Come on In! - Charles Bukowski [25]
was stiff, rigor mortis had long ago set in, there he
was standing with his head down under the water
and the overhead light on …”
“listen, Monty,” I said, “your name is ‘Monty,’ isn’t
it?”
“yes, you’ve got it right.”
“I drove over here earlier but that was such a long time ago.
do you remember if the parking lot is out front
or in the back?”
“it’s straight out back.”
“goodnight, Monty.”
“goodnight.”
fortunately after all that
I still knew front from back. I climbed down off
that bar stool and made my way as best I could to the
exit.
my turn
the male reviewer writes that he
misses the poems about
the drinking bouts and the hard
women and the low
life.
the female reviewer says that
all I write about
is drinking and puking and bad
women
and a life nobody could
ever care
about.
their reviews are
on the same page
and are about
the same book
and
this is a poem
about
book reviewers.
skinny-dipping
as a young man
he went skinny-dipping with
Kafka
but it was too much
for him:
the sun burned him badly
and he was in bed
for two days
with a high
fever.
he was fat
and in great pain
as he twisted in the
sheets.
now Kafka didn’t get burned
and he visited the fat
boy
and the fat boy’s
mother
gave Kafka
hell.
and life continued.
and the fat boy
went on to write many
books and he became
famous in his own
time
while Kafka only wrote
a few books and remained
unknown.
the fat boy
even went on to live
comfortably in Paris
with a wife of some
importance
and they mixed with
many of the
great artists of their
day
while Kafka remained
unknown
and life continued.
a close call
pushing my cart through the supermarket
today
the thought crossed my mind
that I could start
knocking cans from the shelves and swiping
at rolls of towels, toilet paper and
silver foil,
I could throw oranges, bananas, tomatoes
into the air, I could take cans of
beer from the refrigerator and roll
them down the aisle, I could pull up
women’s skirts and grab their asses,
I could ram my shopping cart through
the plate glass window.
then another thought occurred to me:
people generally consider the consequences
before they do something
like that.
I pushed my cart along.
a young woman in a checkered skirt was
bending over in the pet food section.
I seriously considered grabbing her
ass
but I didn’t, I rolled on
by.
I had the items I needed and I pushed
my cart up to the checkout stand.
a lady in a red smock with a nameplate
waited on me.
the nameplate indicated her name was
“Robin.”
Robin looked at me: “how you doing?”
she asked.
“fine,” I told her.
and then she began tabulating and
bagging my purchases
with no idea that
the fellow standing there before her
had just two minutes ago been
one small step away from the
madhouse.
like a rock
through early evening
I
sit alone
listening to the sound of
the heater;
I fall into myself
like a rock dropped into some
ungrand canyon.
it hits bottom. I
lift my drink.
unfortunately
my hell is not any more hell
than the hell of a
fly.
that’s what makes it
difficult. and
nothing is less
profound than a
melancholy
drunk.
I must remember:
the death or the murder of a
drunk matters
less
than
nothing.
spider, on the wall:
why do you take
so long?
the waitress at the yogurt shop
is young, quite young,
and the boys are lined up on the bench
waiting for a table
as she waits on customers.
the boys say sly and
daring things to her
in very low voices.
they all want to
bed down with her
or
at least
get her
attention.
she hears the
whispered remarks,
really likes hearing them
but says,
again and again,
“shut up! oh, you shut up!”
it goes on and
on:
the boys continue and
she continues:
“oh, shut up!”
in a voice without
grace or melody
in a voice
without warmth or humor
in a voice
remarkably
ugly:
“oh, shut up now!”
but the eager boys
are not aware of her
tone of
voice
and the one who