nobody knows what they are supposed to know—
poets can’t write poetry
mechanics can’t fix your car
fighters can’t fight
lovers can’t love
preachers can’t preach. it’s even like that with
armies: whole armies led without generals,
whole nations led without leaders, why the whole thing is like
trying to copulate with a wooden
dick…oh, pardon me!
how old are you? three? three. ah. three fingers, that’s nice!
you learn fast, my little ducky. what? more
applejuice? o.k.
you wanna play train? you wanna take me for a ride?
o.k., Tucson, we’ll go to Tucson, what the hell!
damn it, I don’t KNOW if we’re there yet, you’re
driving!
what? we’re on the way BACK already?
you want some candy? shit, you been eatin’ candy for hours!
listen, I don’t KNOW when your mother will be back, uh?
well,
after signing up for the artist’s colony she’s going to a poetry
reading. what’s a poetry reading? a poetry reading is where
people gather and read their poetry to each other, the ones
mostly who can’t write poetry.
what’s poetry? nobody knows. it changes. it works by itself
like a snail crawling up the side of a house. oh, that’s a big
squashy thing that goes all gooey and slimy when you
step on
it. am I a snail?
I guess so kid, what?
you wanna kaakaa?
o.k., go ahead. can you get your own pants down? I don’t
see
you very often, oh, you want the light on? you want me
to stay
or go away? stay? fine, then.
now kaakaa, little one, that’s it…
kaakaa…
so you can grow up to be a big woman and
do what big women
do.
kaakaa.
at’s it, sweet,
ain’t it funny?
mama kaakaa too.
oh yeah
wow!
that’s all right!
now wipe your ass.
no, better than
that! there, that’s
better.
you say I’m kaakaa!
hey that’s
good! I like that!
very funny.
now let’s go get some more beer and
applejuice.
a problem of temperament
I played the radio all night the night of the 17th.
and the neighbors applauded
and the landlady knocked on the door
and said
PLEASE
PLEASE
PLEASE
MOVE,
you make the sheets dirty
where does the blood come from?
you never work.
you lay around and talk to the radio
and drink
and you have a beard
and you are always smirking
and bringing those women
to your room
and you never comb your hair
or shine your shoes
and your shirts are wrinkled
why don’t you leave?
you are making the neighbors
unhappy,
please make us all happy
and go away!
go to hell, baby, I hissed through
the keyhole; mah rent’s paid ’til
Wednesday. can I show you a watercolor
nude painted in 1887 by an unknown German
artist? I have it insured for
$1,000.
unrelenting, she stamped down the hall.
no artiste, she. I would
like to see her in the nude, though.
perhaps I could paint my way
to freedom. no?
poetess
For S.S.V.
she lived in a small room by the freeway and she
wrote like a man—somebody who worked on the dock
—and I tapped on her window and she let me in, I
climbed through the window and I sat down as the
stupid fingers of my mind reached around the room,
I told her I had been on a drunk and that I had to
cut my toenails (they hurt) and I told her that
there were a lot of people getting on my nerves like
a broken glove compartment and she walked over and
kissed me, asked if I wanted coffee and if I had
been eating, and then she told me her radio was brok-
en—she had dropped it on the floor. and I took a
knife blade and worked at the screws in the back.
be careful, she said, it says
there is danger of shock, and I told
her: I am immortal, I can’t get or
be killed.
she set a cheese sandwich and a cup of coffee in
front of me and I straightened up the loose tubes,
there seemed to be no broken ones, but it was get-
ting to be time for the first race and I told her,
Jesus, I don’t have time!
if you’re immortal, she said,
you have plenty of time.
I ate the cheese sandwich and drank the coffee.
see you tonight, I said, I’ll
put the god damned thing together
tonight.
