Sifting Through the Madness for the Word, the Line, the Way New Poems by Charles Bukowski

Author:Charles Bukowski
Format: epub

“uh,” she said,

“uh . . .”

“listen, I called every

pitch correctly before it

happened!”

“uh . . . ?”

“I called them right

52 times in a

row!”

“uh . . . ?”

her head rolled

over to

one side.

within 5 seconds

she was

snoring.

I went to the

kitchen and got a

beer.

I sat in a chair

and looked at her

snoring on the bed

and drank the

beer.

then I got up and

198

got a glass of wine

and came back.

I sat in that chair

drinking until it

got dark.

Jane kept snoring and

I kept drinking.

I’d called them right,

I’d called all those

plays

right.

I was young and I was

mean and I was

tough and now I had

something else going

too, something wonderful and

mysterious.

I deserved a younger

woman!

I deserved more

money!

I deserved a better

life!

there was nobody

quite as unique as I

was!

then I gave it up

199

and went to bed

with all my clothes

on.

200

burning bright

I read about him in the sports pages,

he’s just a kid, he’s still in high school, he’s never fought anything but four rounders, 8 four rounders in which he K.O.’d

each one of his 8 opponents

in the first minute of the first

round.

they put him on the card every two weeks or so

and he waits in his dressing room,

warming up,

then they come in

each time

and tell him the same thing:

the other guy failed to show.

he can’t even get anybody to spar with him down at the gym.

“I’ll put him in a six rounder!

I’ll put him in a ten rounder!” says his promoter.

“not enough experience,” says his

father, who is his manager.

it’s hell when you’re too good

to make money.

another young fighter called Van Gogh

found that out.

201

the death of a hero

I was young when my hero was young

the only difference being that

he quickly became famous

and soon I saw his photograph

in the newspaper

in nightclubs with starlets

and the next thing I knew there was a

war

and he was in uniform

in full garb

but I remembered that in his

books

he had said that he would never ever

go to war.

well, most of us have

heroes

and we don’t want them

to be

ordinary,

we want them to be dangerous

and damned well original

and never given over to

any kind or sort of

compromise.

I couldn’t understand

how a man could write so

defiantly and clearly

and then proceed to do the

opposite.

I thought that

what you wrote

202

was from your

soul

and that

such a final

cop-out

by my hero

was impossible.

so I turned on the bastard

and so did the

public—we were not interested

in his books about

army life.

afterwards he went to Malibu and sat on the beach and watched the waves break on the shore like lies like lies like lies . . . 203

hooked

28,000 of us sat there on

opening day

one hour before post

with our Racing Forms

and our programs and our

newspapers and our coffees

when the announcer said,

“ladies and gentlemen, we regret to

announce that the mutuel clerks

have gone on strike and refuse to

sell tickets so there will be no

racing today. rain checks will be issued at the gates beginning at

one p.m.”

an elderly man in a Hawaiian shirt and black shoes took out a .45

and blew his left eye out and through the back of his skull.

everybody felt bad.

“there’s nothing to do now,” I told my girlfriend, “but go home and go to bed. we’ll race

each other.”

the next day I bought a newspaper and looked to see if it had all really

happened.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.