Come on In! - Charles Bukowski [27]
the butler stood in front of Fuch and screamed:
fucky-boy! fucky-baby! fuck-face! fuck-brain!
where did your name come from, fuck-head?
how come you’re such a fuck-up?
etc….
they all started laughing uncontrollably
as the butler delivered his tirade in that
beautiful British accent.
they couldn’t stop laughing, they fell out of their
chairs and got down on the rug, pounding it and
laughing, Fuch, his lovely young wife and Raymond
in that sprawling mansion overlooking the shining sea.
I dreamt
that I was
in my room
having been
shot in the belly
by some tart.
snakes crawled the
floor
while outside
a schoolmaster
sang
an old school
song
then
the curtains
went up in
flame
the phone
rang
everything
seemed
in a hurry
to die
so I
decided to
die
which made all the
bad poets
happy
and all the good poets
glad
as they
rushed in
to fill
the vacancy
then the dream
was
over
I awakened
and I was
the Bad Boy
of poetry
all over
again.
the old couple next door
they were an old couple
and she slept with her
head at one end of the
bed
and he with his head
at the other
end.
they explained that
in case somebody
came in to murder
them
at least one of them
would have a
better chance to
escape.
when he died
she had a stuffed replica
made of his
body
and she slept with
her head at one end
of the bed
and the replica’s
head was down at the
other.
and just like in the
past,
at least once every
night,
she would awaken
in a fury and
scream,
“STOP
THAT
GODDAMNED
SNORING!”
men without women
finally,
goaded by the high price of
female relationships
he lashed his ankles to the
bedpoles
and tried to reach his
own
penis
with his
mouth:
close but no
cigar.
another of
nature’s dirty
tricks.
finally, in a
fury, he gave it a last
mad
attempt.
something cracked in his
back
and a blue flame
engulfed his
brain.
after 45 minutes of
agony
he got himself off
the bed,
found he couldn’t stand
straight.
each time he tried
a hundred knives cut
into both his back and
his soul.
the next day
he managed to drive to
the doctor’s
office
bent low over the
steering wheel
barely able to
see through the
windshield.
“how did you do this?”
the
doctor
asked.
he told the doctor
the honest
truth
because he felt
that an informed
diagnosis
was the only chance
for a complete
cure.
“what?” said the
doctor. “you’re
kidding?”
“no, that’s what
happened.”
“please excuse me,
I’ll be right
back.”
there was a dead
silence.
then he heard the
soft laughter of
the doctor and the
nurse from
behind the door.
then it grew
louder.
he sat there
looking out the office
window: there was a park outside
with lovely mature trees, it was
a fine summer afternoon
the birds were out in force and
for some odd reason
he longed for a shimmering bowl
of cool wet grapes.
the laughter behind the door
grew softer again
and then died out
as he sat there
waiting.
the “Beats”
some keep trying to connect me with
the “Beats”
but I was almost unpublished in the
1950s
and
even then
I very much
distrusted their vanity and
all that
public
posturing.
and when I met a few of them
later in life
I realized that most of my original
feelings for
them
hadn’t
changed.
some of my friends accepted
that; others thought that I
should change my
opinion.
my opinion remains the
same: writing is done
one person
at a time
one place
at a time
and all the gatherings
of
the
flock
have very little
to do
with
anything.
any one of them
could have made
a decent living as a
bill collector or a
used car
salesman
and they still
could
make an honest living
instead of bitching about
changes of fashion and
the ways of fate.
but instead
from the sad university
lecterns
and in the poetry halls
these hucksters of the
despoiled word
are still clamoring for
handouts,
still talking the same
dumb
shit.
hurry slowly
when will you take to the cane,
Chinaski?
when will you walk that short-legged