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Hey Chuck,
We need to talk, bruh. No, you don't have to put down the glass—keep on sipping. I'm a cat, I don't judge.
So I've been hanging up here in the window, hoping for a nice bird to flutter by, and it's been chill. I'm relaxing, doing my thing. Except that you keep staring at me, scribbling your little sentences. It's just…creepy.
Look, man, I get your thing. I'm with it—it's totes compatible with my thing, which is the window thing, the stretching thing, food, maybe some nip. So you like to drink and barf the most fucked-up things you can dream up onto paper. The whores! The whores with their cunts and pussies full of cum and wine! Uh huh. Giving a drunk old man roadhead! Yeah, yeah. Madhouses full of drunk whores with sour cunt pussies murdering the hateful factoryman. Whatevs, Chuck. You gotta do you.
But I'm not feeling the cat poems.
It's just…creepy. And not in the way you're going for. I get the whole filthy drunken kraut bastard motif. I dig it, man. I can see how it would resonate with certain people. Not people of taste, but people who think they have taste. "Edgy" people. People who compare acne to leprosy in a sincere way. People who wish they had the guts to pull a knife at the racetrack. You're writing for the failed, the wannabe rocker-turned-leather jacket-clad sellmonkey who is resentful of his betters, the young sweet thing who thinks taking up with a creepy old dude makes her interesting. Those dudes and dudettes fucking adore you. And that's all super-sweet. I ain't hating, bruh. Do you.
But about the cat thing. It's just…hacky. Sorry, bruh, but that's what's up.
Look, I understand why you're into cats. We're aloof and live in alleys and walk around broken stuff doing whatever.
But then you scribble some shit down. Shit like, "Small birds who go the way of cats sing inside my head." Hey, you're drunk. It's no biggie.
But there is a larger issue, which is my concern that your survivors, having abided your desire to sell your quote-unquote more meaningful works to the small presses you so loved, will sell a book of your cat poems to, like, HarperCollins. And then they will publish a book of, like, fragments—literally, half-baked sentences vaguely related to cats—in time to make it a Christmas gift to single young women who are of pretty good repute but wish for worse. And they will buy it, because these are people who lack the intellect to develop good taste and instead substitute booze and liberal use of the word cunt.
Sorry, bruh. I just think you should do what you do best: Stop staring at me and go meet some whores for drinks.
Calico Butcatski
Slightly dingy West Hollywood apartment
February 1978
GO: Charles Bukowski has been dead for 20 years. His stupid book of hacky cat poetry, On Cats (Ecco, 128 pages, $25.99), is on sale now.
Willamette Week