Love Is a Dog From Hell_ Poems, 1974-1977 - Charles Bukowski [35]
“yeah?”
“yeah.”
we said goodbye.
I liked that
phone call.
shit time
half drunk
I left her place
her warm blankets
and I was hungover
didn’t even know what town
it was.
I walked along and
I couldn’t find my car.
but I knew it was somewhere.
and then I was lost
too.
I walked around. it was a
Wednesday morning and I could
see the ocean to the south.
but all that drinking:
the shit was about to pour
out of me.
I walked towards the
sea.
I saw a brown brick
structure at the edge
of the sea.
I walked in. there was an
old guy groaning on one of
the pots.
“hi, buddy,” he said.
“hi,” I said.
“it’s hell out there,
isn’t it?” the old guy
asked.
“it is,” I answered.
“need a drink?”
“never before noon.”
“what time you got?”
“11:58.”
“we got two minutes.”
I wiped, flushed, pulled up my
pants and walked over.
the old man was still on his pot,
groaning.
he pointed to a bottle of wine
at his feet
it was almost done
and I picked it up and took about
half what remained.
I handed him a very old and wrinkled
dollar
then walked outside on the lawn
and puked it up.
I looked at the ocean and the
ocean looked good, full of blues and
greens and sharks.
I walked back out of there
and down the street
determined to find my automobile.
it took me one hour and 15 minutes
and when I found it
I got in and drove off
pretending that I knew just as much
as the next
man.
madness
I don’t beat the walls with my fists
I just sit
but it rushes in
a tide of it.
the woman in the court behind me howls,
weeps every night.
sometimes the county comes
and takes her away for a day or two.
I believed she was suffering the loss
of a great love
until one day she came over and told me about
it—
she had lost 8 apartment houses
to a gigolo who had swindled her out
of them.
she was howling and weeping over loss of property.
she began weeping as she told me
then with a mouth lined with stale lipstick
and smelling of garlic and onions
she kissed me and told me:
“Hank, nobody loves you if you don’t have money.”
she’s old, almost as old as I am.
she left, still weeping…
the other morning at 7:30 a.m. two black
attendants came with their stretcher,
only they knocked on my door.
“come on, man,” said the tallest
one.
“wait,” I said, “there’s a mistake.”
I was terribly hungover
standing in my torn bathrobe
hair hanging down over my eyes.
“this is the address they gave us, man,
this is 5437 and 2/5’s isn’t it?”
“yes.”
“come on, man, don’t give us no shit.”
“the lady you want is in the back there.”
they both walked around back.
“this door here?”
“no, no, that’s my back door. look go up those steps behind
you there. it’s the door to the east, the one with the mailbox
hanging loose.”
they went up and banged on the door. I watched them take her
away. they didn’t use the stretcher. she walked between them.
and the thought occurred to me that they were taking the wrong
one but I wasn’t sure.
a 56 year old poem
I went with two ladies
down to Venice
to look for antique furniture.
I parked in back of the store
and went in with them.
$125 for a clock, $700 for 6 chairs.
I stopped looking.
the ladies moved around
looking at everything.
the ladies had class.
I waved goodbye to one of the ladies
and walked out.
it was Sunday and the bar
wasn’t much better,
everybody was nervous and young
and blonde and pale.
I finished my drink, got 4 beers
at the liquor store
and sat in my car drinking them.
finishing the 4th beer
the ladies came out.
they asked me if I was all right.
I told them that every experience
meant something
and that they had pulled me out of
my usual murky
current.
the one I knew best had bought a table
with a marble top for $100.
she owned her own business and was a
civilized person.
she was civilized enough to know a neighbor
who had a van
and while I sat in her apartment drinking
1974 Zeller Schwarze Katz
they went down and got the table.
later she wanted to know what I thought about
the table and I said I thought