Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame

by Charles Bukowski

  and it moved

  like something

  alive.

  I sat and watched it

  until I had smoked the

  5 or 6

  cigarettes left.

  then I got up

  and went to bed.

  man in the sun

  she reads to me from the New Yorker

  which I don’t buy, don’t know

  how they get in here, but it’s

  something about the Mafia

  one of the heads of the Mafia

  who ate too much and had it too easy

  too many fine women patting his

  walnuts, and he got fat sucking at good

  cigars and young breasts and he

  has these heart attacks—and so

  one day somebody is driving him

  in this big car along the road

  and he doesn’t feel so good

  and he asks the boy to stop and let

  him out and the boy lays him out

  along the road in the fine sunshine.

  I don’t know whether it’s Crete or

  Sicily or Italy proper

  but he’s lying there in the sunshine

  and before he dies he says:

  how beautiful life can be, and

  then he’s gone.

  sometimes you’ve got to kill 4 or 5

  thousand men before you somehow

  get to believe that the sparrow

  is immortal, money is piss and

  that you have been wasting

  your time.

  woman

  this head like a saucer

  decorated with everything

  as lip to lip we hang

  in mechanical joy;

  my hands blaze with arias

  but I think of books

  on anatomy,

  and I fall from you

  as nations burn in anger…

  to recover from most pitiful error

  and rebuild, this is it

  loss and mending

  until they take us in.

  the glory of a Saturday afternoon

  like biting into an old peach

  and you walk across the room

  heavy with everything

  except my love.

  like all the years wasted

  yesterday drunken Alice

  gave me

  a jar of fig jam

  and today she

  whistles

  for her cat

  but

  he will not

  come—

  he is with the horses

  at a

  tub of beer

  or

  in room 21

  at the Crown Hill

  Hotel

  or he is at the

  Crocker

  Citizens National

  Bank

  or

  he arrived in

  New York City at

  5:30 p.m.

  with paper suitcase

  and

  $7.

  next to Alice

  in her yard

  a paper goose

  walks

  upside down

  on a carton that says:

  California

  Oranges.

  drunken Alice whistles.

  no good. no good.

  work slowly.

  everybody tries hard

  but the

  gods.

  Alice goes in for a

  drink, comes

  out.

  whistles again

  all the way to a

  park bench in

  El Paso—

  and her love comes

  running out of the

  bushes

  bright-eyed as a

  color film

  and not waiting

  for

  Monday.

  we go in

  together.

