Mockingbird Wish Me Luck (7 page)

 

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.

 

 

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.

 

 

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

anything.

 

 

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.

 

 

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.

 

 

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

 

 

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.

 

 

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.