Free Burning in Water, Drowing in Flame by Charles Bukowski

a giant penis of hate
    and the crows came down half-dead, half-living,
    and they clubbed them to death to save their shells
    but they ran out of shells before they ran out of crows
    and the crows came back and walked around the pellets and
    stuck out their tongues
    and mourned their dead and elected new leaders
    and then all at once flew home to fuck to fill the gap.
     
     
    you can only kill what shouldn’t be there,
    and Finkelstein should be there and my watch
    and maybe myself, and I realize that if the poems are bad
    they are supposed to be bad and if they are good
    they are likewise supposed to be—although there is a minor
    fight to be fought,
    but still I am sad
    because I was in this small town somewhere in the badlands,
    way off course, not even wanting to be there,
    two dollars in my wallet, and a farmer turned to me
    and asked me what time it was
    and I wouldn’t tell him,
    and later they gathered them up for burning
    as if they were no better than dung with feathers,
    feathers and a little gasoline,
    and from the bottom of one pile
    a not-quite-dead crow smiled at me.
     
     
    it was 4:35 p.m.
     

note to a lady who expected rupert brooke
     
     
    wha’, what did you expect? a schoolboy lisping Donne? or
    some more practical lover filling you with the stench of Life?
    I’m a fool and no gentleman: I walked the Brooklyn Bridge
    with Crane in pajamas, but suicide fails as you get older:
    there’s less and less to kill.
     
     
    so among the skin and lambchops, the sick neckties of
    other closets, I scheme schemes round as oranges
    filled with the music of my crafty mumbling.
     
     
    Brooke? no. I am a monkey with an olive lost in the
    circus sand of your laughter, circus apes, circus tigers,
    circus madmen of finance screwing their secretaries before
    the 5:15…and what did you expect?
     
     
    a pink-cheek dribbling Picasso colors on your dry brain?
     
     
    so, the room was blue with the smoke of my boiling, hell,
    a senseless sea
    and I fell fingers sotted to the last pinch of your juice,
    fell through the thorned vines cursing your name,
    no gentleman
    no gentleman,
    kissed-off love like snake-bite,
    the veranda buzzed with flies, buzzed with flies
    and lies, and your red mouth screamed,
    your lamps screamed
    breaking like overdue bills:
     
     
     
    DRUNK! DRUNK AGAIN!
O, YOU IDIOT!
     
     

     
     
     
    so, Yeats, Keats, teats…nothing but an apricot!
     
     
    wha’, what happened to Spain? my boy Lorca?
    the revolution? must join the brigade!
    lemme outa here!
     

the difference between a bad poet and a good one is luck
     
     
    I suppose so.
    I was living in an attic in Philadelphia
    it became very hot in the summer and so I stayed in the
    bars. I didn’t have any money and so with what was almost left
    I put a small ad in the paper and said I was a writer
    looking for work…
    which was a god damned lie; I was a writer
    looking for a little time and a little food and some
    attic rent.
    a couple of days later when I finally came home
    from somewhere
    the landlady said, there was somebody looking for
    you. and I said,
    there must be some mistake. she said,
    no, it was a writer and he said he wanted you to help him write
    a history book.
    oh, fine, I said, and I knew with that I had another week’s
    rent—I mean, on the cuff—
    so I sat around drinking wine on credit and watching the
    hot pigeons
    suffer and fuck on my hot roof.
    I turned the radio on real loud
    drank the wine and wondered how I could make a history book
    interesting but true.
    but the bastard never came back,
    and I had to finally sign on with a railroad track gang
    going West
    and they gave us cans of food but no
    openers
    and we broke the cans against the seats and sides of
    railroad cars a hundred years old with dust
    the food wasn’t cooked and the water tasted like
    candlewick
    and I leaped off into a clump of brush somewhere in
    Texas
    all green with nice-looking houses in the
    distance
    1 found a park
    slept all