Love is a Dog from Hell (12 page)

 

beheaded in the middle of the

night

scratching my sides

I am covered with bites

kick my white legs out of the sheets

as the sirens scream

there is a gun blast.

 

I go to the kitchen

for a glass of water

destroy the reverie of a roach

destroy the roach.

a gale comes from the North

as the man in the apartment across

from me

inserts his penis into the rump of his

4 year old

daughter.

 

I hear the screams

light a cigar

stick it into the lips of my

beheaded head.

it is half a cigar

stale

a
Medalist Naturáles
, No. 7.

 

I walk back to the bedroom

with a spray can.

I press the button.

it hisses. I

gag,

think of ancient wars

loves dead.

so much happens in the dark

yet tomorrow

the sun will move up and on,

you’ll get a ticket if you park on the

south side of the street on

Thursday

or the north side on

Friday.

 

the efficiency of the sun and the

law

bulwarks sanity.

 

something bites me.

I madden

spray half my

bedsheets.

 

I turn

see the dark mirror—

the cigar

the loose belly

me

old.

 

I laugh.

 

it’s good they don’t

know.

 

I take my head

 

put it back on my

neck

 

get between the sheets and

 

can’t sleep.

 

the Mexican dancer shook her fans at

me and her ass at me, I

didn’t ask her to and

my woman got mad and ran out of the cafe and

it began raining and you could hear it on the

roof and I didn’t have a job and I had 13 days left

on the rent.

sometimes when a woman runs out on you like

that you wonder if it’s not

economics, you can’t blame them—

if I had to get fucked I’d rather get fucked

by somebody with money.

we’re all scared but when you’re ugly and you

don’t have much left you get

strong, and I called the waiter over and I said,

I think I am going to turn this table over, I’m

bored, I’m insane, I need

action, call in your goon, I’ll piss on his

collarbone.

 

I got

thrown out swiftly. it was

raining. I picked myself up in the rain and

walked down the empty street

cotton candy sweet

dumb shit for sale, all the little stores locked

with 67¢ Woolworth locks.

 

I reached the end of the street in time

to see her get into the yellow cab with

another guy.

 

I fell down by a garbage can, stood up

and pissed against it, feeling sad and not

sad, knowing there was only so much they could do to

you, piss sliding down the corrugated

tin, the philosophers must have had something to

say about this. women. their luck against your

destiny. winner take Barcelona. next

bar.

 

the men phone and ask me that.

 

are you really Charles Bukowski

the writer? they ask.

 

I’m a sometimes writer, I say,

most often I don’t do anything.

 

listen, they ask, I like your

stuff—do you mind if I come

over and bring a couple of 6

packs?

 

you can bring them, I say

if
you
don’t come in…

 

when the women phone, I say,

o yes, I
write
, I’m a writer

only I’m not writing right now.

 

I feel foolish phoning you,

they say, and I was surprised

to find you listed in the phone book.

 

I have reasons, I say,

by the way why don’t you come over

for a beer?

 

you wouldn’t mind?

 

and they arrive

handsome women

good of mind and body and eye.

often there isn’t sex

but I’m used to that

yet it’s good

very good just to look at them—

and some rare times

I have unexpected good luck

otherwise.

 

for a man of 55 who didn’t get laid

until he was 23

and not very often until he was 50

I think that I should stay listed

via Pacific Telephone

until I get as much as

the average man has had.

 

of course, I’ll have to keep

writing immortal poems

but the inspiration is there.

 

I suppose it’s raining in some Spanish town

now

while I’m feeling bad

like this;

I’d like to think so

now.

let’s go to a Mexican hamlet—

that sounds nice:

a Mexican hamlet

while I’m feeling bad

like this

the walls yellow with age—

that rain

out there,

a pig moving in his pen at night

disturbed by the rain,

little eyes like cigarette-ends,

and his damned tail:

see it?

I can’t imagine the people.

it’s hard for me to imagine the people.

maybe they are feeling bad like this,

almost as bad as this.

I wonder what they do when they feel

bad?

they probably don’t mention it.

they say,

“look, it’s raining.”

that’s the best way.

 

here I’ll be

55 in a

week.

 

what will I

write about

when it no

longer stands

up in the morning?

 

my critics

will love it

when my playground

narrows down to

tortoises

and shellstars.

 

they might even

say

nice things about

me

 

as if I had

finally

come to my

senses.

 

I’m out of matches.

the springs in my couch

are broken.

they stole my footlocker.

they stole my oil painting of

two pink eyes.

my car broke down.

eels climb my bathroom walls.

my love is broken.

but the stockmarket went up

today.

 

dogs and angels are not

very different.

I often go to this place

to eat

about 2:30 in the afternoon

because all the people who eat

there are particularly addled

simply glad to be alive and

eating baked beans

near a plate glass window

which holds the heat

and doesn’t let the cars and

sidewalks inside.

 

we are allowed as much free

coffee as we can drink

and we sit and quietly drink

the black strong coffee.

 

it is good to be sitting someplace

in a world at 2:30 in the afternoon

without having the flesh ripped from

your bones. even

being addled, we know this.

 

nobody bothers us

we bother nobody.

 

angels and dogs are not

very different

at 2:30 in the afternoon.

 

I have my favorite table

and after I have finished

I stack the plates, saucers,

the cup, the silverware

neatly—

my offering to the luck—

and that sun

working good

all up and

down

inside the

darkness

here.

 

“she shoots up in the neck,” she told

me. I told her to stick it into my

ass and she tried and said, “oh oh,”

and I said, “what the hell’s the matter?”

she said, “nothing, this is New York

style,” and she jammed it in again and said,

“oh shit.” I took it and put it into

my arm, I got part of it.

“I don’t know why people

fuck with the stuff, there’s not that

much to it. I think they’re all losers

and they want to lose real bad. there’s

no other way, it’s like they can’t

get where they’re going or want to go

and there’s no other way.

this has got to be it.

she shoots up in the neck.”

 

“I know,” I said. “I phoned her, she

could hardly talk, said it was

laryngitis. have some of this wine.”

 

it was white wine and 4:30 a.m. and her

daughter was sleeping in the bedroom. she

had cable tv with no sound and

a large screen young John Wayne watched

us, and we neither kissed nor made

love and I left at 6:15 a.m.

after the beer and wine were gone

so her daughter wouldn’t awaken for

school and find me sitting in

bed with her mother

with John Wayne and the night gone

and not much chance for anybody—

 

the blazing shark

wants my balls

as I walk through the meat section

looking for salami and cheese

 

purple housewives

fingering 75 cent avocados

know my shopping cart is an

oversized cock

 

I am a man with a switchball watch

standing in a honky-tonk phonebooth

sucking strawberry red titty

upsidedown in a Philadelphia crowd.

 

suddenly all about me are screams of

RAPE RAPE RAPE RAPE RAPE

and I am stiffing it to something beneath me

dyed red hair, bad breath, blue teeth

 

I used to like Monet

I used to like Monet very much

it was funny, I thought, the way he did it

with colors

 

women are so expensive

dog leashes are expensive

I am going to start selling air in dark orange bags

marked: moon-blooms

 

I used to like bottles full of blood

young girls in camel-hair coats

Prince Valiant

Popeye’s magic touch

the struggle is in the struggle

like a corkscrew

a good man doesn’t get cork in the wine

 

the thought has occurred to millions of men

while shaving

the removal of life might be preferred to

the removal of hair

 

spit out cotton and clean your rearview

mirror, run like you mean it, drunk jock,

the whores will win, the fools will win,

but break like a horse out of the gate.