You Get So Alone at Times That It Just Makes Sense - Charles Bukowski [6]
work
because that tremendous
brave optimism
that buoyed everybody up
so well
during the depression
just turned to
sugar water
during
good times.
he died
a dwindling legend
with a huge handlebar
mustache
just like his father
used to have
in the old Fresno
Armenian way
in a world that
could no longer
use
William.
January
here
you see this
hand
here you see this
sky
this
bridge
hear this
sound
the agony of the
elephant
the nightmare of the
midget
while
caged parrots
sit in a
flourish of
color
while pieces of
people
fall over the
edge
like pebbles
like
rocks
madhouses screaming in
pain
as the royalty of the
world is
photographed
say
on horseback
or
say
watching a procession
in their
honor
as
the junkies junk
as the alkies drink
as the whores whore
as the killers kill
the albatross blinks its
eyes
the weather stays
mostly
the same.
sunny side down
NOTHING. sitting in a cafe having breakfast. NOTHING. the waitress,
and the people eating. the traffic runs by. doesn’t matter what
Napoleon did, what Plato said. Turgenev could have been a fly. we are worn-
down, hope stamped out. we reach for coffee cups like the robots about
to replace us. courage at Salerno, bloodbaths on the Eastern front didn’t
matter. we know that we are beaten. NOTHING. now it’s just a matter of
continuing
anyhow—
chew the food and read the paper. we
read about ourselves. the news is
bad. something about
NOTHING.
Joe Louis long dead as the medfly invades Beverly Hills.
well, at least we can sit and
eat. it’s been some rough
trip. it could be
worse. it could be worse than
NOTHING.
let’s get more coffee from the
waitress.
that bitch! she knows we are trying to get her
attention.
she just stands there doing
NOTHING.
it doesn’t matter if Prince Charles falls off his horse
or that the hummingbird is so seldom
seen
or that we are too senseless to go
insane.
coffee. give us more of that NOTHING
coffee.
the man in the brown suit
fuck, he was small
maybe 5-3,
135 pounds,
I didn’t like
him,
he sat there at his desk
at the
bank
and as I waited in line
he seemed to have a way
of glancing at
me
and I stared
back,
I don’t know what
it was
that caused the
animosity.
he had this little mustache
that drooped
at the ends,
he was in his mid-forties
and like most people who worked
in banks
he had a non-committal
yet self-important
personality.
one day I almost went
over the railing
to ask him
what the hell
was he looking
at?
today I went in
and stood in line
and saw him leave his
desk.
one of the lady tellers was
having a problem
with a man
at her
window
and the man
in the brown suit
began to hold
counsel with both of
them.
suddenly
the man in the brown suit
vaulted the
railing
got behind the other
man
wrapped his arms
about him
then dragged him along
to a latch
entrance
along the railing
reached over
unhooked the latch
while still managing to
hold the
man.
then he dragged him
in there
latched the
gate
and while holding the
man
he told one of the
girls,
“Phone the
police.”
the man he was holding was
about 20, black, a good 6-2,
maybe 190 pounds,
and I thought, hey,
break loose, man, jail is a
long time.
but he just stood
there
being
held.
I left before the
police
arrived.
the next time
I went to the bank
the man in the brown suit
was behind his
desk.
and when he glanced at
me
I smiled just a
little.
a magician, gone…
they go one by one and as they do it gets closer
to me and
I don’t mind that so much, it’s
just that I can’t be practical about the
mathematics that take others
to the vanishing point.
last Saturday
one of racing’s greatest harness drivers
died—little Joe O’Brien.
I had seen him win many a
race. he
had a peculiar rocking motion
he flicked the reins
and rocked his body back and
forth. he
applied this motion
during the stretch run and
it was quite dramatic and
effective…
he was so small that he couldn’t