Play the Piano Drunk Like a Percussion Instrument Until the Fingers Begin to Bleed a Bit

by Bukowski, Charles

  his children leave with

  him.

  she comes back to bed

  and I stretch a leg out

  place it against hers.

  I was young once too.

  human relationships simply aren’t

  durable.

  I think back to the women in

  my life.

  they seem non-existent.

  “did he get his drill?” I ask.

  “yes, he got his drill.”

  I wonder if I’ll ever have to come

  back for my bermuda

  shorts and my record album

  by The Academy of St. Martin in the

  Fields? I suppose I

  will.

  40,000 flies

  torn by a temporary wind

  we come back together again

  check walls and ceilings for cracks and

  the eternal spiders

  wonder if there will be one more

  woman

  now

  40,000 flies running the arms of my

  soul

  singing

  I met a million dollar baby in a

  5 and 10 cent

  store

  arms of my soul?

  flies?

  singing?

  what kind of shit is

  this?

  it’s so easy to be a poet

  and so hard to be

  a man.

  the strangest thing

  I was sitting in a chair

  in the dark

  when horrible sounds of torture

  and fear

  began in the brush

  outside of my window.

  it was obviously not a male cat

  and a female cat

  but a male and a male

  and from the sound

  one appeared to be much larger

  and was attacking with the intent to

  kill.

  then it stopped.

  then it began again

  worse this time;

  the sounds were so terrible

  that I was unable to

  move.

  then the sounds stopped.

  I got up from my chair

  went to bed and

  slept.

  I had a dream. this small grey and white

  cat came to me in my dream

  and it was very

  sad. it spoke to me,

  it said:

  “look what the other cat did to me.”

  and it rested in my lap

  and I saw the slashes and

  the raw flesh. then it

  jumped off my lap.

  then that was all.

  I awakened at 8:45 p.m.

  put on my clothes and walked outside

  and looked around.

  there was nothing

  there.

  I walked back inside and

  dropped two eggs

  into a pot of water

  and turned up the

  flame.

  the paper on the floor

  …the drawing is poor and I know little of the plot:

  a man with a stable, world-earned face and the necktie of

  respectability, and a satisfied pipe; and his wife—

  signified by the quick ink of black hair (just ever so

  tousled with having babies and guiding them safely through

  the falls): there is a grandmother who sits somewhat like

  a flowerpot: allotted an earned space but not really

  useful; and a couple of smiling, knee-climbing gamins

  two little Jung and Adlers

  full of moot, black-type questions,

  and, of course,

  a young girl troubled with young loves

  (they take these things so much more seriously than the

  young men who

  go behind the barn);

  and there is a young man—her, I presume barn-wise, brother

  with this great tundra, this shield of black hair;

  he is horribly healthy

  and dressed in the latest in sport shirts

  in the best barn-wise manner;

  this big…brother (16? 17? 18? God wot?)

  is usually (when I read this, which is not very often)

  leaning forward over the car seat

  (he sits in the back, like the author)

  and makes some…comment on LIFE, capital all-the-way LIFE

  that is so VERY true

  that it just…upsets everybody

  except the poor kiddies who don’t know what the hell it’s

  all about in spite of their Jung and Adler

  and they just ride along round-eyed and sucking at their

  lollypops all up in the pretty pure white clouds;

  but, lo, the headman grinds his pipe grey-faced against this

  sporty truth that old men let lie like overgrown

  gas-meter covers; and the mother (wife wot?) draws down

  a long black eyebrow and one more strand of hair becomes

  unattached in the cool long struggle; and

  Grandma, oh, I don’t know—

  by then I have looked away; but I remember the girl,

  the young girl with young loves

  is always especially angry

  because the back of the barn has been blamed on her…

  locked with René the Frenchman, the struggling…painter or

  wot?

  nobody wants to face it but this…fat…sports-wear shirt

  character (who is really a nice strong boy who will really

  be O.K. some day) keeps bringing the cow out from behind the

  barn

  with the bull; but he is young

  and laughs

  and all somehow bear up;

  but best is his…explanation of it all,

  of the cow and the bull,

  with the inherent and instinctive…wiseness of his

  youth;

  the explanation usually comes in the morning

  over the breakfast table—

  before all this sickly struggling ordinary mess of common…

  humanity has had a chance

  to seat itself

  the healthy white…face laughs and tells it all;

  he’s been sitting there waiting to tell it all,

  he’s been sitting there with the little…twins (or wot?)

  as they spill porridge so cutely with their little spoons,

  this big…happy oaf who’s never had a toothache

  has been sitting waiting the entrance of his elders

  (Granny who must put in her teeth, and Papa who is worried

  about the office, and Mama who isn’t exactly straightened out

  yet; and the young girl who loves with faith, anger and…

  purity) in they come

  and he throws out an arm

  and tilting his healthy…carcass madly back in the chair

  before the sun-pure kitchen curtains

  and the little lovable, struggling bungling group

  he says his great say,

  and in the balloon above his head are the words

  and by the twisted agony of the faces

  I am led to believe something has been said,

  but I read again

  looking carefully at the great happy spewing oaf’s face

  the brown great deepness of the eyes

  and the young girl’s teeth pushed out sour as if she had

  bitten into some lemon of truth,

  but there is something wrong

  there is some mistake

  because the sheet of paper I hold

  slants and angles in the electric light

  into the open dizziness of my dome

  and it huddles and curls itself into a puffy knot

  and pushes at the back of my eyes

  and pulls my nerves taut-thin from toe to hair-line

  and I know then that

  the grea
t spewing oaf has said

  nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing

  nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing

  nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing

  and now,

  on the rug

  under the chair

  I can see the comic section

  folded in half,

  I can see the black and white lines

  and some faces I don’t care to discern;

  but a thin illness overcomes me

  at the sight of this portion of paper

  and I look away

  and try not to think

  that much of our living life

  is true to the little paper faces

  that stare up from our feet

  and grin and jump and gesture,

  to be wrapped in tomorrow’s garbage

  and thrown away.

