Free The Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over the Hills by Charles Bukowski Page B

weird
    puzzlement.
     
 
    some of the women could fire rifles. we left a small
    detachment to decide upon
    them. then we fired up the unburned huts and moved on
    to the next village.
     

family, family
     
     
    I keep looking at the
    kid
    up
    side
        down,
    and I am tickling
    her sides
    as her mother pins new
    diapers
    on,
    and the kid doesn’t look like
    me
    —upsidedown
    so I get ready to
    kill them both
        but
    relent:
     
 
    I don’t even
    look like
    myself—
        rightsideup, so.
    shit on it!
    I tickle again, say
    crazy
    words, and and and and
    hope
    all the while
    that this
        very unappetizing
    world
    does not blow up
    in all our
        laughing
    faces.
     

poem for the death of an American serviceman in Vietnam:
     
     
    shot through a hole in the
    bellybutton
    9 miles wide—
    out it came:
    those Indian head pennies
    those old dead whores
    the sick sea walking like
    pink
    toast
    past bottles of orange
    children
    dripping
    drip
        dry
     
 
    barometer
    lowering
    while the guns elevated like
    erections—
    tossed the apple salad back
    into the
    sky.
     
 
    (he died then, stuffing balloons with
    marbles as the prince
    laughed.)
     

guilt obsession behind a cloud of rockets:
     
     
    genuinely traginew, dandy then, babe,
    the age-old bile:
    dummies stuffed with wax and
    steel,
    a deeper dark than any dark
    we have ever
    known—
    I do not speak of such obvious things as
    skin—
    christ, it’s a bad
    fix, ghostly true,
    I might even say
    off the top of the bottle
    that I suffer more than
    most, haha, but
    I’ve also found that
    good men
    neither talk about their virtues or
    their possibilities,
    —strike deep here,
    catch fish, headaches, sores, blisters,
    traffic tickets, tooth decay, hatred from
    lesbians, the surgeon’s brown
    finger—
    if death is so fearful
    then life must be
    good?
    dandy then, babe, genuinely
    traginew, and
    I’ve found out why men
    sign their names to their
    works—
    not that they created them
    but more
    than the others did
    not.
     

even the sun was afraid
     
     
    they’d stuck him in the shoulder and
    he came out
    pissed—
    feeling all the space of ground
    feeling the sunshine
    and
    looking for somebody.
     
 
    it stood there.
     
 
    it seemed that even the sun was afraid of the
    bull.
     
 
    the matador screamed something
    shook and flagged the cape.
    the bull came at him.
    he gave him the cape. but the mat did not get very
    close.
     
 
    then the bull saw the padded
    horse, the blindfolded horse,
    and he trotted over
    and began working his horns against the horse’s
    side and underside.
     
 
    the pic
    there on top of the horse
    lanced him good
    he stuck him deep and hard with the
    pole
    really muscling it in
    screwing it in deep
    right in the top part of the back there
    up near the neck.
     
 
    this makes the bull go more for the horse—
    he probably thinks the horse is doing it to him—
    and as he goes more for the horse
    he gets drilled more and more
    by the chickenshit
    lance.
     
 
    the bull left the horse
    went for the cape
    then came back to the horse.
    then he got another drilling by the
    pic.
     
 
    he does not any longer quite look like the
    bull who first ran into the ring.
    but they haven’t cut him down enough
    they have something else for
    him: the banderillas.
     
 
    short sharp pieces that are jammed into the upper back
    and neck, the placement of these does appear
    dangerous.
    no cape is used and these young Mexican boys
    stupid and with dirty
    behinds
    they leap into the air and make the
    placements as the bull runs
    by.
     
 
    we watched them make the
    placements.
    now the bull was properly ready for the matador to be
    brave.
    the neck and back muscles were severed, shredded in
    many places.
    the head came
    down.
     
 
    Harry took a drink. “these Mexican bulls aren’t any
    good. you oughta see the Spanish bulls. they got horns
    like this”:
    he showed me how they had horns like that. with his
    hands. then we both had