I climbed out the window and into my car. the sun
came down in the dust and dirt of the parking lot
making everything a good soft yellow and brown, and
the vines on the fence smelled green the way green
smells, and I drove out backing up, waving to her
through the windshield and she stood in the window
waving and smiling, and I backed up the alley and
around the street, put it in forward and ran
along the pavement toward the freeway, out of there,
thinking about what I had done or hadn’t done to
the radio (or her), feeling as if I had left an
army in trouble during battle, but then some kid
in a Volks
cut across me without a signal
and I forgot about all the rest
and I pushed the pedal down and
moved after him.
the miracle
To work with an art form
does not mean to
screw off like a tapeworm
with his belly full,
nor does it justify grandeur
or greed, nor at all times
seriousness, but I would guess
that it calls upon the best men
at their best times,
and when they die
and something else does not,
we have seen the miracle of immortality:
men arrived as men,
departed as gods—
gods we knew were here,
gods that now let us go on
when all else says stop.
Mongolian coasts shining in light
Mongolian coasts shining in light,
I listen to the pulse of the sun,
the tiger is the same to all of us
and high oh
so high on the branch
our oriole
sings.
About the Author
CHARLES BUKOWSKI is one of America’s best-known contemporary writers of poetry and prose, and, many would claim, its most influential and imitated poet. He was born in Andernach, Germany, to an American soldier father and a German mother in 1920, and brought to the United States at the age of three. He was raised in Los Angeles and lived there for fifty years. He published his first story in 1944 when he was twenty-four and began wr
iting poetry at the age of thirty-five. He died in San Pedro, California, on March 9, 1994, at the age of seventy-three, shortly after completing his last novel, Pulp (1994).
During his lifetime he published more than forty-five books of poetry and prose, including the novels Post Office (1971), Factotum (1975), Women (1978), Ham on Rye (1982), and Hollywood (1989). Among his most recent books are the posthumous editions of What Matters Most Is How Well You Walk Through the Fire (1999), Open All Night: New Poems (2000), Beerspit Night and Cursing: The Correspondence of Charles Bukowski and Sheri Martinelli, 1960-1967(2001), and Night Torn Mad with Footsteps: New Poems (2001), sifting through the madness for the Word, the line, the way: New Poems (2003), and The Flash of Lightning Behind the Mountain (2004).
All of his books have now been published in translation in over a dozen languages and his worldwide popularity remains undiminished. In the years to come Ecco will publish additional volumes of previously uncollected poetry and letters.
Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.
Also by CHARLES BUKOWSKI
The Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over the Hills (1969)
Post Office (1971)
Mockingbird Wish Me Luck (1972)
South of No North (1973)
Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame: Selected Poems 1955-1973 (1974)
Factotum (1975)
Love is a Dog from Hell (1977)
Women (1978)
You Kissed Lilly (1978)
play the piano drunk like a percussion instrument until the fingers begin to bleed a bit (1979)
Shakespeare Never Did This (1979)
Dangling in the Tournefortia (1981)
Ham on Rye (1982)
Bring Me Your Love (1983)
Hot Water Music (1983)
There’s No Business (1984)
War All the Time: Poems 1981-1984 (1984)
You Get So Alone At Times That It Just Makes Sense (1986)
The Movie: “Barfly” (1987)
The Roominghouse Madrigals: Early Selected Poems 1946-1966 (1988)
Hollywood (1989)
Septuagenarian Stew: Stories & Poems (1990)
The Last Night of the Earth Poems (1992)
Screams from the Balcony: Selected Letters 1960-1970 (1993)
Pulp (1994)
Living on Luck: Selected Letters 1960s-1970s (Volume 2) (1995)
Betting on the Muse: Poems & Stories (1996)
Bone Palace Ballet: New Poems (1997)
The Captain is Out to Lunch and the Sailors Have Taken Over the Ship (1998)
Reach for the Sun: Selected Letters 1978-1994 (Volume 3) (1999)
What Matters Most is How Well You Walk Through the Fire: New Poems (1999)
Open All Night: New Poems (2000)
Night Torn Mad with Footsteps: New Poems (2001)
Beerspit Night and Cursing: The Correspondence of Charles Bukowski & Sheri Martinelli 1960-1967 (2001)
sifting through the madness for the Word, the line, the way: new poems (2003)
The Flash of Lightning Behind the Mountain (2004)
Copyright
THE DAYS RUN AWAY LIKE WILD HORSES OVER THE HILLS. Copyright © 1969 by Charles Bukowski. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Mobipocket Reader July 2007 ISBN 978-0-06-145760-9
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