  2 flies

  The flies are angry bits of

  life;

  why are they so angry?

  it seems they want more,

  it seems almost as if they

  are angry

  that they are flies;

  it is not my fault;

  I sit in the room

  with them

  and they taunt me

  with their agony;

  it is as if they were

  loose chunks of soul

  left out of somewhere;

  I try to read a paper

  but they will not let me

  be;

  one seems to go in half-circles

  high along the wall,

  throwing a miserable sound

  upon my head;

  the other one, the smaller one

  stays near and teases my hand,

  saying nothing,

  rising, dropping

  crawling near;

  what god puts these

  lost things upon me?

  other men suffer dictates of

  empire, tragic love…

  I suffer

  insects…

  I wave at the little one

  which only seems to revive

  his impulse to challenge:

  he circles swifter,

  nearer, even making

  a fly-sound,

  and one above

  catching a sense of the new

  whirling, he too, in excitement,

  speeds his flight,

  drops down suddenly

  in a cuff of noise

  and they join

  in circling my hand,

  strumming the base

  of the lampshade

  until some man-thing

  in me

  will take no more

  unholiness

  and I strike

  with the rolled-up paper—

  missing!—

  striking,

  striking,

  they break in discord,

  some message lost between them,

  and I get the big one

  first, and he kicks on his back

  flicking his legs

  like an angry whore,

  and I come down again

  with my paper club

  and he is a smear

  of fly-ugliness;

  the little one circles high

  now, quiet and swift,

  almost invisible;

  he does not come near

  my hand again;

  he is tamed and

  inaccessible; I leave

  him be, he leaves me

  be;

  the paper, of course,

  is ruined;

  something has happened,

  something has soiled my

  day,

  sometimes it does not

  take a man

  or a woman,

  only something alive;

  I sit and watch

  the small one;

  we are woven together

  in the air

  and the living;

  it is late

  for both of us.

  through the streets of anywhere

  of course it is nonsense to try to patch up an

  old poem while drinking a warm beer

  on a Sunday afternoon; it is better to simply

  exist through the end of a cigarette;

  the people are listless and although this is a

  poor term of description

  Gershwin is on the radio

  banging and praying to get out;

  I have read the newspapers,

  carefully noting the suicides,

  I have also carefully noted

  the green of some tree

  like a nature poet on his last cup,

  and

  bang bang

  there they go outside;

  new children, some of them getting ready

  to sit here, and do as I am doing—

  warm beer, dead Gershwin,

  getting fat around the middle,

  disbelieving the starving years,

  Atlanta frozen like God’s head

  holding an apple in the window,

  but we are all finally tricked and

  slapped to death

  like lovers’ vows, bargained

  out of any gain,

  and the radio is finished

  and the phone rings and a female says,

  “I am free tonight;” well, she is not much

  but I am not much either;

  in adolescent fire I once thought I could ride

  a horse through the streets of anywhere,

  but they quickly shot this horse from under,

  “Ya got cigarettes?” she asks. “Yes,” I say,

  “I got cigarettes.” “Matches?” she asks.

  “Enough matches to burn Rome.” “Whiskey?”

  “Enough whiskey for a Mississippi River

  of pain.” “You drunk?” “Not yet.”

  She’ll be over: perfect: a fig

  leaf and a small club, and

  I look at the poem I am trying to work with:

  I say that

  the backalleys will arrive upon

  the bloodyapes

  as noon arrives upon the Salinas

  fieldhands….

  bullshit. I rip the page once, twice,

  three times, then check for matches and

  icecubes, hot and cold,

  with some men their conversation is better than

  their creation

  and with other men

  it’s a woman

  almost any woman

  that is their Rodin among park benches;

  bird down in road awaiting rats and wheels

  I know that I have deserted you,

  the icecubes pile like fool’s gold

  in the pitcher

  and now they are playing

  Alex Scriabin

  which is a little better

  but not much

  for me.

  fire station

  (For Jane, with love)

  we came out of the bar

  because we were out of money

  but we had a couple of wine bottles

  in the room.

  it was about 4 in the afternoon

  and we passed a fire station

  and she started to go

  crazy:

  “a FIRE STATION! oh, I just love

  FIRE engines, they’re so red and

  all! let’s go in!”

  I followed her on

  in. “FIRE ENGINES!” she screamed

  wobbling her big

  ass.

  she was already trying to climb into

  one, pulling her skirt up to her

  waist, trying to jacknife up into the

  seat.

  “here, here, lemme help ya!” a fireman ran

  up.

  another fireman walked up to

  me: “our citizens are always welcome,”

  he to
ld

  me.

  the other guy was up in the seat with

  her. “you got one of those big THINGS?”

  she asked him. “oh, hahaha!, I mean one of

  those big HELMETS!”

  “I’ve got a big helmet too,” he told

  her.

  “oh, hahaha!”

  “you play cards?” I asked my

  fireman. I had 43 cents and nothing but