Come on In! - Charles Bukowski [23]
he sat in one chair.
I sat in another.
we had been up together many days
and nights.
there had been an hour’s heavy
silence.
then he leaned forward slightly
and whispered,
“you don’t have to worry about
worms when you die, Chinaski,
worms don’t infest dead
bodies, it’s a fairy tale.”
“that’s good to know,” I
said.
then we fell into another
hour’s heavy
silence.
bombed away
when I was younger
when we were all younger
one of T. S. Eliot’s most admired
and envied
lines
was:
“this is the way the world
ends,
not with a bang
but a
whimper.”
before Hiroshima
we all wished we had written that immortal
line.
however
poor T.S. lost
much of his immortality
because of that
monstrous
event.
but at least
he had his immortal status
for a
while
and like the old fighter
Beau Jack said
after blowing his fortune on
parties, suckerfish and
women:
“it beats not ever having been
the champ.”
these days
we don’t know how
or
when
the world will
conclude.
and under the circumstances,
the idea of
an immortal line or poem
seems somewhat
optimistic
not to mention the fact that
most of us now
do our whimpering long
before any possible
end.
the swimming pool will be going here
Mr. Cobweb, call me when the applause breaks out like a sprinkle of
henshit; 1671 wasn’t so long ago and tomorrow waits like a headless
anvil; but I’m still able to reach for my handkerchief
and wave to the ever-dancing girls (what dolls!) stomping away as
my brain in that dark cellar simmers in the stew.
sure, good things keep happening, eh? I mean, sometimes I fear
that I’m going to explode right through the top of my skull:
teeth, lungs, intestines, liver, bladder, balls and all, and
for hardly any reason! I’ve
got to be nuts, you
know! hope
so.
Mr. Cobweb, call me, I have an answering service, and oh yes, my friend
the great actor stuck his foot down into the dirt behind his mansion in
Malibu Canyon and told me: “the swimming pool will be going
here.”
mainly, though, what I like is how the sun keeps on trying and we
build sidewalks and walk on them, we go up and down in elevators, read
newspapers, take issue with events singular and worldly, keep exercising,
we keep going and going, it’s all rather fresh and exciting,
and new girls continue to get up to dance, those beautiful dancing
girls, I clutch the blade in my teeth and grin at them, Mr.
Cobweb!
and, Mr. Cobweb, there was another great actor, he was sitting with
his drink, looking down into his drink, he had a long thin sad neck
and I walked over and said, “listen, Harry, you’re always depressed, get
over it, you’re at the top of your game, things could be a lot worse, you
could be servicing Hondas at Jiffy Lube …”
Mr. Cobweb, even 1332 wasn’t so long ago, we are all blessed in this life,
looking around and trying to fit ourselves into the puzzle, it takes time,
a lifetime, many lifetimes, but we have to keep trying and that takes guts.
me? shit, I’ve had enough, it’s grand, sure, but let me nudge
out now. I distrust the whole tawdry game.
Mr. Cobweb, Al Capone has been dead a long time but it doesn’t seem so
long to me, I sit within these brown-yellow walls and there’s an old
rose stuck in an old drinking glass, it’s been there several months looking
at me and I reach out and touch it—the petals are still there but
they feel strangely like paper; why shouldn’t they, huh?
Mr. Cobweb, you tell the funniest jokes I’ve ever heard!
so call me any time, I always answer on the fourth ring, for
sure.
a bright boy
I was in one of those after-hour places.
I don’t know how long I had been there when
I noticed a dead cigar in my hand. I attempted
to light it and burned my nose.
“you ever meet Randy Newhall?” the guy
next to me asked.
“no …”
“he went through college in 2 years instead
of 4.”
I asked the barkeep to bring us a couple more
drinks.
“then he walked into the largest employment agency
in town, they had 50 applications for this
one job at a talent agency but
he just