The Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over the Hills (14 page)

 

…an ocean liner

the Captain smiles and farts and knows my

name

the sea is boiling and smells of

torn chunks and warm raw meat

and

half-daft sick spiders try to

wind their dead legs around each other

around everything

but they tangle off slide off drift off

losing legs against the prow

and wanting to scream and not being able to

scream

while

I am on the grant from a University

and

translating Rimbaud and Lorca and

Günter Grass over and over

again

then

after a conversation on Proust and

Patchen I rape a

rich beautiful girl in my cabin

and

afterwards she turns into a

dead peach tree which I

hang on the wall

then

I awaken in a small dirty bedroom and the

woman walks in:

“listen, I need a stroller. the kid is

getting too heavy to carry.”

 

 

“o.k., o.k.”

 

 

“but when? when?”

 

 

“not today. too god damned

tired.”

 

 

“tomorrow?”

 

 

“tomorrow, sure.”

 

 

the hearse comes through the room filled with

the beheaded, the disappeared, the living

mad.

the flies are a glue of sticky paste

their wings will not

lift.

I watch an old woman beat her cat

with a broom.

the weather is unendurable

a dirty trick by

God.

the water has evaporated from the

toilet bowl

the telephone rings without

sound

the small limp arm petering against the

bell.

I see a boy on his

bicycle

the spokes collapse

the tires turn into

snakes and melt

away.

the newspaper is oven-hot

men murder each other in the streets

without reason.

the worst men have the best jobs

the best men have the worst jobs or are

unemployed or locked in

madhouses.

I have 4 cans of food left.

air-conditioned troops go from house to

house

from room to room

jailing, shooting, bayoneting

the people.

we have done this to ourselves, we

deserve this

we are like roses that have never bothered to

bloom when we should have bloomed and

it is as if

the sun has become disgusted with

waiting

it is as if the sun were a mind that has

given up on us.

I go out on the back porch

and look across the sea of dead plants

now thorns and sticks shivering in a

windless sky.

somehow I’m glad we’re through

finished—

the works of Art

the wars

the decayed loves

the way we lived each day.

when the troops come up here

I don’t care what they do for

we already killed ourselves

each day we got out of bed.

I go back into the kitchen

spill some hash from a soft

can, it is almost cooked

already

and I sit

eating, looking at my

fingernails.

the sweat comes down behind my

ears and I hear the

shooting in the streets and

I chew and wait

without wonder.

 

 

the place was crowded.

the editor told me,

“Charley get some chairs from upstairs,

there are more chairs upstairs.”

I brought them down and we opened the beer and

the editor said,

“we’re not getting enough advertising,

the boat might go down,”

so they started talking about how to get

advertising.

I kept drinking the beer

and had to piss

and when I got back

the girl next to me said,

“we ought to evacuate the city,

that’s what we ought to do.”

 

 

I said, “I’d rather listen to Joseph Haydn.”

 

 

she said, “just
think
of it,

if everybody left the city!”

 

 

“they’d only be someplace else

stinking it up,” I said.

 

 

“I don’t think you like

people,” she said, pulling her short skirt down

as much as possible.

 

 

“just to fuck with,” I said.

then I went to the bar next door and

bought 3 more packs of beer.

when I got back they were talking Revolution.

so here I was back in 1935 again,

only I was old and they were young. I was at least

20 years older than anybody in the room,

and I thought, what the hell am I doing

here?

 

 

soon the meeting ended

and they went out into the night,

those young ones

and I picked up the phone, I got

John T.,

“John, you o.k.? I’m low tonight.

suppose I come over and get

drunk?”

 

 

“sure, Charley, we’ll be waiting.”

 

 

“Charley,” said the editor, “I guess we’ve got to

put the chairs back

upstairs.”

 

 

we carried the chairs back upstairs

the

revolution was

over.

 

 

100 million Chinese bugs on the stairway to

hell,

come drink with me

rub my back with me;

this filth-pitched room,

floor covered with yellow newspapers

3 weeks old; bottle caps, a red

pencil, a rip of

toilet paper, these odd bits of

broken things;

the flies worry me as ice cream ladies

walk past my window;

at night I sleep, try to sleep

between mounds of stinking laundry;

ghosts come out,

play dirty games, evil games, games of horror with

my mind;

in the morning there is blood on the sheet

from a broken sore upon my

back.

