John William Corrington]
Late April 1962
I got an idea, Willie. Let’s you and I put out an issue. Call it the The Toilet Paper Review. We won’t even need a duplicator. I will just get a roll and type it up in this typewriter. We will, just you and I, run all our old poems we can’t get rid of in The Toilet Paper Review. One copy to Trace, one copy to God, one copy for Sherman and one for Sherman’s whore who can take it. Anywhere. Anyhow.
The Toilet Paper Review
Edited by William Corrington and Charles Bukowski
Vol. I, #I
if ya wanna look at television
we don’t give a shit.
“I Kneel”
By William Corrington
these legs need to run
but I kneel
before female flowers—
catch the scent of forgetfulness
and grab it,
sure,
and evenings
hours of evenings
grey-headed evenings
nod
and afterwards
“Sculpture”
By Charles Bukowski
Harry, the habit, and then we made
this face, and then out of the Face
came: fish, elms, butternut candy,
and we went outside
and we went outside
and we—needle off, or
break the tape, I can’t stand
it anymore,
I walked 18 blocks,
came back, and the face
had grown to the size of the room
and I knew it was true:
I was mad.
“The Alley That Waits Us”
By William Corrington
I guess we must go on,
loss after loss,
we must go on,
until the final loss,
say in some alley,
blood running down like a
necktie ha ha, we are
tricked and slapped to death,
bargained out of any gain,
any love, any rest,
hands to walls, waa waaa!,
traffic (grr!!) going by,
filthy lovers making filthy
lover’s vows, fish sick fish
going out with the tide
waa waaa!! mah head a
falling now, we are almost
into the black dream,
never to be genius now,
sun brings tulips, rain brings
worms, God brings genius
and disposes genius tulip
worm so things begin again
new things forever
tiresome tiresome to think
body flat now
az small ratz run to my shoes
run off again
and I am seen by a small boy
and he too
runs runs
but they will catch him
like the tulips
like Poppa
like Belmonte
like large stones that break
into sand
that cuts where there is blood,
loss after loss
wherever we
are.
(and we still don’t give a shit whether u look at T.V. or not. We need subscribers. Please help.)
[To John William Corrington]
May 1962
[ . . . ] I received a letter from some woman today. She gives me Nietzsche: “what we do is never understood, but only praised and blamed.” And then she says, “This must be what you meant when you spoke of the bad influence of praise in your letter. But, think—to be praised AND to be understood! There, my Friend, is the only type of practical paradise for the writer or the painter or the composer . . .” “Very true—the artist must certainly go from one creation to the next, but none of them are entire new beginnings—nothing ever really has a new beginning. One creation evolves from another. One purpose turns into ten thousand others. When you find an inspired thought, in your head, surely you can not believe it is breathlessly new? It came from centuries of submerged creations of ideas. But I do not mean to get started on a long dragged out ‘essay’ . . .”
Well, thank Christ for that.
what a bunch of fucking preconceptions, and what a dismal harnessed outlook. These intelligent people jaggle my nuts. Each beginning to me (TO ME!!!) is a NEW BEGINNING. God yas. How else do I know whether I am dead or not? what wiggles. what gives. the cunts. I must see the cunts. Each flower is a new flower. The others are dead. Good they were, but dead. I know that when I look at a bridge or a building that this thing is a COMPILATION of so-called knowledge. So fuck a horse. When I write a poem, I add a bolt, a red-nosed bolt with a sour middle and a bloody ass. Or maybe—better
