Free Burning in Water, Drowing in Flame by Charles Bukowski Page A

night
    and then they found me and put me in a cell
     
     
    and they asked me about murders and
    robberies.
    they wanted to get a lot of stuff off the books
    to prove their efficiency
    but I wasn’t that tired
    and they drove me to the next big town
    fifty-seven miles away
    the big one kicked me in the ass
    and they drove off.
    but I lucked it:
    two weeks later I was sitting in the office of the city hall
    half-asleep in the sun like the big fly on my elbow
    and now and then she took me down to a meeting of the council
    and I listened very gravely as if I knew what was happening
    as if I knew how the funds of a halfass town were being
    dismantled.
    later I went to bed and woke up with teethmarks all over
    me, and I said, Christ, watch it, baby! you might give me
    cancer! and I’m rewriting the history of the Crimean War!
    and they all came to her house—
    all the cowboys, all the cowboys:
    fat, dull and covered with dust.
    and we all shook hands.
    I had on a pair of old bluejeans, and they said
    oh, you’re a writer, eh?
    and I said: well, some think so.
    and some still think so…
    others, of course, haven’t quite wised up yet.
    two weeks later they
    ran me out
    of town.
     

the curtains are waving and people walk through the afternoon here and in Berlin and in New York City and in Mexico
     
     
    I wait on life like a pregnancy, put the stethoscope to
    the gut
    but all I hear now is
    the piano slamming its teeth through areas of my
    brain
    (somebody in this neighborhood likes
    Gershwin which is too bad
    for
              me)
    and the woman sits behind me
    sits there sits there
    and keeps lighting cigarettes
    and now the nurses leave the hospital near here
    and they wear dresses that are naked in the sun
    to cheer the dead and the dying and the doctors
    but it does not help
    me
    if I could rip them with moans of delight it
    would neither add or take away
    anything
     
     
    now now
     
     
                a horn blows a tired
    summer like a gladiola given up and leaning against a
    house and
    the bottles we have emptied would strangle the
    sensibilities…of God
     
     
    now I look up and see my face in the mirror:
    if I could only kill the man who killed the
    man
     
     
    more than coffeepots and cheroots have done me
    in more than myself has done me
    in
     
     
    madness comes like a mouse out of the cupboard and
    they hand me a photograph of the
    moon
     
     
    the woman behind me has a daughter who falls in love
    with men in beards and sandals and berets
    who smoke pipes and carefully comb their hair and
    play chess and talk continually of the
    soul and of Art
     
     
    this is good enough: you’ve got to love
    something
     
     
    now the landlord waters outside dripping the
    plants with false rain
    Gershwin is finished now it sounds like
    Greig
     
     
    o, it’s all so common and hard! impossible!
    I do wish somebody would go blackberry
    wild
     
     
    but no
    I suppose it will be the
    same: a beer and then another
    beer and then another
    beer
    maybe then a halfpint of
    scotch
    three cigars—smoke smoke yes smoke
    under the electric sun of night
    hidden here in these walls with this woman and her
    life while
    the police are taking the drunks off the
    streets
     
     
    I do not know how much longer I can
    last
    but I keep thinking
    ow! my god!
    the
    gladiola will straighten hard and
    full of
    color like an
    arrow pointing at the
    sun
    Christ will shudder like
    marmalade
    my cat will look like Gandhi once
    looked
    everything everything
    even the tiles in the men’s room at the
    Union Station will be
    true
     
     
    all those mirrors there
    finally with faces in them
     
     
            roses
        forests
    no more policemen
                no more
    me.
     

for the mercy-mongers
     
     
    it is justified
    all dying is justified
    all killing all death all
    passing,
    nothing is in vain
    not even the neck
    of a fly,
     
     
    and a flower
    passes through the armies
    and like a small boy
    bragging,
    lifts up