You Get So Alone at Times That It Just Makes Sense - Charles Bukowski [3]
always be a bum!”
and I thought, if being a bum is to be the
opposite of what this son-of-a-bitch
is, then that’s what I’m going to
be.
and it’s too bad he’s been dead
so long
for now he can’t see
how beautifully I’ve succeeded
at
that.
education
at that small inkwell desk
I had trouble with the words
“sing” and “sign.”
I don’t know why
but
“sing” and “sign”:
it bothered
me.
the others went on and learned
new things
but I just sat there
thinking about
“sing” and “sign.”
there was something there
I couldn’t
overcome.
what it gave me was a
bellyache as
I looked at the backs of all those
heads.
the lady teacher had a
very fierce face
it ran sharply to a
point
and was heavy with white
powder.
one afternoon
she asked my mother to come
see her
and I sat with them
in the classroom
as they
talked.
“he’s not learning
anything,” the teacher
told my
mother.
“please give him a
chance, Mrs. Sims!”
“he’s not trying, Mrs.
Chinaski!”
my mother began to
cry.
Mrs. Sims sat there
and watched
her.
it went on for some
minutes.
then Mrs. Sims said,
“well, we’ll see what we
can do…”
then I was walking with
my mother
we were walking in
front of the school,
there was much green grass
and then the
sidewalk.
“oh, Henry,” my mother said,
“your father is so disappointed in
you, I don’t know what we are
going to do!”
father, my mind said,
father and father and
father.
words like that.
I decided not to learn anything
in that
school.
my mother walked along
beside me.
she wasn’t anything at
all.
and I had a bellyache
and even the trees we walked
under
seemed less than
trees
and more like everything
else.
downtown L.A.
throwing your shoe at 3 a.m. and smashing the window, then sticking
your head through the shards of glass and laughing as the phone rings
with authoritative threats as you curse back through the receiver, slam
it down as the woman screeches: “WHAT THE FUCK YA DOIN’, YA ASSHOLE!”
you smirk, look at her (what’s this?), you’re cut somewhere, love it, the
dripping of red onto your dirty torn undershirt, the whiskey roaring
through your invincibility: you’re young, you’re big, and the world
stinks from centuries of Humanity while
you’re on course
and there’s something left to drink—
it’s good, it’s a dramatic farce and you can handle it with
verve, style, grace and elite
mysticism.
another hotel drunk—thank god for hotels and whiskey and ladies of the
street!
you turn to her: “you chippy hunk of shit, don’t bad mouth me! I’m
the toughest guy in town, you don’t know who the hell you’re in this room
with!”
she just looks, half-believing…a cigarette dangling, she’s half-
insane, looking for an out; she’s hard, she’s scared, she’s been
fooled, taken, abused, used, over-
used…
but, under all that, to me she’s the flower, I see her as she was
before she was ruined by the lies: theirs and
hers.
to me, she’s new again as I am new: we have a chance
together.
I walk over and fill her drink: “you got class, doll, you’re not like the
others…”
she likes that and I like it too because to make a thing true all you’ve
got to do is believe.
I sit across from her as she tells me about her life, I give her refills,
light her cigarettes, I listen and the City of the Angels
listens: she’s had a hard row.
I get sentimental and decide not to fuck her: one more man for her
won’t help and one more woman for me won’t
matter—besides, she doesn’t look that
good.
actually, her life is boring and rather common but most are—mine is too
except when lifted by
whiskey
she gets into a crying-jag, she’s cute, really, and pitiful, all she wants
is what she always wanted, only it’s getting further and further
away.
then she stops crying, we just drink and smoke, it’s
peaceful—I won’t bother her that
night…
I have trouble trying to yank the pull-down bed from the wall, she
comes up to help, we pull together—suddenly, it releases—flings
itelf upon us, a hard death-like mindless object, it knocks us upon
our asses beneath