unless your foe seeks the life of your body
or the life of your soul; then,
kill, if necessary; and
when it comes time to die
do not be selfish:
consider it inexpensive
and where you are going:
neither a mark of shame or failure
or a call upon sorrow
as the wind breaks in from the sea
and time goes on
flushing your bones with soft peace.
I Wait in the White Rain
I wait in the white rain for knives like your tongue
I see the spiral clowns fountain up with myths untrue,
I wrestle spasms in the dark on dark stairways
while dollar crazy landladies
are threaded with the hot needles of sperm,
come these morning drunks
brushing away sunlight from the eyes like a web,
come darling, come gloria patri, come luck,
come anything,
this is the hot way—
points sticking in like armadillos
in the rear of a Benedictine mind,
and snow snow snow snow snow
shovel all the snow upon me I can hold,
gingerbread mouth, duck-like dick,
raisins for buttons, thread for heart-strings,
damned waves of blood caught in them
like a minnow in the Tide of Everywhere
I wait in the white rain for knives like your tongue,
and the trucks go by
with bankrupt faces
the steam of their essence like foul sweat
stale stink death in my socks
all the drums of hell
cannot awaken a rhythm within me
I am gone
like an old pale goldfish
dead and stiff as aunt Helen
looking flat-eyed into the center of my brain
and flushed away like any other waste of man,
the man-turd, the breath of life,
and why we don’t go mad as roaches, why not more
suicides I’ll never know
as I wait in the white rain for knives like your tongue,
I am done, quite; like any ford that cuts off a river
I am done forever and only,
this christ-awful waiting on the end of a stale movie,
everyone screaming for beauty and victory
like children for candy,
my hands open
unamazed hand
unamazed mind
unamazed doorsill
send your flowers to Shakey Joe
or Butternut Carlyle
who might trade them to useful purpose
before everything, everyone,
is dead
Breakout
The landlord walks up and down the hall
coughing
letting me know he is there,
and I’ve got to sneak
in the bottles,
I can’t walk to the crapper
the lights don’t work,
there are holes in the walls from
broken water pipes
and the toilet won’t flush,
and the little jackoff
walks up and down
out there
coughing, coughing,
up and down his faded rug
he goes,
and I can’t stand it anymore,
I break out,
I GET him
just as he walks by,
“What the hell’s wrong?”
he screams,
but it’s too late,
my fist is working against the bone;
it’s over fast and he falls,
withered and wet;
I get my suitcase and then
I am going down the steps,
and there’s his wife in the doorway,
she’s ALWAYS IN THE DOORWAY,
they don’t have anything to do but
stand in doorways and walk up and down the halls,
“Good morning, Mr. Bukowski,” her face is a mole’s face
praying for my death, “what—”
and I shove her aside,
she falls down the porch steps and
into a hedge,
I hear the branches breaking
and I see her half-stuck in there
like a blind cow,
and then I am going down the street
with my suitcase,
the sun is fine,
and I begin to think about
the next place where I’m
going to set up, and I hope
I can find some decent humans,
somebody who can treat me
better.
I Cannot Stand Tears
there were several hundred fools
around the goose who broke her leg
trying to decide
what to do
when the guard walked up
and pulled out his cannon
and the issue was finished
except for a woman
who ran out of a hut
claiming he’d killed her pet
but the guard rubbed his straps
and told her
kiss my ass,
take it to the president;
the woman was crying
and I cannot stand tears.
I folded my canvas
and went further down the road:
the bastards had ruined
my landscape.
Horse on Fire
Bring bring
straight things
like a horse on fire
Ezra said,
write it
soaz a man on th’ West Coast’a
Africka culd
understand ut;
and he proceeded to write the Cantos
full of dead languages
newspaper clippings
and love scenes from St. Liz;
bring bring
straight things: in bird-light,
the terror of a mouse,
grass-arms great stone heads;
and reading Canto 90
he put the paper down
Ez did (both their eyes were wet)
and he told her…
“among the greatest love poems
ever written.”
Ezra, there are many kinds of traitors
of which
the political are the least,
but self-appraisal of
poetry and love
has proved more fools than
rebels.
Mother and Son
a lady in pink sits on her porch
in tight capris
and her ass is a marvelous thing
pink and crouched in the sun
her ass is a marvelous thing,
and now she rises and claps her hands
toward the sea
and shouts:
TIM, TIM, COME BACK, COME BACK
HERE! it is a child in a walker
running across the cement
looking for butterflies
and a way out,
and she chases him:
TIM, TIM, COME BACK HERE!
I watch her butt
her pink tight magic butt
and it rises in my mind
like a Beethoven symphony
but she is not mine.
I have been quietly reading about
the 18th century glass harmonica
and somebody else will take the pink wobble
to direct hand;
but
really
I’ve seduced her on this Sunday afternoon
and I have seen each movement and crawl
of pink flesh beneath pink capris,
and she catches her boy in the sun
and he laughs back at her
already a man on the dare
exploring the new f
ront yards of his mind,
and he might resent that I have made love
to his mother this way
as he might resent other things
later
pink red dawn blood bombs
the squealing of sheep
the taxis that ride us out,
or he might put on a necktie
choke out the mind
and become like the rest
therefore
making my pink love
upon these black keys
wasted.
