under—shock and loss of
blood.
hell, I know that,
and now the lion has my
other arm
I try to knee him
his tail knocks a picture off the wall
a picture of a Dutch windmill and a
pond
it is a fine day
the world looks good
I feel I’d like to be
swimming or fishing or sleeping
under a tree
but the lion will not
let go
then
my other arm is
gone
the people kneel to
pray
all but the
doctor
the lion is clawing at my
chest
trying to get at the
heart
I ask the doctor to light me a
cigarette and
he does
then the
priest walks
in
the lion does not bother the priest
yet
I’d heard about the
lion
about how sometimes he was fast or sometimes he was
slow
I knew he usually preferred older people
although sometimes he even ate
babies or young men and
girls
god o mighty! save me! save me!
I scream
but the people do not
move
they let the lion
eat me
the priest mumbles incantations I do not
understand
the doctor turns his back and looks
out the window
it is the month of July
with the taste of butter in the air
and I am rapidly becoming a
keepsake thing
as before my eyes I see the
moth, butcherbird, dove, vulture and
angel
burning
the lion eats my heart
and the doctor puts the sheet over my
head
and it is early in the
morning
very early in the
morning
and decent people are still
in bed
most of them asleep with bad breath
and very few of them making
love
and most of them
not like me
yet
vacancy
sun-stroked women
without men
on a Santa Monica monday;
the men are working or in jail
or insane;
one girl floats in a rubber suit,
waiting…
houses slide off the edges of cliffs
and down into the sea.
the bars are empty
the lobster eating houses are empty;
it’s a recession, they say,
the good days are
over.
you can’t tell an unemployed man
from an artist any more,
they all look alike
and the women look the same,
only a little more desperate.
we stop at a hippie hole
in Topanga Canyon…
and wait, wait, wait;
the whole area of the canyon and the beach
is listless
useless
VACANCY, it says, PEOPLE WANTED.
the wood has no fire
the sea is dirty
the hills are dry
the temples have no bells
sun-stroked women without men
one sailboat
life drowned.
3:16 and one half…
here I’m supposed to be a great poet
and I’m sleepy in the afternoon
here I am aware of death like a giant bull
charging at me
and I’m sleepy in the afternoon
here I’m aware of wars and men fighting in the ring
and I’m aware of good food and wine and good women
and I’m sleepy in the afternoon
I’m aware of a woman’s love
and I’m sleepy in the afternoon,
I lean into the sunlight behind a yellow curtain
I wonder where the summer flies have gone
I remember the most bloody death of Hemingway
and I’m sleepy in the afternoon.
some day I won’t be sleepy in the afternoon
some day I’ll write a poem that will bring volcanoes
to the hills out there
but right now I’m sleepy in the afternoon
and somebody asks me, “Bukowski, what time is it?”
and I say, “3:16 and a half.”
I feel very guilty, I feel obnoxious, useless,
demented, I feel
sleepy in the afternoon,
they are bombing churches, o.k., that’s o.k.,
the children ride ponies in the park, o.k., that’s o.k.,
the libraries are filled with thousands of books of knowledge,
great music sits inside the nearby radio
and I am sleepy in the afternoon,
I have this tomb within myself that says,
ah, let the others do it, let them win,
let me sleep,
wisdom is in the dark
sweeping through the dark like brooms,
I’m going where the summer flies have gone,
try to catch me.
the rat
with one punch, at the age of 16 and 1/2,
I knocked out my father,
a cruel shiny bastard with bad breath,
and I didn’t go home for some time, only now and then
to try to get a dollar from
dear momma.
it was 1937 in Los Angeles and it was a hell of a
Vienna.
I ran with these older guys
but for them it was the same:
mostly breathing gasps of hard air
and robbing gas stations that didn’t have any
money, and a few lucky among us
worked part-time as Western Union messenger
boys.
we slept in rented rooms that weren’t rented—
and we drank ale and wine
with the shades down
being quiet quiet
and then awakening the whole building
with a fistfight
breaking mirrors and chairs and lamps
and then running down the stairway
just before the police arrived
some of us soldiers of the future
running through the empty starving streets and alleys of
Los Angeles
and all of us
getting together later
in Pete’s room
a small cube of space under a stairway, there we were,
packed in there
without women
without cigarettes
without anything to drink,
while the rich pawed away at their many
choices and the young girls let
them,
the same girls who spit at our shadows as we
walked past.
it was a hell of a
Vienna.
