You Get So Alone at Times That It Just Makes Sense - Charles Bukowski [19]
pounding, tremendous volume
there were 40 or so
in that room
and that band
stiffened a good
10 or 15 of us by
6 a.m.
and they rolled them right out
to the morgue elevator
over to the west, a very
busy elevator.
I stayed in Death’s waiting room for
3 days.
I watched them roll out close to
fifty.
they finally got tired of waiting
for me
and rolled me
out of there.
a nice black homosexual fellow
pushed me
along.
“you want to know the odds of
coming out of that ward?”
he asked.
“yeah.”
“50 to one.”
“hell,
got any
smokes?”
“no, but I can get you
some.”
we rolled along
as the sun managed to come through the
wire-webbed windows
and I began to think of
that first drink when
I got
out.
concrete
he had set up the
reading
he was one of the foremost practitioners
of concrete poetry
and after I read I went
up there to where he
lived
his place was high in the
mountains and
we drank and looked out the large
window at very large
birds
flying about
gliding mostly
he said they were eagles
(he might have been putting me
on)
and his wife played the
piano
a bit of
Brahms
he didn’t talk
much
he was a concrete
man
his wife was very
beautiful
and the way the eagles
glided
that was very beautiful
also
then it was twilight
then it was night
and you couldn’t see the eagles
anymore
it had been an afternoon
reading
we drank until one
a.m.
then I got into my car
and drove the winding
narrow road
d
o
w
n
I was too drunk to fear the
danger
when I got to my place I
drank two bottles of
beer and went to
bed.
then the phone
rang
it was my
girlfriend
she had been calling all
night
she was angry
she accused me of fornicating with
another
I told her about the beautiful
eagles
how they glided
and that I had been with a concrete
man
bullshit
she said
and hung
up
I stretched out there
looked at the ceiling and
wondered what the eagles
ate
then the phone rang
again
and she asked
did the concrete man have a
concrete wife and did you stick you
dick in her?
no
I answered
I fucked an
eagle
she hung up
again
concrete poetry
I thought
what the hell is
it?
then I went to sleep and I
slept and I
slept.
Gay Paree
the cafes in Paris are just like you imagine
they are:
very well-dressed people, snobs, and
the snob-waiter comes up and takes your
order
as if you were a
leper.
but after you get your wine
you feel better
you begin to feel like a snob
yourself
and you give the guy at the next table
a sidelong glance
he catches you and
you twitch your nose
a bit as if you had just smelled
dogshit
then you
look away.
and the food
when it arrives
is always too mild.
the French are delicate with their
spices.
and
as you eat and drink
you realize that everybody is
terrorized:
too bad
too bad
such a lovely city
full of
cowards.
then
more wine brings more
realization:
Paris is the world and the world
is
Paris.
drink to it
and
because of
it.
I thought the stuff tasted worse than usual
I used to drink with Jane
every night
until two or
three
a.m.
and I had to
report for
work
at 5:30
a.m.
one morning
I was sitting
casing mail
next to this
healthy
religious
fellow
and he said,
“hey, I smell
something, don’t
you?”
I answered in the
negative.
“actually,” he said,
“it smells something
like
gasoline.”
“well,” I told
him, “don’t light a
match or
I might
explode.”
the blade
there was no parking near the post office where
I worked at night
so I found this splendid spot
(nobody seemed to care to park there)
on a dirt road behind a
slaughterhouse
and as I sat in my car
just before work
smoking a last cigarette
I was treated to the same
scene
as each evening tailed off into
night—
the pigs were herded out of the
yard pens
and onto runways
by a man making pig sounds and
flapping a large canvas
and the pigs ran wildly
up the runway
toward the waiting
blade,
and many evenings
after watching that
after finishing my
smoke
I just started the