“aw’ right. but ya know what happened?”
“no, Barry.”
“a cop stopped me on my Moped. and guess why?”
“speeding?”
“no! he claimed I had to have a license to drive a Moped!
that’s stupid! he gave me a ticket! I almost smashed him
in the face!”
“oh yeah?”
“yeah! I almost smashed him!”
“Barry, I’ve got to make the first race.”
“how much does it cost you to get in?”
“four dollars and twenty-five cents.”
“I got into the Pomona County Fair for a dollar.”
“all right, Barry.”
the motor has been running. I put it into first and pull
out. in the rearview mirror I see him walk
back across the lawn.
Brownie is waiting for him,
wagging his tail.
his mother is inside waiting.
maybe Barry will slam her against the refrigerator
thinking about that cop.
or maybe they’ll play checkers.
I find the Hollywood freeway
then the Pasadena freeway.
life has been tough on Barry:
he’s 24
looks 38
but it all evens out finally:
he’s aged a good many other people
too.
liberated woman and liberated man
look there.
the one you considered killing yourself
for.
you saw her the other day
getting out of her car
in the Safeway parking lot.
she was wearing a torn green
dress and old dirty
boots
her face raw with living.
she saw you
so you walked over
and spoke and then
listened.
her hair did not glisten
her eyes and her conversation were
dull.
where was she?
where had she gone?
the one you were going to kill yourself
for?
the conversation finished
she walked into the store
and you looked at her automobile
and even that
which used to drive up and park
in front of your door
with such verve and in a spirit of
adventure
now looked
like a junkyard
joke.
you decide not to shop at
Safeway
you’ll drive 6 blocks
east and buy what you need
at Ralphs.
getting into your car
you are quite pleased that
you didn’t
kill yourself;
everything is delightful and
the air is clear.
your hands on the wheel,
you grin as you check for traffic in
the rearview mirror.
my man, you think,
you’ve saved yourself
for somebody else, but
who?
a slim young creature walks by
in a mini skirt and sandals
showing a marvelous leg.
she’s going in to shop at Safeway
too.
you turn off the engine and
follow her in.
small talk
all right, while we are gently celebrating to night
and while crazy classical music leaps at me from
my small radio, I light a fresh cigar
and realize that I am still very much alive and that
the 21st century is almost upon me!
I walk softly now toward 5 a.m. this dark night.
my 5 cats have been in and out, looking after
me, I have petted them, spoken to them, they
are full of their own private fears wrought by previous
centuries of cruelty and abuse
but I think that they love me as much as they
can, anyhow, what I am trying to say here
is that writing is just as exciting and mad and
just as big a gamble for me as it ever was, because Death
after all these years
walks around in the room with me now and speaks softly,
asking, do you still think that you are a genuine
writer? are you pleased with what you’ve done?
listen, let me have one of those
cigars.
help yourself, motherfucker, I say.
Death lights up and we sit quietly for a time.
I can feel him here with me.
don’t you long for the ferocity
of youth? He finally asks.
not so much, I say.
but don’t you regret those things
that have been lost?
not at all, I say.
don’t you miss, He asks slyly, the young girls
climbing through your window?
all they brought was bad news, I tell him.
but the illusion, He says, don’t you miss the
illusion?
hell yes, don’t you? I ask.
I have no illusions, He says sadly.
sorry, I forgot about that, I say, then walk
to the window
unafraid and strangely satisfied
to watch the warm dawn
unfold.
the crunch
too much
too little
too fat
too thin
or nobody.
laughter or
tears
haters
lovers
strangers with faces like
the backs of
thumb tacks
armies running through
streets of blood
waving winebottles
bayoneting and fucking
virgins.
or an old guy in a cheap room
with a photograph of M. Monroe.
there is a loneliness in this world so great
that you can see it in the slow movement of
the hands of a clock.
people so tired
mutilated
either by love or no love.
people just are not good to each other
one on one
the rich are not good to the rich
the poor are not good to the poor.
we are afraid.
our educational system tells us
that we can all be
big-ass winners.
it hasn’t told us
about the gutters
or the suicides.
or the terror of one person
aching in one place
alone
untouched
unspoken to
watering a plant.
people are not good to each other.
people are not good to each other.
people are not good to each other.
I suppose they never will be.
I don’t ask them to be.
but sometimes I think about
it.
the beads will swing
the clouds will cloud
and the killer will behead the child
like taking a bite out of an ice cream cone.
too much
too little
too fat
too thin
or nobody
more haters than lovers.
people are not good to each other.
perhaps if they were
our deaths would not be so sad.
meanwhile I look at young girls
stems
flowers of chance.
there must be a way.
surely there must be a way we have not yet
thought of.
who p
ut this brain inside of me?
it cries
it demands
it says that there is a chance.
it will not say
“no.”
funhouse
I drive to the beach at night
in the winter
and sit and look at the burned-down amusement pier
wonder why they just let it sit there
in the water.