  they, all of them, know

  ask the sidewalk painters of Paris

  ask the sunlight on a sleeping dog

  ask the 3 pigs

  ask the paperboy

  ask the music of Donizetti

  ask the barber

  ask the murderer

  ask the man leaning against a wall

  ask the preacher

  ask the maker of cabinets

  ask the pickpocket or the

  pawnbroker or the glass blower

  or the seller of manure or

  the dentist

  ask the revolutionist

  ask the man who sticks his head in

  the mouth of a lion

  ask the man who will release the next

  atom bomb

  ask the man who thinks he’s Christ

  ask the bluebird who comes home

  at night

  ask the peeping Tom

  ask the man dying of cancer

  ask the man who needs a bath

  ask the man with one leg

  ask the blind

  ask the man with the lisp

  ask the opium eater

  ask the trembling surgeon

  ask the leaves you walk upon

  ask a rapist or a

  streetcar conductor or an old man

  pulling weeds in his garden

  ask a bloodsucker

  ask a trainer of fleas

  ask a man who eats fire

  ask the most miserable man you can

  find in his most

  miserable moment

  ask a teacher of judo

  ask a rider of elephants

  ask a leper, a lifer, a lunger

  ask a professor of history

  ask the man who never cleans his

  fingernails

  ask a clown or ask the first face you see

  in the light of day

  ask your father

  ask your son and

  his son to be

  ask me

  ask a burned-out bulb in a paper sack

  ask the tempted, the damned, the foolish

  the wise, the slavering

  ask the builders of temples

  ask the men who have never worn shoes

  ask Jesus

  ask the moon

  ask the shadows in the closet

  ask the moth, the monk, the madman

  ask the man who draws cartoons for

  The New Yorker

  ask a goldfish

  ask a fern shaking to a tapdance

  ask the map of India

  ask a kind face

  ask the man hiding under your bed

  ask the man you hate the most in this

  world

  ask the man who drank with Dylan Thomas

  ask the man who laced Jack Sharkey’s gloves

  ask the sad-faced man drinking coffee

  ask the plumber

  ask the man who dreams of ostriches every

  night

  ask the ticket-taker at a freak show

  ask the counterfeiter

  ask the man sleeping in an alley under

  a sheet of paper

  ask the conquerors of nations and planets

  ask the man who has just cut off his finger

  ask a bookmark in the bible

  ask the water dripping from a faucet while

  the phone rings

  ask perjury

  ask the deep blue paint

  ask the parachute jumper

  ask the man with the bellyache

  ask the divine eye so sleek and swimming

  ask the boy wearing tight pants in

  the expensive academy

  ask the man who slipped in the bathtub

  ask the man chewed by the shark

  ask the one who sold me the unmatched

  gloves

  ask these and all those I have left out

  ask the fire the fire the fire—

  ask even the liars

  ask anybody you please at anytime

  you please on any d
ay you please

  whether it’s raining or whether

  the snow is there or whether

  you are stepping out onto a porch

  yellow with warm heat

  ask this ask that

  ask the man with birdshit in his hair

  ask the torturer of animals

  ask the man who has seen many bullfights

  in Spain

  ask the owners of new Cadillacs

  ask the famous

  ask the timid

  ask the albino

  and the statesman

  ask the landlords and the poolplayers

  ask the phonies

  ask the hired killers

  ask the bald men and the fat men

  and the tall men and the

  short men

  ask the one-eyed men, the

  oversexed and undersexed men

  ask the men who read all the newspaper

  editorials

  ask the men who breed roses

  ask the men who feel almost no pain

  ask the dying

  ask the mowers of lawns and the attenders

  of football games

  ask any of these or all of these

  ask ask ask and

  they’ll all tell you:

  a snarling wife on the balustrade is more

  than a man can bear.

  a nice day

  the virus holds

  the concepts give way like rotten

  shoelaces

  toothache and bacon dance on the

  lawn

  I open a drawer to dirty

  stockings

  a stockbroker’s universe

  steel balls flutter like

  butterflies

  I can feel doom like

  something under the sheets with bristles

  that stinks and moves

  toward me

  the mailman is insane and

  hands me a bagful of snails

  eaten inside

  out

  by some rat of decay

  in the madhouse a man kisses the walls

  and dreams of sailboating down some

  cool Nile

  I read about the bullfights the ballgames

  the boxing matches

  things continue to fight

  and in the churches they play at parlor

  games and peek at legs

  I go outside to absolutely

  nothing

  a square round of orange zero

  headpieces over obscene mouths that form

  at me like suckerfish

  good morning, nice day isn’t it?

  a fat woman says

  I am unable to answer

  and down the sidewalk I go

  shamed

  unable to tell her

  of the knife inside me

  I do notice though the sun is shining

  that the flowers are pulled up on

  their strings

  and I on mine:

  belly, bellybutton, buttocks, bukowski

  waving walking

  teeth of ice with the taste of tar

  tear ducts propagandized

  shoes acting like shoes

  I arrive on time

  in the blazing midday of

  mourning.