3 of us under that stairway
were killed in World War II.
another one is now manager of a mattress
company.
me? I’m 30 years older,
the town is 4 or 5 times as big
but just as rotten
and the girls still spit on my
shadow, another war is building for another
reason, and I can hardly get a job now
for the same reason I couldn’t then:
I don’t know anything, I can’t do
anyt
hing.
sex? well, just the old ones knock on my door after
midnight. I can’t sleep and they see the lights and are
curious.
the old ones. their husbands no longer want them,
their children are gone, and if they show me enough good
leg (the legs go last)
I go to bed with
them.
so the old women bring me love and I smoke their cigarettes
as they
talk talk talk
and then we go to bed again and
I bring them love
and they feel good and
talk
until the sun comes
up, then we
sleep.
it’s a hell of a
Paris.
hot
I was up under the attic and it was almost summer
and I sat around drinking wine
and watching the hot pigeons suffer and fuck
on the hot roof
and I listened to sounds on my radio and
drank the wine
and I sat there naked and sweating
and wishing I were back in the journalism class
where everybody was a
genius.
it was even hot when I got thrown out of there
for non-payment of rent and I signed on with a
track gang going West—the windows wouldn’t open
and the seats and sides of the cars were 100 years old with
dust. they gave us cans of food but no openers
and we busted the cans against the side of the seats
ate raw hash, raw lima beans
the water tasted like candlewick
and I leaped out under a line of trees in the middle of
Texas, some small town, and the police found me asleep
on a park bench and put me in a cell with only a crapper,
no water, no sink, and they questioned me about robberies and
murders,
under a hot light
and getting nothing
they drove me to the next town 17 miles away
the big one kicked me in the ass
and after a good night’s sleep
I went into the local library
where the young lady librarian seemed to take an interest in my
reading habits
and later we went to bed
and I woke up with teethmarks all over me and I said,
Christ, watch it, baby, you might give me
cancer!
you’re an idiot, she said.
I suppose that I
was.
radio
strange eyes in my head
I’m the coward and the fool and the clown
and I listen to a man telling me that I can get a
restaurant guide and an expanding cultural events calendar
I’m just not here today
I don’t want restaurants and expanding cultural events
I want an old shack in the hills
rent free
with enough to eat and drink until I die
strange eyes in my head
strange ways
no chance
ariel
oh my god, oh my dear god
that we should end up
on the end of a rope
in some slimy bathroom
far from Paris,
far from thighs that care,
our feet hanging down
above the simplicity
of stained tile,
telephone ringing,
letters unopened,
dogs pissing in the street…
greater men than I
have failed to agree with Life.
I wish you could have met my brother, Marty:
vicious, intelligent, endearing,
doing
quite well.
the passing of a dark gray moment
Standing here,
doing what?
as exposed as an azalea
to a bee.
Where’s the axman,
where’s it done?
They tiptoe round
on rotting wood,
peeking into shelves.
Summertime!
Where’s the sun,
where’s the sea?
The god’s are gone!
Everything hums
with humble severity…
they wipe their faces
with cotton and rags
—and wait for morning.
Where’s the fire,
where’s the burn?
Rain-spouts! and rats
printing dirge-notes in ashes…
a voice plows my brain:
“the gods are dead.”
Where’s the time,
where’s the place?
Somewhat eased, extinguished,
I listen behind me
to my bird eating seed,
hoping he’ll chitter
and peep some pink
back into white elbows.
I love that bird,
the simple needing of seed, so clear:
A god can be anything
that’s needed right away.
The sound of aircraft overhead
winging a man…
stronger now, not yet pure,
but moving away the dread.
consummation of grief
I even hear the mountains
the way they laugh
up and down their blue sides
and down in the water
the fish cry
and all the water
is their tears.
I listen to the water
on nights I drink away
and the sadness becomes so great
I hear it in my clock
it becomes knobs upon my dresser
it becomes paper on the floor
it becomes a shoehorn
a laundry ticket
it becomes
cigarette smoke
climbing a chapel of dark vines…
it matters little
very little love is not so bad
or very little life
what counts
is waiting on walls
I was born for this
I was born to hustle roses down the avenues of the dead.
those sons of bitches
the dead come running sideways
holding toothpaste ads,
the dead are drunk on New Year’s eve
satisfied at Christmas
thankful on Thanksgiving
bored on the 4th of July
loafing on Labor Day
confused at Easter
cloudy at funerals
clowning at hospitals
nervous at birth;
the dead shop for stockings and shorts
and belts and rugs and vases and
coffeetables,
the dead dance with the dead
the dead sleep with the dead
the dead eat with the dead.
the dead get hungry looking at hogs’ heads.
the dead get rich
the dead get deader
those sons of bitches
this graveyard above the ground
one tombstone for the mess,
I say:
humanity, you never had it
from the beginning.
the hunt
by god, it was a long day
the 3 horse broke down
the cook burned his hand,
e. pitts was recalled from the sandlots
because the regular back had a
hamstring,
and the grunion ran again
through the oily sea
to plant eggs on shore and be caught
by unemployed drunks
with flopping canvas hats
and no woman at all.
offshore you could see the light
s of a
passing yacht
with a party on board,
lots of girls and jokes and the
rest,
and they put the 3 horse in
the truck, carried him away from the
crowd and shot
him, little things like that and other
things
are what sometimes create unemployed drunks
with flopping canvas hats,
sans woman,
trying to grab for
grunion.
the big fire
I’m on fire like the cactus in the desert
I’m on fire like the palms of an acrobat
I’m on fire like the fangs of the spider
I’m on fire with you and me
I’m on fire walking into a drugstore
I’m on fire I’m on fire
the girl hands me my change and
laughs at me