The Days Run Away Like Wild Horses

by Charles Bukowski

  good men

  neither talk about their virtues or

  their possibilities,

  —strike deep here,

  catch fish, headaches, sores, blisters,

  traffic tickets, tooth decay, hatred from

  lesbians, the surgeon’s brown

  finger—

  if death is so fearful

  then life must be

  good?

  dandy then, babe, genuinely

  traginew, and

  I’ve found out why men

  sign their names to their

  works—

  not that they created them

  but more

  than the others did

  not.

  even the sun was afraid

  they’d stuck him in the shoulder and

  he came out

  pissed—

  feeling all the space of ground

  feeling the sunshine

  and

  looking for somebody.

  it stood there.

  it seemed that even the sun was afraid of the

  bull.

  the matador screamed something

  shook and flagged the cape.

  the bull came at him.

  he gave him the cape. but the mat did not get very

  close.

  then the bull saw the padded

  horse, the blindfolded horse,

  and he trotted over

  and began working his horns against the horse’s

  side and underside.

  the pic

  there on top of the horse

  lanced him good

  he stuck him deep and hard with the

  pole

  really muscling it in

  screwing it in deep

  right in the top part of the back there

  up near the neck.

  this makes the bull go more for the horse—

  he probably thinks the horse is doing it to him—

  and as he goes more for the horse

  he gets drilled more and more

  by the chickenshit

  lance.

  the bull left the horse

  went for the cape

  then came back to the horse.

  then he got another drilling by the

  pic.

  he does not any longer quite look like the

  bull who first ran into the ring.

  but they haven’t cut him down enough

  they have something else for

  him: the banderillas.

  short sharp pieces that are jammed into the upper back

  and neck, the placement of these does appear

  dangerous.

  no cape is used and these young Mexican boys

  stupid and with dirty

  behinds

  they leap into the air and make the

  placements as the bull runs

  by.

  we watched them make the

  placements.

  now the bull was properly ready for the matador to be

  brave.

  the neck and back muscles were severed, shredded in

  many places.

  the head came

  down.

  Harry took a drink. “these Mexican bulls aren’t any

  good. you oughta see the Spanish bulls. they got horns

  like this”:

  he showed me how they had horns like that. with his

  hands. then we both had a

  drink.

  the matador did not seem to get in very

  close. the bull kept getting in those

  tired and desperate lunges at the cape

  getting more and more winded

  more and more

  useless.

  each of the matador’s movements had some meaning, some

  name. the Mexicans knew it. the drunken Americans in the

  shade with good jobs and subnormal wives

  didn’t know anything. they rooted for the

  bull.

  they didn’t know that it took guts

  to even do a bad job with the bull.

  well, this bull was bad and the matador was bad

  but the matador was worse than the

  bull, and I guess that’s about as bad as the act can

  get.

  except when the bull is so much less worse than the

  matador and the mat gets gored and the Americans go

  home happy and

  fuck all night

  trying to forget about the job in the

  morning.

  kill time came. the mat knew what to do. he knew the

  spot. it was like running a hot poker into a

  barrel of loose tin foil.

  the bull

  beaten and stabbed about the neck and back

  winded totally by ripping at a vision of a

  red cape that only

  gave, gave, gave

  folded over the horn forever—

  the bull was winded spiritually as

  well.

  and finally stood

  disgusted and doomed

  looking

  LOOKING.

  we had another

  drink. we knew the plot, the hero, the whole

  fucking thing. the sword went

  in.

  but it wasn’t

  over.

  the bull stood there.

  and with the sword cutting his vitals

  they came up.

  4 or 5 Mexicans with dirty

  behinds. including the

  mat.

  and they turned

  him. flicked their capes at

  him. punched him on the

  nose.

  still he wouldn’t

  fall.

  they were trying to push him into death

  but he was hanging

  in.

  and every now and then

  the head would remember

  and give a lunge of

  horn and

  they would step back

  remembering their own deaths.

  then the mat came up

  pulled the sword

  out, stuck it home

  again.

  still no good.

  the bull would not go

  down.

  we had another drink.

  “you see,” said Harry, “they keep turning him. that

  sword is cutting him. every time they make him move,

  the sword cuts again.”

  finally somebody took his foot and

  kicked the bull over and the bull

  fell down.

  but still

  it wasn’t any

  good.

  the bull kept kicking his

  legs, trying to get

  up. he wouldn’t

  quit.

  so then a little fat chap came

  out. he was all dressed in white and wore a little

  white butcher’s cap. he seemed quite

  angry.

  he had a short blade and walked up

  and very angry and quick

  he chopped and chopped and chopped and

  chopped. it appeared that he was chopping at the

  bull’s head, his

  brain.

  the bull couldn’t get at the boy in the

  butcher’s cap. he had to

  take it. finally one of the chops

  took.

  you could SEE the bull

  die. the bull gave it

  up. the crowd

  cheered.

  Harry took a

  drink, that was the end of that

  pint. and that

  matador.

  “what’s the name of the next

  bull?” I asked

  Harry.

  “I don’t know. the light is

  bad.”

  anyhow, the next bull came

  out.

  we had one more pint and the

 
; drive back in.

  on a grant

  …an ocean liner

  the Captain smiles and farts and knows my

  name

  the sea is boiling and smells of

  torn chunks and warm raw meat

  and

  half-daft sick spiders try to

  wind their dead legs around each other

  around everything

  but they tangle off slide off drift off

  losing legs against the prow

  and wanting to scream and not being able to

  scream

  while

  I am on the grant from a University

  and

  translating Rimbaud and Lorca and

  Günter Grass over and over

  again

  then

  after a conversation on Proust and

  Patchen I rape a

  rich beautiful girl in my cabin

  and

  afterwards she turns into a

  dead peach tree which I

  hang on the wall

  then

  I awaken in a small dirty bedroom and the

  woman walks in:

  “listen, I need a stroller. the kid is

  getting too heavy to carry.”

