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thought of.

who put this brain inside of me?

it cries

it demands

it says that there is a chance.

it will not say

“no.”

funhouse

I drive to the beach at night

in the winter

and sit and look at the burned-down amusement pier

wonder why they just let it sit there

in the water.

I want it out of there,

blown up,

vanished,

erased;

that pier should no longer sit there

with madmen sleeping inside

the burned-out guts of the fun house…

it’s awful, I say, blow the damn thing up,

get it out of my eyes,

that tombstone in the sea.

the madmen can find other holes

to crawl into.

I used to walk that pier when I was 8

years old.

the poetry reading

at high noon

at a small college near the beach

sober

the sweat running down my arms

a spot of sweat on the table

I flatten it with my finger

blood money blood money

my god they must think I love this like the others

but it’s for bread and beer and rent

blood money

I’m tense lousy feel bad

poor people I’m failing I’m failing

a woman gets up

walks out

slams the door

a dirty poem

somebody told me not to read dirty poems

here

it’s too late.

my eyes can’t see some lines

I read it

out—

desperate trembling

lousy

they can’t hear my voice

and I say,

I quit, that’s it, I’m

finished.

and later in my room

there’s scotch and beer:

the blood of a coward.

this then

will be my destiny:

scrabbling for pennies in dark tiny halls

reading poems I have long since become tired

of.

and I used to think

that men who drove buses

or cleaned out latrines

or murdered men in alleys were

fools.

somebody

god I got the sad blue blues,

this woman sat there and she

said

are you really Charles

Bukowski?

and I said

forget that

I do not feel good

I’ve got the sad sads

all I want to do is

fuck you

and she laughed

she thought I was being

clever

and…ust looked up her long slim legs of heaven

I saw her liver and her quivering intestine

I saw Christ in there

jumping to a folk-rock

all the long lines of starvation within me

rose

and I walked over

and grabbed her on the couch

ripped her dress up around her face

and I didn’t care

rape or the end of the earth

one more time

to be there

anywhere

real

yes

her pan ties were on the

floor

and my cock went in

my cock my god my cock went in

I was Charles

Somebody.

the colored birds

it is a highrise apt. next door

and he beats her at night and she screams and nobody stops it

and I see her the next day

standing in the driveway with curlers in her hair

and she has her huge buttocks jammed into black

slacks and she says, standing in the sun,

“god damn it, 24 hours a day in this place, I never go anywhere!”

then he comes out, proud, the little matador,

a pail of shit, his belly hanging over his bathing trunks—

he might have been a handsome man once, might have,

now they both stand there and he says,

“I think I’m goin’ for a swim.”

she doesn’t answer and he goes to the pool and

jumps into the fishless, sandless water, the peroxide-codeine water,

and I stand by the kitchen window drinking coffee

trying to unboil the fuzzy, stinking picture—

after all, you can’t live elbow to elbow to people without wanting to

draw a number on them.

every time my toilet flushes they can hear it. every time they

go to bed I can hear them.

soon she goes inside and then comes out with 2 colored birds

in a cage. I don’t know what they are. they don’t talk. they

just move a little, seeming to twitch their tail-feathers and

shit. that’s all they do.

she stands there looking at them.

he comes out: the little tuna, the little matador, out of the pool,

a dripping unbeautiful white, the cloth of his wet suit gripping.

“get those birds in the house!”

“but the birds need sun!”

“I said, get those birds in the house!”

“the birds are gonna die!”

“you listen to me, I said, GET THOSE BIRDS IN THE HOUSE!”

she bends and lifts them, her huge buttocks in the