  III

  At Terror Street and Agony Way

  Poems 1965-1968

  it was a splendid day in Spring

  and outside we could hear the birds

  that hadn’t been killed

  by the smog

  beerbottle

  a very miraculous thing just happened:

  my beerbottle flipped over backwards

  and landed on its bottom on the floor,

  and I have set it upon the table to foam down,

  but the photos were not so lucky today

  and there is a small slit along the leather

  of my left shoe, but it’s all very simple:

  we cannot acquire too much: there are laws

  we know nothing of, all manner of nudges

  set us to burning or freezing; what sets

  the blackbird in the cat’s mouth

  is not for us to say, or why some men

  are jailed like pet squirrels

  while others nuzzle in enormous breasts

  through endless nights—this is the

  task and the terror, and we are not

  taught why. still, it’s lucky the bottle

  landed straightside up, and although

  I have one of wine and one of whiskey,

  this foretells, somehow, a good night,

  and perhaps tomorrow my nose will be longer:

  new shoes, less rain, more poems.

  the body

  I have been

  hanging here

  headless

  for so long

  that the body has forgotten

  why

  or where or when it

  happened

  and the toes

  walk along in shoes

  that do not

  care

  and although

  the fingers

  slice things and

  hold things and

  move things and

  touch

  things

  such as

  oranges

  apples

  onions

  books

  bodies

  I am no longer

  reasonably sure

  what these things

  are

  they are mostly

  like

  lamplight and

  fog

  then often the hands will

  go to the

  lost head

  and hold the head

  like the hands of a

  child

  around a ball

  a block

  air and wood—

  no teeth

  no thinking part

  and when a window

  blows open

  to a

  church

  hill

  woman

  dog

  or something singing

  the fingers of the hand

  are senseless to vibration

  because they have no

  ears

  senseless to color because

  they have no

  eyes

  senseless to smell

  without a nose

  the country goes by as

  nonsense

  the continents

  the daylights and evenings

  shine

  on my dirty

  fingernails

  and in some mirror

  my face

  a block to vanish

  scuffed part of a child’s

  ball

  while everywhere

  moves

  worms and aircraft

  fires on the land

  tall violets in sanctity

  my hands let go let go

  let go

  k.o.

  he was easy, fat as a hummingbird

  and I had him blowing,

  I jabbed and crossed and took my time:

  everybody was waiting for the main event,

  drinking beer, and I was thinking

  how we were going to furnish the house,

  I needed a workbench and some tools,

  and then he came over with the right—

  I had been looking at the lights

  and the next thing I knew everybody was

  howling, and I was down on my knees like

  praying, and when I got up

  he was strong and I was weak;

  well, I thought, I’ll go back to the farm,

  I always was a poor winner.

  sunday before noon

  spinach, Gabriel,

  all fall down,

  all fall down and blow,

  barbados, barbados,

  where are yr toe
s?

  the branches break, the birds fall, the buildings burn,

  the whores stand straight,

  the bombs stack,

  evening, morning, night,

  peanutbutter,

  peanutbutter falcons,

  rain breathing like lilies from the top of my head,

  pincers pincers

  kisses like steel clamps

  mouths full of moths,

  hydra-headed cocksuckers,

  Florida in full moon,

  shark with mouthful of man

  man with mouthful of peanutbutter, rain

  rain peeking into the guts of grey hours,

  horses dreaming of horses,

  flowers dreaming of flowers,

  horses running with greyhour pieces of my lovely flesh,

  bread burning, all Spain on fire and

  cities dreaming of craters,

  bombs bigger than the brains of anything,

  going down

  are the clocks cocks roosters?

  the roosters stand on the fence

  the roosters are peanutbutter crowing,

  the FLAME will be high, the flame will be big,

  kiss kiss kiss

  everything away,

  I hope it rains today, I hope

  the jets die, I hope

  the kitten finds a mouse, I hope

  I don’t see it, I hope

  it rains, I hope

  anything away from here,

  I hope a bridge, a fish, a cactus somewhere

  strutting whiskers to the noon,

  I dream flowers and horses

  the branches break the birds fall the buildings

  burn, my whore walks across the room and

  smiles at me.

  7th race when the angels swung low and burned

  I watched the board and the 6 dropped to 9

  after a first flash of 18 from a morning line

  of 12…two minutes to post and a fat man

  kept jamming against my back, but I made it,

  I bet 20 to win and walked out to the deck

  looking down at my program:

  purple and cerise quarters, cerise sleeves