The People Look Like Flowers At Last

Home > Fiction > The People Look Like Flowers At Last > Page 13
The People Look Like Flowers At Last Page 13

by Charles Bukowski


  taken a bath and she was getting

  dressed in the closet so I

  wouldn’t see her, and her

  mother said, “you know, you like

  to make this thing about your

  women into a great big drama;

  you love it, you love them

  fighting and screaming over

  you, you think it’s humorous,

  don’t you?”

  “now, baby…” I said.

  “some day a woman is going to

  put a knife into your heart,

  you’re going to be killed and

  while you’re dying you’re going

  to say, ‘you stuck that thing

  into me too far!’”

  my daughter came out, fully

  clothed, and I told her mother

  that I’d bring her back in

  3 hours.

  about 4 miles away we found

  a place to eat.

  my daughter had a hamburger

  sandwich and milk.

  I had fried shrimp with

  soup, fries, plus coffee.

  we ate, I tipped the waitress,

  I paid the cashier, then

  we went out and got into my

  car. it was a dark day, low

  clouds, you couldn’t see any

  sun. “your mother,” I told her

  as we drove off, “is nothing

  but a wiseass.”

  the final word

  always in the poem

  we fall short.

  ah,

  to say the final word

  you must

  kill the fish,

  throw away the

  head and tail

  (especially the eyes)

  and eat the rest.

  there is this hunger

  to drive down the road

  looking for it

  in a 1998 Cadillac,

  trees along the road,

  a dung-spotted moon,

  and to run it down

  and get out and

  look at it,

  hold it in your hand

  and look at it,

  examine it

  (especially the eyes)

  then throw it all away

  and

  Cadillac off.

  fingernails; nostrils; shoelaces

  the gas line is leaking, the bird is gone from the

  cage, the skyline is dotted with vultures;

  Benny finally got off the stuff and Betty now has a job

  as a waitress; and

  the chimney sweep was quite delicate as he

  giggled up through the

  soot.

  I walked miles through the city and recognized

  nothing as a giant claw ate at my

  stomach while the inside of my head felt

  airy as if I was about to go

  mad.

  it’s not so much that nothing means

  anything but more that it keeps meaning

  nothing,

  there’s no release, just gurus and self-

  appointed

  gods and hucksters.

  the more people say, the less there is

  to say.

  even the best books are dry sawdust.

  I watch the boxing matches and take copious

  notes on futility.

  then the gate springs open again

  and there are the beautiful silks

  and powerful horses riding

  against the sky.

  such sadness: everything trying to

  break through into

  blossom.

  every day should be a miracle instead

  of a machination.

  in my hand rests the last bluebird.

  the shades roar like lions and the walls

  rattle, dance around my

  head.

  then her eyes look at me, love breaks my

  bones and I

  laugh.

  after receiving a contributor’s copy

  carping little kettle-fish

  griping over your wounds

  found in these misprinted pages,

  and still looking for sponsors

  lovers

  mothers

  easy fame:

  which one of you

  did I see through a

  frozen Denver restaurant window

  eating apple pie?

  which one of you

  rode to East Hollywood on a bloodhound

  hunting your wet nurse?

  which one of you then knocked

  on my door

  wanting to talk about POETRY?

  which one of you is vain enough

  and miserable enough

  and sick enough

  to suck an editor’s ass?

  which one of you goes

  to all the lit parties

  and reads his stuff to

  tapeworms?

  which one of you thinks

  he’s Pound, or Shelley

  on a blue butterfly?

  which one of you

  changed my poem to read

  the way you THINK

  a poem should read?

  which one of you mewed in

  sick, friendly sentiment

  like larvae crawling the

  body of my mind?

  and this may seem strong

  and unfair,

  for I say let everyone live

  and write

  who wants to live and write,

  but which one of you

  lives with his mother or his aunt,

  which one of you first

  puts talcum on his butt

  and then climbs up on

  the cross?

  which one of you

  (one a university prof

  I once chastised

  for senseless abstraction)

  which one of you now

  writes about whores and drinking

  and has never been to bed with a woman,

  and has never drunk

  more than a small brown beer?

  and which one of you

  writes with a dictionary against his belly

  like buggering an unabridged cow?

  which one of you grinds his soul

  to Bach’s organ

  like a monkey on a string?

  which one of you

  hates the wife that feeds you?

  not because she’s human

  but because

  she doesn’t like your stuff.

  which one of you

  couldn’t hit a baseball?

  which one of you

  has never been in jail?

  which one of you?

  which one of you?

  which one of

  you?

  poor night

  I think I’m in the first

  dry period of my life.

  nearing 62

  one fears senility and

  an end

  to the luck.

  I slowly drink

  two large glasses of wine

  and stare

  at the white page.

  it has always come so

  easily.

  I have always laughed at

  writers who claimed that

  creation was

  painful.
>
  I change stations

  on the radio, pour

  another wine.

  “papa,” she opens the

  door, “do you have any

  matches?”

  “sure,” I say and

  hand her a couple of

  books.

  she leaves.

  Henry Miller is dead.

  Saroyan. Jeffers.

  Nelson Algren.

  They’ve all been dead now

  for some time.

  “papa,” she returns,

  “this pen I’m using is

  terrible. do you have

  another pen?”

  “sure,” I say and

  hand her a good

  one.

  “there is too much smoke

  in this room!”

  she opens a window.

  “you should let some of

  the smoke out!”

