Mockingbird Wish Me Luck Read online

  under—shock and loss of

  blood.

  hell, I know that,

  and now the lion has my

  other arm

  I try to knee him

  his tail knocks a picture off the wall

  a picture of a Dutch windmill and a

  pond

  it is a fine day

  the world looks good

  I feel I’d like to be

  swimming or fishing or sleeping

  under a tree

  but the lion will not

  let go

  then

  my other arm is

  gone

  the people kneel to

  pray

  all but the

  doctor

  the lion is clawing at my

  chest

  trying to get at the

  heart

  I ask the doctor to light me a

  cigarette and

  he does

  then the

  priest walks

  in

  the lion does not bother the priest

  yet

  I’d heard about the

  lion

  about how sometimes he was fast or sometimes he was

  slow

  I knew he usually preferred older people

  although sometimes he even ate

  babies or young men and

  girls

  god o mighty! save me! save me!

  I scream

  but the people do not

  move

  they let the lion

  eat me

  the priest mumbles incantations I do not

  understand

  the doctor turns his back and looks

  out the window

  it is the month of July

  with the taste of butter in the air

  and I am rapidly becoming a

  keepsake thing

  as before my eyes I see the

  moth, butcherbird, dove, vulture and

  angel

  burning

  the lion eats my heart

  and the doctor puts the sheet over my

  head

  and it is early in the

  morning

  very early in the

  morning

  and decent people are still

  in bed

  most of them asleep with bad breath

  and very few of them making

  love

  and most of them

  not like me

  yet

  vacancy

  sun-stroked women

  without men

  on a Santa Monica monday;

  the men are working or in jail

  or insane;

  one girl floats in a rubber suit,

  waiting…

  houses slide off the edges of cliffs

  and down into the sea.

  the bars are empty

  the lobster eating houses are empty;

  it’s a recession, they say,

  the good days are

  over.

  you can’t tell an unemployed man

  from an artist any more,

  they all look alike

  and the women look the same,

  only a little more desperate.

  we stop at a hippie hole

  in Topanga Canyon…

  and wait, wait, wait;

  the whole area of the canyon and the beach

  is listless

  useless

  VACANCY, it says, PEOPLE WANTED.

  the wood has no fire

  the sea is dirty

  the hills are dry

  the temples have no bells

  love has no bed

  sun-stroked women without men

  one sailboat

  life drowned.

  3:16 and one half…

  here I’m supposed to be a great poet

  and I’m sleepy in the afternoon

  here I am aware of death like a giant bull

  charging at me

  and I’m sleepy in the afternoon

  here I’m aware of wars and men fighting in the ring

  and I’m aware of good food and wine and good women

  and I’m sleepy in the afternoon

  I’m aware of a woman’s love

  and I’m sleepy in the afternoon,

  I lean into the sunlight behind a yellow curtain

  I wonder where the summer flies have gone

  I remember the most bloody death of Hemingway

  and I’m sleepy in the afternoon.

  some day I won’t be sleepy in the afternoon

  some day I’ll write a poem that will bring volcanoes

  to the hills out there

  but right now I’m sleepy in the afternoon

  and somebody asks me, “Bukowski, what time is it?”

  and I say, “3:16 and a half.”

  I feel very guilty, I feel obnoxious, useless,

  demented, I feel

  sleepy in the afternoon,

  they are bombing churches, o.k., that’s o.k.,

  the children ride ponies in the park, o.k., that’s o.k.,

  the libraries are filled with thousands of books of knowledge,

  great music sits inside the nearby radio

  and I am sleepy in the afternoon,

  I have this tomb within myself that says,

  ah, let the others do it, let them win,

  let me sleep,

  wisdom is in the dark

  sweeping through the dark like brooms,

  I’m going where the summer flies have gone,

  try to catch me.

  the rat

  with one punch, at the age of 16 and 1/2,

  I knocked out my father,

  a cruel shiny bastard with bad breath,

  and I didn’t go home for some time, only now and then

  to try to get a dollar from

  dear momma.

  it was 1937 in Los Angeles and it was a hell of a

  Vienna.

  I ran with these older guys

  but for them it was the same:

  mostly breathing gasps of hard air

  and robbing gas stations that didn’t have any

  money, and a few lucky among us

  worked part-time as Western Union messenger

  boys.

  we slept in rented rooms that weren’t rented—

  and we drank ale and wine

  with the shades down

  being quiet quiet

  and then awakening the whole building

  with a fistfight

  breaking mirrors and chairs and lamps

  and then running down the stairway

  just before the police arrived

  some of us soldiers of the future

  running through the empty starving streets and alleys of

  Los Angeles

  and all of us

  getting together later

  in Pete’s room

  a small cube of space under a stairway, there we were,

  packed in there

  without women

  without cigarettes

  without anything to drink,

  while the rich pawed away at their many

  choices and the young girls let

  them,

  the same girls who spit at our shadows as we

  walked past.

  it was a hell of a

  Vienna.

