Free New Poems Book Three by Charles Bukowski Page B

later
    I thought I saw the redhead.
    it looked like her ass from behind
    and when her head turned I’m
    almost sure it was her
    face.
    I quickly changed floors,
    went all the way over to the
    clubhouse.
    it might all be my imagination
    that I saw 2 of the women
    that I once thought I couldn’t
    live
    without.
    but
    at least
    I haven’t run into
    the other
    5.

SPEED
    every day on the freeway I get into a race with some
    fool.
    I win most of them.
    but now and then I hook up with some fellow who is
    totally insane
    and then I
    lose.
    each day as I drive the freeway I think, not today, today
    I am going to have an
    easy pleasant
    ride.
    but somehow it happens and it’s always on the
    Pasadena Freeway
    with its snake-like curves which enhance the
    danger and exhilaration.
    these same curves make it almost impossible for the
    police to
    check your rate of speed
    so they seldom cruise the
    Pasadena Freeway.
    here I am 65 years old
    dueling with young boys
    making reckless lane changes
    charging into the tiniest gaps between moving
    steel
    the landscape roaring past in the
    rain
    sun
    fog.
    it takes an eye for split-second
    timing
    but there’s only so far
    any of us
    can go.

IT’S DIFFICULT TO SEE YOUR OWN DEATH APPROACHING
    saw two writers sitting at a table in a café
    the other day—not bad fellows really, either with
    the word or the way.
    it had been several years since I had last
    seen them and as I walked over I noticed that they both
    looked
old
—their faces sagged and one’s
    hair was
white:
    it would appear that the gentle art of poetry
    had not treated them any better than working the
    tomato fields, and oddly, when I greeted them,
    they stammered and could barely respond,
    they just sat there at the table like a
    pair of old coots on a hot summer
    afternoon.
    I took my leave, went back to my table,
    smiled at my wife, pleased that I hadn’t
    grown old like that, no,
    not at all.
    I enjoyed the view of the harbor as I looked out at the
    brightly painted ships docked there, rising and falling
    gently with the tide
    and as I raised my glass to toast my eternal
    youth
    the voice across from me said, “Hank, you
    better take it easy, in just another week
    you’re going to be
    65.”

MADE IN THE SHADE (HAPPY NEW YEAR)
    Popcorn Man, he don’t give a damn,
    hates his brother, beats his mother,
    he don’t give a damn,
    Popcorn Man.
    Popcorn Man, he don’t have a
    conscience, he don’t wear a rubber,
    hates his mother, beats his brother,
    Popcorn Man.
    Popcorn Man,
    he’ll wipe your ass with a frying pan,
    Popcorn Man,
    he’ll steal your arms, burn your
    meat, suck out your eyeballs as a
    Popcorn treat,
    Popcorn Man.
    he don’t give a damn,
    he don’t give a damn,
    that Popcorn Man,
    he really don’t give a damn,
    that Popcorn Man.

ONE FOR WOLFGANG
    today was Mozart’s 237th birthday
    as tonight the sounds from the harbor
    drift in over my little
    balcony.
    I suck the world in through this cigar,
    then blow it out.
    I’m calm, I’m tired, I’m calm and
    tired.
    Mozart, what do you think?
    why do the gods tease us as
    we approach the final
    darkness?
    yet, who’d want to stay here
    FOREVER ?
    a day at a time is difficult
    enough.
    so I guess everything is all right.
    anyway, happy
    237th birthday.
    and many more.
    I’d like to treat you to
    a fine dinner tonight
    but the other people
    at all the other tables
    wouldn’t
    understand.
    they never
    have.

NIGHT UNTO NIGHT
    Barney, you knew right away
    when they halved the
    apple
    that your part would contain the
    worm.
    you knew you’d never dream of conquistadors or
    swans.
    each man has his designated place and yours is at
    the end of the line,
    a long long line,
    an almost endless line
    in the worst possible weather.
    you’ll never be embraced by a lovely lady
    and your place in the scheme of things
    will go unrecorded.
    there are men put on earth not to live but to die
    slowly and badly or
    quickly and
    uselessly.
    the latter are the lucky