Hot Water Music by Charles Bukowski Page A

happened by now, it won’t,” he said. “I should have fucked her. I’m sorry now I didn’t fuck her.”
    He got another sparrow and down it came and a very fat grey cat with greenyellow eyes picked it up and was off with it behind the hedge. I walked back across the street to my place. My old man was waiting on the front porch. He looked angry. “Listen, I want you to get busy mowing the lawn! Now !”
    I walked to the garage and pulled out the mower. First I mowed the driveway, then I went out to the front lawn. The mower was stiff and old and it was hard work. My old man stood there, looking angry, watching me, as I pushed the mower through the tangled grass.

SCUM GRIEF
     
     
    The poet Victor Valoff was not a very good poet. He had a local reputation, was liked by the ladies and supported by his wife. He was continually giving readings at local bookstores and he was often heard on the Public Radio Station. He read in a loud and dramatic voice but the pitch never varied. Victor was always at climax. That’s what attracted the ladies, I guess. Certain of his lines, if taken separately, seemed to have power, but when all the lines were considered as a whole, you knew that Victor was saying nothing, only saying it loudly.
    But Vicki, like most ladies, being easily charmed by fools, insisted upon hearing Valoff read. It was a hot Friday night in a Feminist-Lesbian-Revolutionary bookshop. No admission. Valoff read for free. And there would be a display of his art work after the reading. His art work was very modern. A stroke or two, usually red, and a bit of an epigram in a contrasting color. Some piece of wisdom would be inscribed on it like:
     
    Green heaven come home to me,
    I weep grey, gray, grey, gray…
     
    Valoff was intelligent. He knew there were two ways to spell grey.
    Photos of Tim Leary hung about. IMPEACH REAGAN signs. I didn’t mind the IMPEACH REAGAN signs. Valoff rose and walked to the platform, a half bottle of beer in his hand.
    “Look,” said Vicki, “look at that face! How he has suffered!”
    “Yeah,” I said, “and now I’m going to suffer.”
    Valoff did have a fairly interesting face—compared to most poets. But compared to most poets almost everybody has.
    Victor Valoff began:
     
    “East of the Suez of my heart
    begins a buzzing buzzing buzzing
    sombre still, still sombre
    and suddenly Summer comes home
    straight on through like a
    Quarterback sneak on the one yard line
    of my heart!”
     
    Victor screamed the last line and as he did so somebody near me said, “ Beautiful !” It was a local feminist poet who had grown tired of blacks and now fucked a doberman in her bedroom. She had braided red hair, dull eyes, and played a mandolin while she read her work. Most of her work involved something about a dead baby’s footprint in the sand. She was married to a doctor who was never around (at least he had the good sense not to attend poetry readings). He gave her a large allowance to support her poetry and to feed the doberman.
    Valoff continued:
     
    “Docks and ducks and derivative day
    Ferment behind my forehead
    in a most unforgiving way
    o, in a most unforgiving way.
    I sway through the light and darkness…”
     
    “I’ve got to agree with him there,” I told Vicki.
    “Please be quiet,” she answered.
     
    “With one thousand pistols and one
    thousand hopes
    I step onto the porch of my mind
    to murder one thousand Popes!”
     
    I found my half pint, uncapped it and took a good hit.
    “Listen,” said Vicki, “you always get drunk at these readings. Can’t you contain yourself?”
    “I get drunk at my own readings,” I said. “I can’t stand my stuff either.”
    “ Gummed mercy ,” Valoff went on, “ that’s what we are, gummed mercy, gummed gummed gummed mercy …”
    “He’s going to say something about a raven,” I said.
    “ Gummed mercy ,” continued Valoff, “ and the raven forevermore …”
    I laughed. Valoff recognized the laugh. He looked