I want it out of there,
blown up,
vanished,
erased;
that pier should no longer sit there
with madmen sleeping inside
the burned-out guts of the fun house…
it’s awful, I say, blow the damn thing up,
get it out of my eyes,
that tombstone in the sea.
the madmen can find other holes
to crawl into.
I used to walk that pier when I was 8
years old.
the poetry reading
at high noon
at a small college near the beach
sober
the sweat running down my arms
a spot of sweat on the table
I flatten it with my finger
blood money blood money
my god they must think I love this like the others
but it’s for bread and beer and rent
blood money
I’m tense lousy feel bad
poor people I’m failing I’m failing
a woman gets up
walks out
slams the door
a dirty poem
somebody told me not to read dirty poems
here
it’s too late.
my eyes can’t see some lines
I read it
out—
desperate trembling
lousy
they can’t hear my voice
and I say,
I quit, that’s it, I’m
finished.
and later in my room
there’s scotch and beer:
the blood of a coward.
this then
will be my destiny:
scrabbling for pennies in dark tiny halls
reading poems I have long since become tired
of.
and I used to think
that men who drove buses
or cleaned out latrines
or murdered men in alleys were
fools.
somebody
god I got the sad blue blues,
this woman sat there and she
said
are you really Charles
Bukowski?
and I said
forget that
I do not feel good
I’ve got the sad sads
all I want to do is
fuck you
and she laughed
she thought I was being
clever
and…ust looked up her long slim legs of heaven
I saw her liver and her quivering intestine
I saw Christ in there
jumping to a folk-rock
all the long lines of starvation within me
rose
and I walked over
and grabbed her on the couch
ripped her dress up around her face
and I didn’t care
rape or the end of the earth
one more time
to be there
anywhere
real
yes
her pan ties were on the
floor
and my cock went in
my cock my god my cock went in
I was Charles
Somebody.
the colored birds
it is a highrise apt. next door
and he beats her at night and she screams and nobody stops it
and I see her the next day
standing in the driveway with curlers in her hair
and she has her huge buttocks jammed into black
slacks and she says, standing in the sun,
“god damn it, 24 hours a day in this place, I never go anywhere!”
then he comes out, proud, the little matador,
a pail of shit, his belly hanging over his bathing trunks—
he might have been a handsome man once, might have,
now they both stand there and he says,
“I think I’m goin’ for a swim.”
she doesn’t answer and he goes to the pool and
jumps into the fishless, sandless water, the peroxide-codeine water,
and I stand by the kitchen window drinking coffee
trying to unboil the fuzzy, stinking picture—
after all, you can’t live elbow to elbow to people without wanting to
draw a number on them.
every time my toilet flushes they can hear it. every time they
go to bed I can hear them.
soon she goes inside and then comes out with 2 colored birds
in a cage. I don’t know what they are. they don’t talk. they
just move a little, seeming to twitch their tail-feathers and
shit. that’s all they do.
she stands there looking at them.
he comes out: the little tuna, the little matador, out of the pool,
a dripping unbeautiful white, the cloth of his wet suit gripping.
“get those birds in the house!”
“but the birds need sun!”
“I said, get those birds in the house!”
“the birds are gonna die!”
“you listen to me, I said, GET THOSE BIRDS IN THE HOUSE!”
she bends and lifts them, her huge buttocks in the black slacks
looking so sad.
he slams the door behind them. then I hear it.
BAM!
she screams
BAM! BAM!
she screams
then: BAM!
and she screams.
I pour another coffee and decide that that’s a new
one: he usually only beats her at
night. it takes a man to beat his wife night and
day. although he doesn’t look like much
he’s one of the few real men around
here.
poem for personnel managers:
An old man asked me for a cigarette
and I carefully dealt out two.
“Been lookin’ for job. Gonna stand
in the sun and smoke.”
He was close to rags and rage
and he leaned against death.
It was a cold day, indeed, and trucks
loaded and heavy as old whores
banged and tangled on the streets…
We drop like planks from a rotting floor
as the world strives to unlock the bone
that weights its brain.
(God is a lonely place without steak.)
We are dying birds
we are sinking ships—
the world rocks down against us
and we
throw out our arms
and we
throw out our legs
like the death kiss of the centipede:
but they kindly snap our backs
and call our poison “politics.”
Well, we smoked, he and I—little men
nibbling fish-head thoughts…
All the horses do not come in,
and as you watch the lights of the jails
and hospitals wink on and out,
and men handle flags as carefully as babies,
remember this:
you are a great-gutted instrument of
heart and belly, carefully planned—
so if you take a plane for Savannah,
take the best plane;
or if you eat chicken on a rock,
make it a very special animal.
(You call it a bird; I c
all birds
flowers.)
And if you decide to kill somebody,
make it anybody and not somebody:
some men are made of more special, precious
parts: do not kill
if you will
a president or a King
or a man
behind a desk—
these have heavenly longitudes
enlightened attitudes.
If you decide,
take us
who stand and smoke and glower;