 

 

putting on a shirt that rips across my

back, rotten rag of a thing,

and putting on pants with a rip in the

crotch, I find in the mailbox

(along with other threats):

“Dear Mr. Bukowski:

Would like to see more of your poems for

possible inclusion in

_____Poetry Review.

 

 

How’s it going?”

 

 

some people are young and nothing

else and

some people are old and nothing

else

and some people are in between and

just in between.

 

 

and if the flies wore clothes on their

backs

and all the buildings burned in

golden fire,

if heaven shook like a belly

dancer

and all the atom bombs began to

cry,

some people would be young and nothing

else and

some people old and nothing

else,

and the rest would be the same

the rest would be the same.

 

 

the few who are different

are eliminated quickly enough

by the police, by their mothers, their

brothers, others; by

themselves.

all that’s left is what you

see.

 

 

it’s

hard.

 

 

wondrous, sure, kid, you want more

applejuice? how can you drink that goddamned

stuff? I hate it. what? no, I’m not Dr.

Vogel. I’m the daddy. your old man. where’s mama?

she’s out joining an artist’s colony, oh, that’s a place

where people go who aren’t

artists. yes, that’s the way it works almost

everywhere, sometimes you can go into a hospital and

it can be 40 floors high and there won’t be a doctor in

there, and hard to find a nurse either.

what’s a hospital? a hospital is just a bunch of

disconnected buttons, dying people and very sophisticated and

comfortable orderlies, but the whole world is like this:

nobody knows what they are supposed to know—

poets can’t write poetry

mechanics can’t fix your car

fighters can’t fight

lovers can’t love

preachers can’t preach. it’s even like that with

armies: whole armies led without generals,

whole nations led without leaders, why the whole thing is like

trying to copulate with a wooden

dick…oh, pardon me!

how old are you? three? three. ah. three fingers, that’s nice!

you learn fast, my little ducky. what? more

applejuice? o.k.

you wanna play train? you wanna take me for a ride?

o.k., Tucson, we’ll go to Tucson, what the hell!

damn it, I don’t KNOW if we’re there yet, you’re

driving!

what? we’re on the way BACK already?

you want some candy? shit, you been eatin’ candy for hours!

listen, I don’t KNOW when your mother will be back, uh?

well,

after signing up for the artist’s colony she’s going to a poetry

reading. what’s a poetry reading? a poetry reading is where

people gather and read their poetry to each other, the ones

mostly who can’t write poetry.

what’s poetry? nobody knows. it changes. it works by itself

like a snail crawling up the side of a house. oh, that’s a big

squashy thing that goes all gooey and slimy when you

step on

it. am I a snail?

I guess so kid, what?

you wanna kaakaa?

o.k., go ahead. can you get your own pants down? I don’t

see

you very often, oh, you want the light on? you want me

to stay

or go away? stay? fine, then.

now kaakaa, little one, that’s it…

kaakaa…

so you can grow up to be a big woman and

do what big women

do.

kaakaa.

at’s it, sweet,

ain’t it
funny?

mama kaakaa too.

oh
yeah

 

 

wow!

that’s all right!

now wipe your ass.

no, better than

that!
there, that’s

better.

you say
I’m
kaakaa!

hey that’s

good! I like that!

very funny.

 

 

now let’s go get some more beer and

applejuice.

 

 

I played the radio all night the night of the 17th.

and the neighbors applauded

and the landlady knocked on the door

and said

PLEASE

PLEASE

PLEASE

MOVE,

you make the sheets dirty

where does the
blood
come from?

you
never
work.

you lay around and talk to the radio

and drink

and you have a beard

and you are always smirking

and bringing those women

to your room

and you never comb your hair

or shine your shoes

and your shirts are wrinkled

why don’t you
leave?

you are making the neighbors

unhappy,

please make us all happy

and go away!

 

 

go to hell, baby, I hissed through

the keyhole; mah rent’s paid ’til

Wednesday. can I show you a watercolor

nude painted in 1887 by an unknown German

artist? I have it insured for

$1,000.

 

 

unrelenting, she stamped down the hall.

no
artiste,
she. I would

like to see her in the nude, though.

perhaps I could
paint
my way

to freedom.
no?