Free The Last Night of the Earth Poems by Charles Bukowski Page B

big ride
     
     
    all right,
    some day you’ll see me in a plastic
    helmet, long stockings,
    double-lens goggles;
    I’ll be tooling along on my 10-speed
    bike on the promenade,
    my face will be as intense
    as a canteloupe and
    in my knapsack
    there could be a
    bible, along with the
    liverwurst sandwich and
    the red red
    apple.
 
    off to one side the
    sea will break and
    break
    and I will
    pump along—a
    well-lived
    man,
    lived a little, perhaps,
    beyond his
    sensibilities: too
    much hair in the
    ears, and face
    badly shaven;
    there, my lips
    never again to
    kiss a
    virgin; I gulp in
    the salty air
    while being
    unsure of the
    time
    but almost sure
    of the
    place.
 
    all right, gliding
    along
    girding up for the
    casket,
    the sun like a
    yellow glove to
    grab me
    I pass a group of
    young ones
    sitting in their
    convertible.
 
    “Jesus Christ,” I hear
    a voice, “do you
    know who that
    was? ”
 
    was?
    was?
 
    why, you little
    fart bells!
    you bits of
    bunny
    droppings!
 
    I kick it
    into high, I
    rise over a
    hill
    into a patch
    of fog,
    my legs
    pump and
    the
    sea
    breaks.

small cafe
     
     
    you take a stool, unfold the paper, the waitress brings the
    java, you order bacon and
    everybody in there is old and bent and poor, they are like
    the oldest people in the universe
    having breakfast
    and it’s dark in there like the inside of a glove
    and some of the patrons speak to each other,
    only their voices are broken and scratched and they speak
    of simple things,
    so simple
    you think that they are joking but
    they hulk over their food, unsmiling…
    “Casmir died, he wore his green shoes…”
    “yeh.”
 
    strange place there, no sadness, no rancor, an overhead
    fan turns slowly, one of the blades bent a bit, it
    clicks against the grate: “a-flick, a-flick, a-flick…”
    nobody
    notices.
 
    my food arrives, it is hot and clean, but never coffee
    like that (the worst), it is like drinking the water left in muddy
    footprints.
 
    the old waitress is a dear, dressed in faded pink, she can
    hardly walk, she’s
    sans everything .
 
    “do you really love me?” she asks the young Mexican fry
    cook. “why?”
 
    “because I can’t help it,” he says, running the spatula
    under a mass of hash browns, turning
    them.
    I eat, peruse the newspaper, general idea I get is
    that the world is not yet about to end but a
    recession is to come creeping in wearing
    faded tennis
    shoes.
 
    an old man looms in the doorway, he’s big in all the
    wrong ways and shuts out what little light there
    is.
 
    “hey, anybody seen Vern?”
 
    there is no answer, the old man
    waits, he waits a good minute and a half, then he lets out a
    little fart.
    I can hear it, everybody can. uh
    huh.
    he reaches up, scratches behind his left ear, then backs out of
    the doorway and is
    gone.
 
    “that ratfucker,” somebody says, “zinched little Laura out of
    her dowry.”
 
    the last bit of toast sogs down my throat, I wipe my mouth, leave
    the tip, rise to pay the
    bill.
 
    the cash register is the old fashioned kind where the
    drawer jumps out when you hit the
    keys.
 
    I was the last person to sit down to eat, I am the first to
    leave, the others still sit
    fiddling with their food, fighting the coffee
    down
 
    as I get to my car I start the engine, think,
    nice place, rather like an accidental
    love, maybe I’ll go back there
    once or
    twice.
 
    then I back out, swing around and enter the
    real world
    again.

washrag
     
     
    leaving for the track in the morning
    my wife asks me,
    “did you wring out your washrag
    properly?”
 
    “yes,” I say.
 
    “you never do,” she says,
    “it’s important that you wring out
    your washrag
    properly.”
 
    I get into my car,
    start it,
    back out the drive.
 
    of course, she’s right, it is
    important.
    on the other hand
    I don’t want to get into an
    argument over
    washrags.
 
    she waves goodbye,
    I wave back,
    then I turn left,
    go down the hill.
 
    it is a fine