  “o.k., o.k.”

  “but when? when?”

  “not today. too god damned

  tired.”

  “tomorrow?”

  “tomorrow, sure.”

  finish

  the hearse comes through the room filled with

  the beheaded, the disappeared, the living

  mad.

  the flies are a glue of sticky paste

  their wings will not

  lift.

  I watch an old woman beat her cat

  with a broom.

  the weather is unendurable

  a dirty trick by

  God.

  the water has evaporated from the

  toilet bowl

  the telephone rings without

  sound

  the small limp arm petering against the

  bell.

  I see a boy on his

  bicycle

  the spokes collapse

  the tires turn into

  snakes and melt

  away.

  the newspaper is oven-hot

  men murder each other in the streets

  without reason.

  the worst men have the best jobs

  the best men have the worst jobs or are

  unemployed or locked in

  madhouses.

  I have 4 cans of food left.

  air-conditioned troops go from house to

  house

  from room to room

  jailing, shooting, bayoneting

  the people.

  we have done this to ourselves, we

  deserve this

  we are like roses that have never bothered to

  bloom when we should have bloomed and

  it is as if

  the sun has become disgusted with

  waiting

  it is as if the sun were a mind that has

  given up on us.

  I go out on the back porch

  and look across the sea of dead plants

  now thorns and sticks shivering in a

  windless sky.

  somehow I’m glad we’re through

  finished—

  the works of Art

  the wars

  the decayed loves

  the way we lived each day.

  when the troops come up here

  I don’t care what they do for

  we already killed ourselves

  each day we got out of bed.

  I go back into the kitchen

  spill some hash from a soft

  can, it is almost cooked

  already

  and I sit

  eating, looking at my

  fingernails.

  the sweat comes down behind my

  ears and I hear the

  shooting in the streets and

  I chew and wait

  without wonder.

  the underground

  the place was crowded.

  the editor told me,

  “Charley get some chairs from upstairs,

  there are more chairs upstairs.”

  I brought them down and we opened the beer and

  the editor said,

  “we’re not getting enough advertising,

  the boat might go down,”

  so they started talking about how to get

  advertising.

  I kept drinking the beer

  and had to piss

  and when I got back

  the girl next to me said,

  “we ought to evacuate the city,

  that’s what we ought to do.”

  I said, “I’d rather listen to Joseph Haydn.”

  she said, “just think of it,

  if everybody left the city!”

  “they’d only be someplace else

  stinking it up,” I said.

  “I don’t think you like

  people,” she said, pulling her short skirt down

  as much as possible.

  “just to fuck with,” I said.

  then I went to the bar next door and

  bought 3 more packs of beer.

  when I got back they were talking Revolution.

  so here I was back in 1935 again,

  only I was old and they were young. I was at least

  20 years older than anybody in the room,

  and I thought, what the hell am I doing

  here?

  soon the meeting ended

  and they went out into the night,

  those young ones

  and I picked up the phone, I got

  John T.,

  “John, you o.k.? I’m low tonight.

  suppose I come over and get

  drunk?”

  “sure, Charley, we’ll be waiting.”

  “Charley,” said the editor, “I guess we’ve got to

  put the chairs back

  upstairs.”

  we carried the chairs back upstairs

  the

  revolution was

  over.

  from the Dept. of English

  100 million Chinese bugs on the stairway to

  hell,

  come drink with me

  rub my back with me;

  this filth-pitched room,

  floor covered with yellow newspapers

  3 weeks old; bottle caps, a red

  pencil, a rip of

  toilet paper, these odd bits of

  broken things;

  the flies worry me as ice cream ladies

  walk past my window;

  at night I sleep, try to sleep

  between mounds of stinking laundry;

  ghosts come out,

  play dirty games, evil games, games of horror with

  my mind;

  in the morning there is blood on the sheet

  from a broken sore upon my

  back.

  putting on a shirt that rips across my

  back, rotten rag of a thing,

  and putting on pants with a rip in the

  crotch, I find in the mailbox

  (along with other threats):

  “Dear Mr. Bukowski:

  Would like to see more of your poems for

  possible inclusion in

  _____Poetry Review.

  How’s it going?”

  footnote upon the construction of the masses:

  some people are young and nothing

  else and

  some people are old and nothing

  else

  and some people are in between and

  just in between.

  and if the flies wore clothes on their

  backs

  and all the buildings burned in

  golden fire,

  if heaven shook like a bell
y

  dancer

  and all the atom bombs began to

  cry,

  some people would be young and nothing

  else and

  some people old and nothing

  else,

  and the rest would be the same

  the rest would be the same.

  the few who are different

  are eliminated quickly enough

  by the police, by their mothers, their

  brothers, others; by

  themselves.

  all that’s left is what you

  see.

  it’s

  hard.

  kaakaa & other immolations

  wondrous, sure, kid, you want more

  applejuice? how can you drink that goddamned

  stuff? I hate it. what? no, I’m not Dr.

  Vogel. I’m the daddy. your old man. where’s mama?

  she’s out joining an artist’s colony, oh, that’s a place

  where people go who aren’t

  artists. yes, that’s the way it works almost

  everywhere, sometimes you can go into a hospital and

  it can be 40 floors high and there won’t be a doctor in

  there, and hard to find a nurse either.

  what’s a hospital? a hospital is just a bunch of

  disconnected buttons, dying people and very sophisticated and

  comfortable orderlies, but the whole world is like this: