Free New Poems Book Three by Charles Bukowski Page A

been?”
    pink-eyed she was
    sitting up against the pillows
    just her slippers on.
    “stop for a
quickie
?
    no wonder you haven’t looked
    at me for a week!”
    “I saw a good fight. free.
    better than anything at the
    Olympic. I saw a good ass-
    kicking alley fight.”
    “you expect me to believe
    that?”
    “christ, don’t you ever wash
    the glasses? well, we’ll use
    these two.”
    I poured two. she knocked hers
    off. well, she needed it
    and I needed mine.
    “it was really brutal. I hate
    to see such things but I can’t
    help watching.”
    “pour me another drink.”
    I poured two more, she needed
    hers because she lived with me.
    I needed mine because I worked
    as a stockroom boy
    for the May Co.
    “you stopped for a
quickie
!”
    “no, I watched a fight.”
    she tossed off her second drink.
    she was trying to decide
    whether I had had a quickie or
    whether I had watched a fight.
    “pour us another drink, is that
    the only bottle we’ve got?”
    I winked at her and pulled
    another bottle from a paper sack.
    we seldom ate. we drank
    and I worked as a
    stockroom boy for the May Co. and
    she had a pair of the
    most beautiful legs I had
    ever seen.
    as I poured the third drink
    she got up, smiled, kicked off the
    slippers and put her high heels
    on.
    “we need some god-damned
    ice,” she said as I watched
    her ass wobble into the
    kitchen.
    then she vanished in there
    and I thought about that
    fight again.

SUNBEAM
    sometimes when you are in hell
    and it is continuous
    you get a bit giddy
    and then when you are tired beyond being
    tired
    sometimes a crazy feeling gets a hold of
    you.
    the factory was in east L.A.
    and of the 150 workers
    I was one of only two white men
    there.
    the other had a soft job.
    mine was to wrap and tape
    the light fixtures
    as they came off the assembly line and
    as I tried
    to keep pace the
    sharp edges of the tape
    cut through my gloves and into my
    hands.
    finally
    the gloves had to be thrown
    away
    because
    they were cut to shreds
    and then my hands were completely exposed
    each new slice like an electric
    shock.
    I was the big dumb white boy
    and as the others
    worked to keep pace
    all eyes were watching to see
    if I would
    fall behind.
    I gave up on my hands
    but I didn’t give up.
    the pace seemed impossible
    and then something snapped in my
    brain and I screamed
    out the name of the firm we were all slaving
    for, “ SUNBEAM !”
    at once
    everybody laughed
    all the girls on the assembly line and
    all the guys too although
    we all still had to struggle to keep up with
    the work flow.
    then I yelled it
    again:
    “ SUNBEAM !”
    it was a total release for me.
    then one of the girls on the
    assembly line yelled back,
    “ SUNBEAM !”
    and we all
    laughed
    together.
    and then as we continued
    to work
    a new voice
    would suddenly call out from
    somewhere,
    “ SUNBEAM !”
    and each time we
    laughed until
    we were all drunk with
    laughter.
    then the foreman,
    Morry,
    came in from the other
    room.
    “ WHAT THE HELL’S GOING ON IN
    HERE? THAT SCREAMING HAS GOT
    TO STOP !”
    so then, we stopped.
    and as Morry turned away we saw that the
    seat of his pants was jammed up in the crack of
    his ass, that fool in control of
    our universe!
    I lasted about 4 months there
    and I will always remember that day,
    that joy, the madness, the mutual
    magic of our
    many voices
    one at a time
    screaming
    “ SUNBEAM !”
    sometimes when you are in
    a living hell
    long enough
    things like that sometimes happen
    and then
    you’re in a kind of heaven
    a heaven which might not seem to be
    very much at all
    to most folks
    but which is good enough
    especially when you can
    watch someone like Morry
    walk away with the seat of his pants
    jammed up in the crack of his
    ass.

APPARITIONS
    I thought I saw the one with long
    brown hair standing by the coffee stand.
    she had on dark shades.
    I ducked and got on the escalator
    and went down to the first
    floor and mingled with the
    crowd.
    a few days