he started the whole
idea: Watts Writers’ Workshop.”
“ah, god, don’t you see? they are tickling your
assholes! you should have burned the whole town
down! I’m sick of it!”
“you just don’t understand
the poems…”
“I do, they are rhymers, full of
platitudes. you write bad
poetry.”
“look muthafucka, I been on the radio, I been printed in the L.A.
Times!”
“oh?”
“well, that happened to
you?”
“no.”
“o.k., muthafucka, you ain’t seen the last of
me!”
I suppose I haven’t. and it’s useless to tell you that I am not
anti-black
because
somehow
that’s when the whole subject becomes
sickening.

millionaires
you
no faces
no faces
at all
laughing at nothing—
let me tell you
I have drunk in skidrow rooms with
imbecile winos
whose cause was better
whose eyes still held some light
whose voices retained some sensibility,
and when the morning came
we were sick but not ill,
poor but not deluded,
and we stretched in our beds and rose
in the late afternoons
like millionaires.
54
poetry
the bus driver grins while sweating in the heat
of the plateglass windshield,
he doesn’t have a chance—
only Hollywood Boulevard, an impossible sun
and an impossible timetable,
there are so many without a chance.
I realize that there is very little chance
for any of
us. poetry won’t save us or a job won’t save us,
a good job or a bad
job.
we take a little bit and hang onto that until it is
gone.
gongs ring, dances begin, there are holidays and
celebrations…
we try to cheat the bad dream…
poetry, you whore, who will go to any man and then
leave him…
the bus driver has Hollywood Boulevard
I sit next to a fat lady who lays her dead thigh
against me.
there is a tiny roll of sweat behind one of the bus driver’s
ears. he is ashamed to brush it
away.
the people look ahead or read or look out their
windows.
the tiny roll of sweat begins to roll
it rolls along behind the ear
then down the neck,
then it’s
gone.
Vine street, says the bus driver,
this is Vine
street.
he’s right, at last. what a marvelous thing.
I get off at Vine Street. I need a drink or something
to eat. I don’t care about the bus
anymore. it is a
rejected poem. I don’t need it
anymore.
there will be more busses.
55
I decide upon something to eat
with a drink as
openers.
I walk out of the dark and into the dark
and sit down and
wait.
56
the painter
he came up on the porch
with a grinning subnormal type
and they stood there
drunk on wine.
the painter had his coat wrapped around something,
then pulled the coat away—
it was a policeman’s helmet
complete with badge.
“gimme 20 bucks for this,” he said.
“fuck off, man,” I said, “what do I want with a
cop’s derby?”
“ten bucks,” he said.
“did you kill him?”
“5 bucks…”
“what happened to that 6 grand you made
at your art show last month?”
“I drank it. all in the same bar.”
“and I never got a beer,” I said.
“2 bucks…”
“did you kill him?”
“we ganged him, punched him around a bit…”
“that’s chickenshit. I don’t want the headpiece.”
“we’re 18 cents short of a bottle, man…”
I gave the painter 35 cents
keeping the chain on the door, slipping it to him
with my fingers. he lived with his mother,
beat his girlfriend regularly
and really didn’t paint that
well. but I suppose a lot of obnoxious characters
work their way into
immortality.
I’m working on it myself.
57
the inquisitor
in the bathtub rereading C;line’s
Journey to the End of the Night
the phone rings
and I get out
grab a towel.
some guy from SMART SET,
he wants to know what’s in my mailbox
how my life has been
going.
I tell him there isn’t anything in the
mailbox or the
life.
he thinks that I’m holding
back. I hope that
I am.
58
my friend william
my friend William is a fortunate man:
he lacks the imagination to suffer
he kept his first job
his first wife
can drive a car 50,000 miles
without a brake job
he dances like a swan
and has the prettiest blankest eyes
this side of El Paso
his garden is a paradise
the heels of his shoes are always level
and his handshake is firm
people love him
when my friend William dies
it will hardly be from madness or cancer
he’ll walk right past the devil
and into heaven
you’ll see him at the party tonight
grinning
over his martini
blissful and delightful
as some guy
fucks his wife in the
bathroom.
59
300 poems
look, he said, I’ve written
300 poems in 2
months,
and he handed me the
stack and I
thought
oo oo.
a young girl
walked up
and handed him a plate of
corn and meat
in his cottage
by the beach
and the sea rolled in
and I turned the
white
pages.
I’ve been drinking
he said
and writing
and the young girl said
is there anything else
I can get
you?
he was rich and I was poor
and the sea rolled in
and I turned the
white
pages.
what do you think?
he asked?
and I said,
well, some of
these…
but I didn’t
finish.
later I walked
outside. I walked down
the sand to where the sand got
wet and I looked at the water and