The People Look Like Flowers At Last

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The People Look Like Flowers At Last Page 15

by Charles Bukowski

pain, I’ve watched men have their entire lives destroyed for

  55 cents an hour or less.

  well,

  maybe it’s the masonry or maybe it’s the water pump, or maybe it’s the

  hog in the hedge, or maybe it’s the end of luck. angels are flying

  low tonight with burning wings, your mother is the victim of

  her ordinary nightmares as 40 faucets drip, the cat has

  leukemia, there are only 245 days left until Christmas, and my dental

  technician hates me.

  so now

  I wake up with a stiff neck instead of a stiff

  dick and

  you

  can always reach me here in

  east Hollywood but

  please please please

  don’t

  try.

  I never bring my wife

  I park, get out, lock the car, it’s a perfect day, warm

  and easy, I feel all right, I begin walking toward the

  entrance and a little fat guy joins me. he walks at my side.

  I don’t know where he came from.

  “hi,” he says, “how you doing?”

  “o.k.,” I say.

  he says, “I guess you don’t remember me. you’ve seen me

  maybe two or three times.”

  “maybe so,” I say, “I’m at the track every day.”

  “I come maybe three or four times a month,” he says.

  “with your wife?” I ask.

  “oh no,” he says, “I never bring my wife.”

  “who do you like in the first?” he asks.

  I tell him that I haven’t bought my Racing Form yet.

  we walk along and I walk faster. he struggles to keep up.

  “where do you sit?” he asks.

  I tell him that I sit in different places.

  “that goddamned Gilligan,” he says, “is the worst

  jock here. I lost a bundle on him the other day. why

  do they use him?”

  I tell him that Whittingham and Longden think he’s all

  right.

  “sure, they’re friends,” he answers. “I know something about

  Gilligan. want to hear it?”

  I tell him to forget it.

  we are nearing the newspaper stand near the entrance

  and I slant off toward it as if I was going to buy

  a paper.

  “good luck,” I tell him and drift off.

  he appears startled, his eyes look shocked, he reminds me

  of a woman who feels secure only when somebody’s thumb is

  up her ass.

  he looks around, spots a gray-haired old man with a

  limp, rushes up, catches stride with the old guy and begins

  talking to him.

  I pay my way in, find a seat far from everybody, sit down.

  I have seven or eight good quiet minutes, then I hear a

  movement: a young man has seated himself near me, not next

  to me but one seat away although there are hundreds of

  empty seats.

  another Mickey Mouse, I think. why do they always find

  me?

  I keep working at my figures.

  then I hear his voice: “Blue Baron will take the

  feature.”

  I make a note to scratch that dog and I look up and

  it seems that his remark was directed to me: there’s

  nobody else within fifty yards.

  I see his face.

  he has a face women would love: utterly bland and

  blank.

  he has remained almost untouched by circumstance, he’s

  a miracle of zero.

  I gaze upon him, enchanted.

  it’s like looking at a lake of milk

  never rippled by even a pebble.

  I look back down at my Form.

  “who do you like?” he asked.

  “sir,” I tell him, “I prefer not to talk.”

  he looks at me from behind his perfectly trimmed black

  mustache, there is not one hair out of place;

  I’ve tried mustaches; I’ve never cared enough for mirrors

  to keep a mustache looking that unnatural.

  he says, “I’ve heard about you. you don’t like to talk

  to anybody.”

  I get up, take my papers, walk three rows down and sixteen

  seats over. I go to my last resort, take out my

  red rubber earplugs, jam them in.

  being my brother’s keeper would only narrow me down to a

  brick-walled place

  where everything is the same.

  I feel for the lonely, I sense their need, but I also feel

  that the lonely are for one another and that they should

  find each other and leave me alone.

  so, plugs in, I miss the flag-raising ceremony, being deep

  into the Form.

  I would like to be human

  if only they would let me.

  going to the track is like going anywhere else except,

  generally speaking,

  there are more lonely people there, which doesn’t help.

  they have a right to be there and I have a right to be there.

  this is a democracy and we are all part of one

  unhappy family.

  an interview at 70

  the interviewer leans toward

  me, “some say that you are not

  as wild as you used to

  be.”

  “well,” I say, “I can’t keep on

  forever writing poems about

  spilling beer into the laps of

  whores.

  a man matures and moves on to other

  things.”

  “but some still want the same

  old Chinaski!”

  “and that’s just what they’ve

  got,” I say.

  “tell us about the

  racetrack,” he suggests.

  “there’s nothing to

  tell.”

  “you have to wait

  until he gets mellow

  until after midnight

  to hear the really good

  stuff,”

  says my wife.

  the interviewer is not

  used to waiting.

  he stares at his

  notes.

  he wants some

  grand statements, some

  grand conclusions,

  something grand to

  happen now.

  he is confused by his

  misconceptions and

  preconceptions.

  and the worst thing

  about him?

  he’s not

  wild

  enough.

  2 views

  my friend says, how can you write so many poems

  from that window? I write from the womb,

  he tells me. the dark thing of pain,

  the featherpoint of pain.

  well, this is very impressive

  only I know that we both receive a good many

  rejections, smoke a great many cigarettes,

  drink too much and attempt to steal each other’s

  women, which is not poetry at all.

  and he reads me his poems

  he always reads me his poem

  and I listen and do not say too much,

  I look o
ut of the window,

  and there is the same street

  my street

  my drunken, rained-on, sunned-on,

  childrened-on street,

  and at night I watch this street

  sometimes

  when it thinks I am not looking,

  the 1 or 2 cars moving quietly,

  the same old man, still alive, on his

  nightly walk,

  the shades of houses down,

  love has failed but

  hangs on

  then lets go.

  but now it is daylight and children

  who will some day be old men and women

  walking through last moments,

  these children run around a red car

  screaming their good nothings,

  then my friend puts down his poem.

  well, what do you think? he asks.

  try so and so, I name a magazine,

  and then oddly

  I think of guitars under the sea

  trying to play music;

  it is sad and good and quiet.

  he sees me standing at the window.

  what’s out there?

  look, I say,

  and see…

  he is eleven years younger than I.

  he turns away from the window. I need a beer,

  I’m out of beer.