  “you’re right,”

  I say.

  she leaves

  and I like her

  concern

  but then I am alone

  with my blank page

  again.

  a) so then

  I wrote this down to

  fill in the blank

  space.

  b) then came the decision

  whether to tear it up or

  save it.

  c) have

  I done

  the right thing?

  you write many poems about death

  yes, and here’s another one

  and later it might even end up in one of my

  books.

  and

  the book will be sitting on a

  shelf

  waiting for you

  long after I am

  gone.

  think of that:

  in a sense I will be speaking again

  just to you.

  and remember this:

  the page you are looking at

  now,

  I once typed the words

  with care

  with you in mind

  under a yellow

  light

  with the radio

  on.

  if you think about death

  long enough

  I have found

  it belongs

  it makes sense

  just like

  this typewriter

  this matchbook

  this paper clip

  and

  the next page

  and the next poem

  after this

  one.

  dog

  is much admired by Man

  because he believes in

  the hand which feeds

  him. a

  perfect

  setup. for

  13 cents a

  day you’ve got

  a hired killer

  who thinks

  you are

  God. a

  dog can’t tell a Nazi from a

  Republican from a Commie from

  a Democrat. and, many times,

  neither can I.

  the hatred for Hemingway

  I gave Hemingway’s last book

  Islands in the Stream

  a bad review

  while most others gave him

  good reviews.

  but the hatred for Hemingway

  by the unsuccessful writer

  especially the female writer

  is incomprehensible to me.

  this unsuccessful female writer was in a rage.

  I had tried to explain why I thought

  Hemingway wrote as

  he did.

  that life-through-death bit, she said,

  is not at all unique with

  Hemingway. what else is our

  whole Western culture about? it’s the same story

  over and over

  again. no news

  there!

  that’s true, I thought, but…

  shooting lions only meant shooting

  himself? she asked. does it? does

  it? not when those lions were unarmed and

  he was coming at them with a rifle and

  didn’t even have to

  come close. really! poor little Hemingway.

  it’s true, I thought, the lions don’t carry

  rifles.

  the Spanish tradition. I can see Goya because he comes

  through as real and complete, she said. I can’t see

  Hemingway as anything but an old Hollywood movie

  acted out by…what’s his name? that Cooper who was a friend

  of his—the High Noon guy. oh wow!

  she doesn’t even like his friends,

  I thought.

  you learn about death by dying

  not by looking at it,

  she said.

  that’s true, I thought, but then

  how do you write about it?

  you say Shakespeare bores you, she said—

  the fact is

  he knew far more than Hemingway—

  Hemingway never got to be more than a

  journalist.

  taught to write by Gertrude Stein, I thought.

  he told you what he saw, she said, but he didn’t know

  what it meant—how things really

  relate…he never

  explained.

  that’s strange, I thought, that’s exactly what I

  liked about

  him.

  you talk a lot of typical

  crap, she said.

  what a shame, I thought,

  she has such long beautiful

  legs. well, Goya was all right too,

  but you can’t go to bed with

  Goya.

  well, all right, I thought, Hemingway pulled those big fish

  out of the sea and endured a few wars

  and watched bulls die and shot some

  lions;

  wrote some great short stories

  and gave us 2 or 3

  good early

  novels;

  on his last day

  Hemingway waved to

  some kids going to school,

  they waved back, and he never touched the orange juice

  sitting there in front of him;

  then he stuck that gun into his mouth like a soda straw

  and touched the trigger

  and one of America’s few immortals

  was blood and brain across the walls and

  ceiling, and then they all smiled,

  they smiled and said,

  ah, a fag! ah, a coward!

  yes, he took advantage of McAlmon

  he took advantage of everybody

  and he didn’t treat Fitzgerald right

  and he typed standing up

  and he was once in a mental

  hospital,

  and Gertie Stein, that friggin’

  dyke,

  maybe she did

  teach him how to

  write.

  but who convinced him that it was time to die?

  you did, you

  dirty

  fuckers.

  four

  the wisdom to quit

  is all we have

  left.

  looking at the cat’s balls

  sitting here by the window

  sweating beer sweat

  mauled by the summer

  I am looking
at the cat’s balls.

  it’s not my choice.

  he sleeps in an old rocker

  on the porch

  and from there he looks at me

  hung to his cat’s balls.

  there’s his tail, damned thing,

  hanging out of the

  way so I can

  view his furry storage tanks but

  what can a man think about

  while looking at a cat’s nuts?

  certainly not about the sunken navy after a

  great sea battle.

  certainly not about a program to save the

  poor.

  certainly not about a flower market or a dozen

  eggs.

  certainly not about a broken light switch.

  balls iz balls, that’s all,

  and most certainly that’s true about

  a cat’s balls.

  my own are rather soft and mushy and

  I’m told by my current lady

  quite large:

  “you’ve got big balls, Chinaski!”

  but the cat’s balls:

  I can’t figure whether he’s hung to them

  or whether they’re hung to him.

  you see, there is this almost nightly battle for

  the female

  and it doesn’t come easy for either of us.

  look:

  a piece is missing from his left ear.

  once I thought one of his eyes had been

  clawed out

  but when the dried

  blood peeled away

  a week later

  there was his pure

  gold-green eye

  looking at me.

  his entire body is scarred from bites

  and the other day,

  attempting to pet his head

  he yowled and almost bit me—

  the skin on his skull

  had been split to reveal the bone.

  it certainly doesn’t come easy for any of us,

  poor fellow.

  he sleeps

  now dreaming

 

‹ Prev