The original angels were battle tested, busted he-men and women that fought tirelessly against hell and its demons. Their wings were scarred and their faces far from the clean-cut sissified versions embedded in stained glass windows and bible etchings. Angels were veterans, complete with rank, file, and all the side-effects that come along with watching your brothers and sisters die beside you in war. Angels were imperfect things with wings that fought on behalf of God.
Then there’s Charles Bukowski; a poet with an angel inside him that obeyed his commandments. An angel, he called his bluebird.
“I am my own God,” he once wrote.
It’s a quote that’s become one of his most famous. A thing so readily available with his photo next to it, that the original source is now difficult to find. But after some digging around broken message boards, it appears it’s from a 1988 issue of LIFE Magazine where celebrities were asked the stupid, age-old question, “Why are we here?”
“We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our educational system,” said Bukowski. “We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.”
His quote appears on page 8, sandwiched between Rosa Parks’ and Maya Angelou’s, Tom Robbins’ and Richard Nixon’s, The Dalai Lama’s and Tom Waits’, Willie Nelson’s and Garrison Keillor’s.
And of all people, it’s Keillor. Garrison fucking Keillor. That we have to follow up with.
Keillor. The man that started A Prairie Home Companion for Public Radio close to half a century ago. Yes, the same Keillor that got fired for touching a woman’s back and letting his hand slip 6” down.
It was, he tells us, an accident, and while many believe Keillor is innocent, just as many think he’s guilty. Of what, however, no one really knows, since the 12-page document listing his actions against the woman was never released to the public. Which, seems odd in the world today, where we can access movies that cost tens of millions of dollars to make and are tightly guarded by armed forces from Internet pirate servers before they ever hit cinema screens.
Regardless, it’s hard to think of what happened to Keillor and of what never happened to Bukowski; the man that wrote vividly of beating, cheating, and exploiting women for sex. The man that represented the unwanted palm slipping 6” down a woman’s blouse, twenty-four hours a day. But Bukowski died before the horde of invisible they’s could come after him like they did to Keillor. Not that they would, but Bukowski got out before he had to comment, post, like, share, or defend himself in an errant blog. He died in 1994 in a San Pedro hospital, and at the precise moment that the demon, leukemia, took his life, Hank (as he was known to his friends) let his bluebird free. His angel. His muse. While Keillor’s was clipped by the demon, frenzy, and left to fly lonesome like a ghost seeking elixirs for its scars.
there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I’m too tough for him,
I say, stay in there, I’m not going
to let anybody see
you.
there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I pour whiskey on him and inhale
cigarette smoke
and the whores and the bartenders
and the grocery clerks
never know that
he’s
in there.
there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I’m too tough for him,
I say,
stay down, do you want to mess
me up?
you want to screw up the
works?
you want to blow my book sales in
Europe?
there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I’m too clever, I only let him out
at night sometimes
when everybody’s asleep.
I say, I know that you’re there,
so don’t be
sad.
then I put him back,
but he’s singing a little
in there, I haven’t quite let him
die
and we sleep together like
that
with our
secret pact
and it’s nice enough to
make a man
weep, but I don’t
weep, do
you?
—Charles Bukowski
Most of the time we never see each other’s angels. Only the demons that scar and kill us because somehow we do something wrong, or by mistake, that lets them take over. But before Bukowski died there was a glimpse of his bluebird. His angel. His muse. A shutter clicked at the exact millisecond that the winged creature was taking flight from his heart and pounding against his chest like a thunderstorm.
As the poet’s rusty sternum opened ever-so-slightly to give glimpse of his muse, Mark Hanauer fired his lens as our witness and captured it forever. His own angel whispered, now, and forced his finger on the button of his camera. A conscious act that was deeply rooted in the mystical unknowns of the subconscious mind that Freud and Jung tried to uncover throughout their careers.
The night before he captured the poet’s bluebird, Mark asked Bukowski’s loverwhat the poet’s drink of choice was. She told him a particular kind of wine and so Mark bought two bottles of it and had them ready for the arrival of what would soon become their best friend; the grizzled, wino-poet king, Henry Charles Bukowski.
The poet arrived to Mark’s studio in Hollywood after his ritualized morning routine of betting on horses. But he didn’t come empty handed. There were already bottles of wine in each one of his gnarled fists as he was trailed by his lady into the room. A lady, we can muse, likely named Linda, since he seemed to have a preference for them throughout his life.
He plopped the bottles onto a table. Then watched as his lady staggered off into the shadows. The usual welcome, how’s it going,and other greetings began as Mark opened the first bottle of wine. A bottle that Bukowski finished off almost entirely by himself.
Maybe it was a magic trick Bukowski taught himself that allowed him to consume more wine than humanly possible. Anyways, he was through his third bottle by the time they were ready to shoot.
Barely able to stand and tilting like an offset typewriter he owned in the 60’s, Bukowski shouted, “You Huckster!” and laughed.
Snap. The shutter closed. The moment made permanent.
There in all of his drunken glory was Bukowski. From page to picture. True as the rotting flesh on his face. Ugly and present. Demanding your attention if you were interested and scaring you off if you didn’t belong. The bluebird in Heaven with its cage condemned to a man in Hell.
For a split-second the poet was real, and Mark captured him on film. Captured the angel, the bluebird, the muse, or whatever else was trying to loosen itself from the man’s chest in the form of a giant, gut-wrenching laugh with tilted teeth, tufted brows, and all that went along with a life lived in the muck.
But almost immediately after the shutter snapped, Bukowski fell and passed out from the wine. His lady returned from the shadows to hold his hand and told everyone to leave him alone until he rose again like Frankenstein’s monster; a role that his parents had beaten into him through abuse and he had exploited for fame sometime in his forties after giving up on writing for nearly a decade.
While the poet laid out on the studio floor, Mark pondered what Hank had said to him.
“You Huckster!” rang through Mark’s head like the mantras called out in India by gurus, sages, and western tourists seeking Nirvana. India, a country that Mark has visited multiple times for multiple reasons. India, a place linked to Bukowski because Buddhist monks performed his funeral rites.
Huckster; one who sells products of questionable value.
Huckster; low German for ‘retailer of a stall’.
Huckster; a mercenary eager to make profit from anything.
Huckster, when given closer inspection, sums up the definition of an artist perfectly. An artist of paintings, poetry, photographs, drawings, or whatever; cursed by the invisible inspiration that leads them down a road of pain, torture, and turmoil. A road with the highest highs and the lowest lows. A road, which Bukowski paved for himself by writing lines like “I got in the shower and burned my balls last Wednesday,” (from “Trouble with Spain”) and Mark paved for himself by taking photos of men and women at the exact time their angels left their bodies and revealed themselves to his.
The muse is the bird trapped inside its owner’s ribs. The poem once the bird is freed. And the back graced by the unwanted palms of the cage itself.
The muse is the battle torn angel inside us all, which regardless of anything can leave us shattered, uplifted, or even flapping our wings in limbo, in-between it all. In the Middle World as it is called in Native legends. And every now and again, for better or worse, we can catch glimpses of it thanks to those blessed with the ability to see.
♦
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Daniel Rolnik is in the blur between art and life. Writes about creative outsiders. Ordained as The World’s Most Adorable Art Critic by former President, Bill Clinton. Master of hyperbole, the “haha!” “Epic!” and a signature pose where he stands open-mouthed and waiving to let his irreverent love light shine. Loves breakfast, lunch, and dinner – especially, with friends.
sweet, Daniel…the Great Bukowski! I especially like your proper use of the apostrophe! keep on keeping’ on!