  3 of us under that stairway

  were killed in World War II.

  another one is now manager of a mattress

  company.

  me? I’m 30 years older,

  the town is 4 or 5 times as big

  but just as rotten

  and the girls still spit on my

  shadow, another war is building for another

  reason, and I can hardly get a job now

  for the same reason I couldn’t then:

  I don’t know anything, I can’t do

  anyt
hing.

  sex? well, just the old ones knock on my door after

  midnight. I can’t sleep and they see the lights and are

  curious.

  the old ones. their husbands no longer want them,

  their children are gone, and if they show me enough good

  leg (the legs go last)

  I go to bed with

  them.

  so the old women bring me love and I smoke their cigarettes

  as they

  talk talk talk

  and then we go to bed again and

  I bring them love

  and they feel good and

  talk

  until the sun comes

  up, then we

  sleep.

  it’s a hell of a

  Paris.

  hot

  I was up under the attic and it was almost summer

  and I sat around drinking wine

  and watching the hot pigeons suffer and fuck

  on the hot roof

  and I listened to sounds on my radio and

  drank the wine

  and I sat there naked and sweating

  and wishing I were back in the journalism class

  where everybody was a

  genius.

  it was even hot when I got thrown out of there

  for non-payment of rent and I signed on with a

  track gang going West—the windows wouldn’t open

  and the seats and sides of the cars were 100 years old with

  dust. they gave us cans of food but no openers

  and we busted the cans against the side of the seats

  ate raw hash, raw lima beans

  the water tasted like candlewick

  and I leaped out under a line of trees in the middle of

  Texas, some small town, and the police found me asleep

  on a park bench and put me in a cell with only a crapper,

  no water, no sink, and they questioned me about robberies and

  murders,

  under a hot light

  and getting nothing

  they drove me to the next town 17 miles away

  the big one kicked me in the ass

  and after a good night’s sleep

  I went into the local library

  where the young lady librarian seemed to take an interest in my

  reading habits

  and later we went to bed

  and I woke up with teethmarks all over me and I said,

  Christ, watch it, baby, you might give me

  cancer!

  you’re an idiot, she said.

  I suppose that I

  was.

  radio

  strange eyes in my head

  I’m the coward and the fool and the clown

  and I listen to a man telling me that I can get a

  restaurant guide and an expanding cultural events calendar

  I’m just not here today

  I don’t want restaurants and expanding cultural events

  I want an old shack in the hills

  rent free

  with enough to eat and drink until I die

  strange eyes in my head

  strange ways

  no chance

  ariel

  oh my god, oh my dear god

  that we should end up

  on the end of a rope

  in some slimy bathroom

  far from Paris,

  far from thighs that care,

  our feet hanging down

  above the simplicity

  of stained tile,

  telephone ringing,

  letters unopened,

  dogs pissing in the street…

  greater men than I

  have failed to agree with Life.

  I wish you could have met my brother, Marty:

  vicious, intelligent, endearing,

  doing

  quite well.

  the passing of a dark gray moment

  Standing here,

  doing what?

  as exposed as an azalea

  to a bee.

  Where’s the axman,

  where’s it done?

  They tiptoe round

  on rotting wood,

  peeking into shelves.

  Summertime!

  Where’s the sun,

  where’s the sea?

  The god’s are gone!

  Everything hums

  with humble severity…

  they wipe their faces

  with cotton and rags

  —and wait for morning.

  Where’s the fire,

  where’s the burn?

  Rain-spouts! and rats

  printing dirge-notes in ashes…

  a voice plows my brain:

  “the gods are dead.”

  Where’s the time,

  where’s the place?

  Somewhat eased, extinguished,

  I listen behind me

  to my bird eating seed,

  hoping he’ll chitter

  and peep some pink

  back into white elbows.

  I love that bird,

  the simple needing of seed, so clear:

  A god can be anything

  that’s needed right away.

  The sound of aircraft overhead

  winging a man…

  stronger now, not yet pure,

  but moving away the dread.

  consummation of grief

  I even hear the mountains

  the way they laugh

  up and down their blue sides

  and down in the water

  the fish cry

  and all the water

  is their tears.

  I listen to the water

  on nights I drink away

  and the sadness becomes so great

  I hear it in my clock

  it becomes knobs upon my dresser

  it becomes paper on the floor

  it becomes a shoehorn

  a laundry ticket

  it becomes

  cigarette smoke

  climbing a chapel of dark vines…

  it matters little

  very little love is not so bad

  or very little life

  what counts

  is waiting on walls

  I was born for this

  I was born to hustle roses down the avenues of the dead.

  those sons of bitches

  the dead come running sideways

  holding toothpaste ads,

  the dead are drunk on New Year’s eve

  satisfied at Christmas

  thankful on Thanksgiving

  bored on the 4th of July

  loafing on Labor Day

  confused at Easter

  cloudy at funerals

  clowning at hospitals

  nervous at birth;

  the dead shop for stockings and shorts

  and belts and rugs and vases and

  coffeetables,

  the dead dance with the dead

  the dead sleep with the dead

  the dead eat with the dead.

  the dead get hungry looking at hogs’ heads.

  the dead get rich

  the dead get deader

  those sons of bitches

  this graveyard above the ground

  one tombstone for the mess,

  I say:

  humanity, you never had it

  from the beginning.

  the hunt

  by god, it was a long day

  the 3 horse broke down

  the cook burned his hand,

  e. pitts was recalled from the sandlots

  because the regular back had a

  hamstring,

  and the grunion ran again

  through the oily sea

  to plant eggs on shore and be caught

  by unemployed drunks

  with flopping canvas hats

  and no woman at all.

  offshore you could see the light
s of a

  passing yacht

  with a party on board,

  lots of girls and jokes and the

  rest,

  and they put the 3 horse in

  the truck, carried him away from the

  crowd and shot

  him, little things like that and other

  things

  are what sometimes create unemployed drunks

  with flopping canvas hats,

  sans woman,

  trying to grab for

  grunion.

  the big fire

  I’m on fire like the cactus in the desert

  I’m on fire like the palms of an acrobat

  I’m on fire like the fangs of the spider

  I’m on fire with you and me

  I’m on fire walking into a drugstore

  I’m on fire I’m on fire

  the girl hands me my change and

  laughs at me