Charles Bukowski - Letter to John Martin, 1986 lyrics

8-12-86

Hello John:

Thanks for the good letter i
Don't think it hurts, sometimes
To remember where you came from you know the
Places where I came from even
The people who try
To write about that or make films about it
They don't get it right they
Call it "9 to 5"
It's never 9 to 5, there's no free
Lunch break at those places, in fact
At many of them in order to keep your job
You don't take lunch then there's OVERTIME
And the books never seem
To get the overtime right and
If you complain about that
There's another sucker to take your place

You know my old saying
"Slavery was never abolished
It was only extended to
Include all the colors"

And what hurts is the
Steadily diminishing humanity
Of those fighting to hold jobs they
Don't want but fear the alternative worse
People simply empty out they are
Bodies with fearful and obedient
Minds the color
Leaves the eye the voice becomes
Ugly and the body the hair the
Fingernails the shoes everything does

As a young man I could not
Believe that people could give
Their lives over to those conditions
As an old man
I still can't believe it what do they do
It for? Sex? TV? An automobile on monthly
Payments? Or children? Children who
Are just going to
Do the same things that they did? Early on
When I was quite young and
Going from job to job
I was foolish enough to sometimes speak to my
Fellow workers: "Hey
The boss can come in here at any
Moment and lay all of us off, just like that
Don't you realize that?"

They would just look at me
I was posing something
That they didn't want to enter their minds

Now in industry, there are vast layoffs
(steel mills dead
Technical changes in other factors of the
Work place) they are layed
Off by the hundreds of thousands
And their faces are stunned:

"I put in 35 years"

"It ain't right"

"I don't know what to do"

They never pay the slaves enough
So they can get free
Just enough so they can stay alive
And come back to work i
Could see all this why couldn't they?
I figured the park bench
Was just as good or being a
Barfly was just as good why
Not get there first before they
Put me there? Why wait?

I just wrote in disgust against it all
It was a relief to get the shit out of my
System and now that I'm here
A so-called professional
Writer, after giving the first 50 years away
I've found out that there are
Other disgusts beyond the system

I remember once, working as a packer
In this lighting fixture company
One of the packers suddenly said:
"I'll never be free!"

One of the bosses was walking by
(his name was Morrie) and he let out
This delicious cackle of a laugh
Enjoying the fact that this fellow
Was trapped for life

So, the luck I finally had in getting out of
Those places, no matter how long it took
Has given me a kind of joy
The jolly joy of the miracle i now
Write from an old mind and an old body
Long beyond the time when most
Men would ever think of
Continuing such a thing, But since I
Started so late I owe it
To myself to continue, And when
The words begin to falter and I
Must be helped up stairways
And I can no longer tell
A bluebird from a paperclip
I still feel that something in
Me is going to remember
(no matter how far I'm gone)
How I've come through
The murder and the mess and the moil
To at least a generous way to die

To not to have entirely wasted one's life
Seems to be a worthy accomplishment
If only for myself

Yr boy, Hank