  I walk to the refrigerator

  and the subject is closed.

  van Gogh and 9 innings

  the battleship nights in Georgia

  when we all

  went down.

  do you know? there was this Russian who

  leaped to music well enough to make you cry

  and he went insane

  and they put him someplace and fed

  him and

  shocked him with electric wires and cold water

  and then

  hot water and he wrote books about himself

  he couldn’t read or

  remember.

  out at the ball game

  in Atlanta

  I watched them hurrying, sweating,

  and I sat there thinking about the

  Dutchman

  (instead of the Russian)

  the Dutchman with the toothbrush

  stroke

  who never learned to properly mix his

  paints and who couldn’t make even a

  whore love him

  and it all ended then

  for him and for the whore

  and he cut off his ear and continued to

  beg for paints

  and they write books about him

  now

  but he’s dead and can’t read them

  and I saw some of his stuff at a

  gallery,

  last year—they had it roped off and

  guarded so you couldn’t touch the

  work.

  somebody won that ball game in Atlanta and the

  whore

  didn’t want his

  ear.

  9 a.m.

  blazing as a fort blazes

  this first impromptu note—

  sunlight—

  foul betrayer

  breaking through kisses and perfume and nylon,

  showing a city of broken teeth

  and insane laws,

  bringing a ruined alley to the eye,

  this diamond in the rough;

  and inside my palm

  a small sore

  berry-red

  that even Christ w’d n’t ignore

  as the ladies pass

  shifting their rotted gears

  and peppermint fences and spoiled dogs

  blazing as

  you burn;

  9 a.m. sunlight

  gives us apples and whores

  and now thankfully

  I can again remember

  when I was young

  when I walked in gold

  when rivers had mirrors

  and there was no end.

  lousy day

  in the old days

  after the races I would often end up with a

  high yellow or a crazy white in some motel

  room

  but now I’m 70 and have to get up four times

  each night to piss

  and about the only thing that really concerns me is

  freeway traffic.

  today I dropped $810.00 at the track and when

  I tried to enter the freeway a

  guy in a red Camaro almost ran me

  off the road (red automobiles have always

  annoyed me) so I swung after him, rode his

  bumper hard, then swung around and we rode side-by-side.

  looking over at him I saw he was a slight young

  boy who looked like a cost accountant, so I ran

  my window down and screamed at him while

  honking, informing him that he was a piece

  of subnormal dung but he just continued to stare

  straight ahead so I hit the gas and left him

  behind and my next thought was, I wonder if I

  should tell my wife about this?

  and then quickly a voice from somewhere

  answered, don’t be a sucker, pal, she’ll

  just turn it into an unflattering joke.

  “oh, hahaha! he probably didn’t even know

  you were there!”

  if a man lives for 70 years he learns

  one or two things—the first being: don’t confide unnecessarily

  in your wife.

  the second being: others may sometimes

  understand you but

  none of them will understand you

  better than your wife

  does.

  sadness in the air

  here I am alone sitting

  like some wimp

  listening to Chopin

  the night wind blowing in

  through the

  torn curtains.

  won $546 at the track today but

  now I’m thinking that

  dying is such a strange and

  ordinary thing.

  I just hope that I’ll never need

  false teeth before I

  go.

  Wm. Holden cracked his head

  on a coffee table

  while drunk and

  bled to death;

  stiff and dead for 4 days

  before they found him.

  I wonder how Chopin went?

  things pass away, that’s not

  news.

  here in L.A.

  I’ve seen so many good

  Mexican fighters

  come and go

  climbing through the

  ropes

  young and glistening with

  ambition

  and then

  vanish.

  where do they go?

  where are they tonight

  as I listen to Chopin?

  maybe I’m in a better

  business?

  I don’t think so.

  writers go fast

  too

  they forget how to lead

  with a

  straight hard sentence

  then they teach class

  write critical articles

  bitch

  get stale

  va
nish.

  Holden slipped on a

  throw rug

  his head hitting the

  nightstand

  he had a .22 alcohol

  blood count.

  myself

  I’ve gone down

  many times usually

  over a telephone cord.

  I hate telephones

  anyhow

  whenever one rings

  I jump.

  people ask, “why do you

  jump when the telephone

  rings?”

  if they don’t know

  you can’t tell them.

  it’s getting cold.

  I go to shut the window.

  I do.

  Chopin continues.

  when you drink alone

  like Wm. Holden

  sometimes you’ve got

  something on your mind

  that you can’t tell

  anybody.

  in many cases it’s

  better to keep

  silent.

  we were not put here to

  enjoy easy days and

  nights

  and when the telephone

  rings

  you too will know that

  we’re all

  in the wrong business

  and if you don’t know

  what that means

  you don’t feel the

  sadness in the air.

  the great debate

  he sent me his latest book.

  I had once liked his writing

  very much.

  he had been wonderfully crude, simple,

  troubled.

  now he had learned how to gracefully

  arrange his words and thoughts

  on paper.

  now he taught courses at the

  universities.

  but I wondered about

  what?

 

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