The Day I Kicked Away a Bankroll
and, I said, you can take your rich aunts and uncles
and grandfathers and fathers
and all their lousy oil
and their seven lakes
and their wild turkey
and buffalo
and the whole state of Texas,
meaning, your crow-blasts
and your Saturday night boardwalks,
and your 2-bit library
and your crooked councilmen
and your pansy artists—
you can take all these
and your weekly newspaper
and your famous tornadoes,
and your filthy floods
and all your yowling cats
and your subscription to Time,
and shove them, baby,
shove them.
I can handle a pick and ax again (I think)
and I can pick up
25 bucks for a 4-rounder (maybe);
sure, I’m 38
but a little dye can pinch the gray
out of my hair;
and I can still write a poem (sometimes),
don’t forget that, and even if
they don’t pay off,
it’s better than waiting for death and oil,
and shooting wild turkey,
and waiting for the world
to begin.
all right, bum, she said,
get out.
what? I said.
get out. you’ve thrown your
last tantrum.
I’m tired of your damned tantrums:
you’re always acting like a
character in an O’Neill play.
but I’m different, baby,
I can’t help
it.
you’re different, all right!
God, how different!
don’t slam
the door
when you leave.
but, baby, I love your
money!
you never once said
you loved me!
what do you want
a liar or a
lover?
you’re neither! out, bum,
out!
…but baby!
go back to O’Neill!
I went to the door,
softly closed it and walked away,
thinking: all they want
is a wooden Indian
to say yes and no
and stand over the fire and
not raise too much hell;
but you’re getting to be
an old man, kiddo;
next time play it closer
to the
vest.
The Dogs
certainly sought: one quiet time,
the horses of war
shot
with their broken legs,
air sprayed with the languor
of walking through a small neighborhood
at 6 p.m.
to smell porkchops frying,
the arrayed sensibility
of men living through light and sound,
and rain
if there be rain
or snow
if there be snow,
and pain,
living through wives and children
and the sensibility of fire
when it is cold; but
the dogs want a part of us,
they want all of us,
and coming in from the factory
to a bug-infected room
in East Kansas City
is not enough
(but who the enemy is
we are
not quite sure)
only
this morning
combing my hair
one eye on the clock,
wondering if another drink
would do,
I
think
I
saw them.
Imbecile Night
imbecile night,
corkscrew like a black guitar,
the day was heaving hell,
and now you come
crawling down the drainpipes
emptying your bladder
all over the place,
and I have drunk 9 bottles of beer,
a pint of vodka,
smoked 18 cigarettes,
and still you sit upon me,
you march the dead out upon
the balcony of my brain;
I see shaven eyebrows; lips, slippers;
my love, in an old robe, curses,
reaches out for me; the
Confederate Army runs; Hitler
turns a handspring…then
the yowling love of cats
saves me, brings me
back again…one more drink,
one more smoke, and in the drawer
a picture of a day at the beach
in 1955…god, I was young then,
younger anyhow; and at the window,
one or 2 lights, the city is dead
except for thieves and janitors,
and I am almost dead too, so
much gone, and I raise the bottle
in the center of the room
and you are everywhere
black imbecile night,
you are under my fingernails,
in my ears and mouth,
and here we stand,
you and I, a giant and a midget
locked in disorder, and when the
first sun comes down showing the spiders
at work, caterpillars crawling on razor threads,
you will let me go,
but now you crawl into the tomb of my bottle,
you wink at me and posture, the wallpaper is
weak with roses, the spiders dream of
gold-filled flies, and I walk the room again,
light another cigarette, feeling I really
should go mad, but not quite knowing
how.
A Kind of Lecture on a Dull Day When There Isn’t Even a Fly Around to Kill
don’t kid yourself:
something kills them all—
finally it becomes a matter of
dying of one thing or
the other—
cancer, a new car, sex, warm
art, poetry, ballet dancing,
a hardware store, smoking grass, peeking
out of windows or
wiping the ass with
cheap toilet
paper
when Christ began
he had the cross in mind
all along.
if I came down off this one
here
it would only be to find a
better one.
meanwhile, sitting with a drink in hand
I know, of course,
what it’s all
about, come to the point,
dismiss it, forget it,
hand to mouth
I kid myself a
little.
The Gift
that this is the gift
and I am ill with it;
it has sloshed around my bones
and brings me awake to
stare at walls.
musing often leads to madness,
o dog with an
old rag doll.
into and beyond terror.
seriousness will not do,
>
seriousness is gone:
we must carve from
fresh marble.
hell, jack, this is wise-time:
we must insist on camouflage,
they taught us that;
wine come down through
staring eye,
god coughed alive
through the indistinct smoke
of verse.
the light yellow mamas are gone
the garter high on the leg,
the charm of 18 is 80.
and the kisses,
snakes darting liquid silver
have stopped:
no man lives the magic
long.
until one morning it catches you;
you light the fire,
pour a hasty drink
as the psyche crawls like a mouse
into an empty pantry.
if you were El Greco
or even a watersnake
something could be done.
another drink.
well, rub your hands
and prove you are alive.
walk the floor. seriousness
will not do.
this is the gift,
this is the gift…
certainly the charm of dying
lies in the fact
that very little
is lost.
Object Lesson
It is always best, of course,
to push it in right below
the heart.
Don’t try to hit the
bull’s eye.
When seeking damage
aim for a large target
and strike several times.
He who pauses is
one damn fool.
I remember a discourse
with a leper
who suggested using
hooks and pulleys.
Not so. Not so.
He was very bitter.