Free The Roominghouse Madrigals by Charles Bukowski Page A

squirrel,
    they had said,
    they’d had their say,
    and I was done.
     

Suicide
     
     
    he told me he had all the gas on
    without flame
    but when I got there
    at 11:30 p.m. the gas was flaming and
    he was drunk on the couch
    with his ragged goatee:
    “it got too much,” he told me,
    “I got to thinking
    and it got too much.”
     
 
    which is good enough, we who think
    or work with words, we who carve
    can come up against this, especially
    if we believe our early successes
    and believe the game is won.
     
 
    I think of Ernie tagging himself
    when the time was ready
    and I think of Frost
    going on,
    licking the boots of politicians,
    telling the pretty lies
    of an addled mind,
    and I think,
    well, Ernie’s won
    another round.
     
 
    I pour the kid a drink, then
    pour myself one. kid?
    hell, he’s 30. a lady’s man
    and a master of the English
    language with a
    peanut-shell soul.
    and I? and I? nothing more.
    we drink and he reels off
    petty larcenies. later I leave,
    both of us alive.
     
 
    the next Sunday, I’m told,
    my friend was in Frisco
    in a green bow tie
    reading his poems to a
    society of misplaced ladies.
     
 
    I’m told he
    gassed them to
    death.
     

3:30 A.M. Conversation
     
     
    at 3:30 a.m. in the morning
    a door opens
    and feet come down the hall
    moving a body,
    and there is a knock
    and you put down your beer
    and answer.
     
 
    god damn it, she says,
    don’t you ever sleep?
     
 
    and she walks in
    her hair in curlers
    and herself in a silk robe
    covered with rabbits and birds
     
 
    and she has brought her own bottle
    to which you splendidly add
    2 glasses;
    her husband, she says, is in Florida
    and her sister sends her money and dresses,
    and she has been looking for a job
    for 32 days.
     
 
    you tell her
    you are a jockey’s agent and a
    writer of jazz and love songs,
    and after a couple of drinks
    she doesn’t bother to cover
    her legs
    with the edge of the robe
    that keeps falling away.
     
 
    they are not bad legs at all,
    in fact, very good legs,
    and soon you are kissing a
    head full of curlers,
     
 
    and the rabbits are beginning
    to wink, and Florida is a long way
    away, and she says we are not strangers
    really because she has seen me
    in the hall.
     
 
    and finally
    there is very little
    to say.
     

Cows in Art Class
     
     
    good weather
    is like
    good women—
    it doesn’t always happen
    and when it does
    it doesn’t
    always last.
    a man is
    more stable:
    if he’s bad
    there’s more chance
    he’ll stay that way,
    or if he’s good
    he might hang
    on,
    but a woman
    is changed forever
    by
    children
    age
    diet
    conversation
    sex
    the moon
    the absence or
    presence of the sun
    or good times.
    a woman must be nursed
    into subsistence
    by love
    where a man can become
    stronger
    by being hated.
    I am drinking tonight in Spangler’s Bar
    and I remember the cows
    I once painted in Art class
    and they looked good
    they looked better than anything
    in here. I am drinking in Spangler’s Bar
    wondering which to love and which
    to hate, but the rules are gone:
    I love and hate only
    myself—
    the others stand beyond me
    like oranges dropped from the table
    and rolling away; it’s what I’ve got to
    decide:
     
 
    kill myself or
    love myself?
    which is the treason?
    where’s the information
    coming from?
     
 
    books…like broken glass:
    I wdn’t wipe my ass with ’em
    yet, it’s getting
    darker, see?
     
 
    (we drink here and speak to
    each other and seem knowing.)
     
 
    paint the cow with the biggest
    tits
    paint the cow with the biggest
    rump.
     
 
    the bartender slides me a beer
    it runs down the bar
    like an Olympic sprinter
    and the pair of pliers that is my hand
    stops it, lifts it,
    golden, dull temptation,
    I drink and
    stand there
    the weather bad for cows
    but my brush is ready
    to stroke up
    the green grass straw eye
    sadness takes me over
    and I drink the beer straight down
    order a shot
    fast
    to give me the guts and the love