On Love. Charles Bukowski

of us or it, the sad strictured palsy of glassed

      and frozen and sterile madhouse background

      enough to make you want to walk out into the sun again

      and look around, but in the park and on the streets

      the dead keep on moving through as if they were already

      in a museum. maybe love is sex. maybe love is a bowl of

      mush. maybe love is a radio shut off.

      anyway, it was a party.

      a week ago.

      today I went to the track with roses in my eyes. dollars in

      my

      pocket. headlines in the alley. it’s over a hundred miles by

      train,

      one way. a party of drunks coming back, broke again, the

      dream

      shot again, bodies wobbling; yakking in the barcar and I’m

      in there

      too, drinking, scribbling what’s left of hope in the dim light,

      the

      barman was a Negro and I was white. bad fix. we made

      it.

      no party.

      the rich newspapers keep talking about “The Negro

      Revolution” and

      “The Breakdown of the Negro Family.” the train hit town,

      finally,

      and I got rid of the 2 homosexuals who were buying me

      drinks, and I

      went to piss and make a phonecall and as I came through

      the

      entranceway to the Men’s crapper here were 2 Negroes at a

      shoeshine

      stand shining the shoes of whitemen and the whitemen let

      them do

      it.

      I walked down to a Mexican bar

      and had a few whiskeys and when I left the barmaid gave

      me a

      little slip of paper with her name, address and phone

      number upon