bloodless,
brain gone, gamble gone, me, Bukowski,
gone …
“Isn’t it a lovely day, Mr. Bukowski?”
“O, yeah, yeah …” pissing in my pajamas, slop drooling out of my mouth.
2 young schoolboys run by—
“Hey, did you see that old guy?”
“Christ, yes, he made me sick!”
after all the threats to do so
somebody else has committed suicide for me at last.
the nurse stops the wheelchair, breaks a rose from a nearby bush, puts it in my hand.
I don’t even know
what it is. it might as well be my pecker
for all the good
it does.
he has on blue jeans and tennis shoes
and walks with two young girls
about his age.
every now and then he leaps
into the air and
clicks his heels together.
he’s like a young colt
but somehow he also reminds me
more of a tabby cat.
his ass is soft and
he has no more on his mind
than a gnat.
he jumps along behind his girls
clicking his heels together.
then he pulls the hair of one
runs over to the other and
squeezes her neck.
he has fucked both of them and
is pleased with himself.
it has all happened
so easily for him.
and I think, ah,
my little tabby cat
what nights and days
wait for you.
your soft ass
will be your doom.
your agony
will be endless
and the girls
who are yours now
will soon belong to other men
who didn’t get their cookies
and cream so easily and
so early.
the girls are practicing on you
the girls are practicing for other men
for someone out of the jungle
for someone out of the lion cage.
I smile as
I watch you walking along
clicking your heels together.
my god, boy, I fear for you
on that night
when you first find out.
it’s a sunny day now.
jump
while you
can.
a girlfriend came in
built me a bed
scrubbed and waxed the kitchen floor
scrubbed the walls
vacuumed
cleaned the toilet
the bathtub
scrubbed the bathroom floor
and cut my toenails and
my hair.
then
all on the same day
the plumber came and fixed the kitchen faucet
and the toilet
and the gas man fixed the heater
and the phone man fixed the phone.
now I sit here in all this perfection.
it is quiet.
I have broken off with all 3 of my girlfriends.
I felt better when everything was in disorder.
it will take me some months to get back to normal:
I can’t even find a roach to commune with.
I have lost my rhythm.
I can’t sleep.
I can’t eat.
I have been robbed of
my filth.
a poem is a city filled with streets and sewers
filled with saints, heroes, beggars, madmen,
filled with banality and booze,
filled with rain and thunder and periods of
drought, a poem is a city at war,
a poem is a city asking a clock why,
a poem is a city burning,
a poem is a city under guns
its barbershops filled with cynical drunks,
a poem is a city where God rides naked
through the streets like Lady Godiva,
where dogs bark at night, and chase away
the flag; a poem is a city of poets,
most of them quite similar
and envious and bitter …
a poem is this city now,
50 miles from nowhere,
9:09 in the morning,
the taste of liquor and cigarettes,
no police, no lovers, walking the streets,
this poem, this city, closing its doors,
barricaded, almost empty,
mournful without tears, aging without pity,
the hardrock mountains,
the ocean like a lavender flame,
a moon destitute of greatness,
a small music from broken windows …
a poem is a city, a poem is a nation,
a poem is the world …
and now I stick this under glass
for the mad editor’s scrutiny,
and night is elsewhere
and faint gray ladies stand in line,
dog follows dog to estuary,
the trumpets bring on gallows
as small men rant at things
they cannot do.