What Matters Most is How Well You Walk Through the Fire by Charles Bukowski Page B

bet the horses
    again
    what am I doing standing out here
    betting the horses?
    anybody can go to the racetrack but
    not everybody can
    write a sonnet…
    the racetrack crowd is the lowest of the breed
    thinking their brains can outfox the
    15 percent take.
    what am I doing here?
    if my publisher knew I was blowing my royalties,
    if those guys in San Diego
    and the one in Detroit who send me money
    (a couple of fives and a ten)
    or the collector in Jerome, Arizona
    who paid me for some paintings,
    if they knew
    what would
    they think?
    jesus christ, I’m playing the starving poet who is
    creating great Art.
    I walk up to the bar with my girlfriend,
    she’s a handsome creature in hotpants
    with long dark hair,
    I order a scotch and water,
    she orders a screwdriver
    jesus christ
    I don’t have a chance
    did Vallejo, Lorca and
    Shelley have to go through
    this?
    I drink some of the scotch and
    water and think,
    the proper mix of the woman and the poem
    is infinite Art.
    then I sit down with my
    Racing Form
    and get back
    to work.

hanging there on the wall
    I used to look across the room
    and think,
    this female will surely do me
    in
    and it’s not worth
    it.
    but I’d do nothing about it
    and I wasn’t
    lonely.
    it was more like a space to
    fill in with something;
    like on a canvas,
    you can keep painting something on it
    even if it isn’t very
    good.
    â€œwhat are you thinking
    about, you bastard?” she would
    say.
    â€œpainting.”
    â€œpainting? you nuts?
    pour me a drink!”
    and I would, and then I’d brush her
    in, drink in hand, sitting
    in a chair, legs crossed, kicking
    her high-heeled shoes.
    I’d brush her in, bad tempered,
    spoiled, loud.
    a painting nobody would ever
    see
    except me.

the hookers, the madmen and the doomed
    today at the track
    2 or 3 days after
    the death of the
    jock
    came this voice
    over the speaker
    asking us all to stand
    and observe
    a few moments
    of silence. well,
    that’s a tired
    formula and
    I don’t like it
    but I do like
    silence. so we
    all stood: the
    hookers and the
    madmen and the
    doomed. I was
    set to be displeased
    but then
    I looked up at the
    TV screen
    and there
    standing silently
    in the paddock
    waiting to mount
    up
    stood the other jocks
    along with
    the officials and
    the trainers:
    quiet and thinking
    of death and the
    one gone,
    they stood
    in a semi-circle
    the brave little
    men in boots and
    silks,
    the legions of death
    appeared and
    vanished, the sun
    blinked once
    I thought of love
    with its head ripped
    off
    still trying to
    sing and
    then the announcer
    said, thank you
    and we all went on about
    our business.

looking for Jack
    like the rest of us, Jack didn’t always shine too brightly:
    â€œthe whole game is run by the fags and the Jews,” he’d say,
    stamping up and down on my rug, grey hair hanging over hook nose
    (he was a Jew); “look, Hank, lemme have a five…”
    walking out and around the block,
    coming back, stamping on the floor,
    he wanted to get the game rolling, he wanted to conquer
    the world.
    â€œdamn you, Jack, I usually sleep till noon…”
    he had a little black book filled with names,
    touches, contacts.
    I drove him to a large place in the Hollywood hills
    and he woke the guy up. the guy was good for
    $20.
    â€œthey owe it to us,” Jack said.
    whenever he got a little ahead—that meant 40 or 50 bucks—
    he’d take it to the track and lose it all,
    have to walk back.
    â€œnobody beats the horses, Hank, nobody, we’re all losers, poets
    are losers, who gives a damn about the poets?”
    â€œnobody, Jack, I don’t like ’em much myself…”
    he showed me early photos when he was a young man in
Brooklyn.
    he was quite handsome, quite manly, at the cutting edge of the Beat
    movement. but the Beats died off and Jack’s been crashing ever
    since. when his father died he left Jack 5 or ten grand
    and he got