Mockingbird Wish Me Luck (3 page)

 

a symphony orchestra.

there is a thunderstorm,

they are playing a Wagner overture

and the people leave their seats under the trees

and run inside to the pavilion

the women giggling, the men pretending calm,

wet cigarettes being thrown away,

Wagner plays on, and then they are all under the

pavilion. the birds even come in from the trees

and enter the pavilion and then it is the Hungarian

Rhapsody #2 by Lizst, and it still rains, but look,

one man sits alone in the rain

listening. the audience notices him. they turn

and look. the orchestra goes about its

business. the man sits in the night in the rain,

listening. there is something wrong with him,

isn’t there?

he came to hear the

music.

 

 

it is a highrise apt. next door

and he beats her at night and she screams and nobody stops it

and I see her the next day

standing in the driveway with curlers in her hair

and she has her huge buttocks jammed into black

slacks and she says, standing in the sun,

“god damn it, 24 hours a day in this place, I never go anywhere!”

 

 

then he comes out, proud, the little matador,

a pail of shit, his belly hanging over his bathing trunks—

he might have been a handsome man once, might have,

now they both stand there and he says,

“I think I’m goin’ for a swim.”

she doesn’t answer and he goes to the pool and

jumps into the fishless, sandless water, the peroxide-codein water,

and I stand by the kitchen window drinking coffee

trying to unboil the fuzzy, stinking picture—

after all, you can’t live elbow to elbow to people without wanting to

draw a number on them.

every time my toilet flushes they can hear it. every time they

go to bed I can hear them.

 

 

soon she goes inside and then comes out with 2 colored birds

in a cage. I don’t know what they are. they don’t talk. they

just move a little, seeming to twitch their tail-feathers and

shit. that’s all they do.

she stands there looking at them.

he comes out: the little tuna, the little matador, out of the pool,

a dripping unbeautiful white, the cloth of his wet suit gripping.

“get those birds in the house!”

“but the birds need sun!”

“I said, get those birds in the house!”

“the birds are gonna die!”

“you listen to me, I said, GET THOSE BIRDS IN THE HOUSE!”

she bends and lifts them, her huge buttocks in the black slacks

looking so sad.

he slams the door behind them. then I hear it.

BAM!

she screams

BAM! BAM!

she screams

then: BAM!

and she screams.

I pour another coffee and decide that that’s a new

one: he usually only beats her at

night. it takes a man to beat his wife night and

day. although he doesn’t look like much

he’s one of the few real men around

here.

 

 

I have read your stuff with

sharp inter…

he said,

falling forward

and knocking over his wine.

 

 

get that bum

OUTA here! screamed my old

lady.

 

 

but ma, I said, he’s my

agent
! got a joint in

Plaza
Square
!

 

 

well, kiss my bubs, she said.

 

 

(she poured wine

all around,

the bat.)

 

 

I’ve represented, he said,

raisen his head, somerset mawn, ben heck

and tomas carylillie.

 

 

an’ as you might ’ave surmised, ’e said,

mah cut, daddy-o, is
ten percent
!

 

 

’is haid fell

forshafts.

 

 

Ma? I asked. who’s

forshafts?

 

 

Somerset Maun
! she answered,

yo hashole
!

 

 

ignore all possible concepts and possibilities—

ignore Beethoven, the spider, the damnation of Faust—

just
make
it, babe, make it:

a house a car a belly full of beans

pay your taxes

fuck

and if you can’t fuck

copulate.

make money but don’t work too

hard—make somebody else
pay
to

make it—and

don’t smoke too much but drink enough to

relax, and

stay off the streets

wipe your ass real good

use a lot of toilet paper

it’s bad manners to let people know you shit or

could
smell like it

if you weren’t

careful.

 

 

I hold to the edge of the table

with my belly dangling over my

belt

 

 

and I glare at the lampshade

the smoke clearing

over

North Hollywood

 

 

the boys put their muskets down

lift high their fish-green beer

 

 

as I fall forward off the couch

kiss rug hairs like cunt

hairs

 

 

close as I’ve been in a

long time.

 

 

at high noon

at a small college near the beach

sober

the sweat running down my arms

a spot of sweat on the table

I flatten it with my finger

blood money blood money

my god they must think I love this like the others

but it’s for bread and beer and rent

blood money

I’m tense lousy feel bad

poor people I’m failing I’m failing

 

 

a woman gets up

walks out

slams the door

 

 

a dirty poem

somebody told me not to read dirty poems

here

 

 

it’s too late.

 

 

my eyes can’t see some lines

I read it

out—

desperate trembling

lousy

 

 

they can’t hear my voice

and I say,

I quit, that’s it, I’m

finished.

 

 

and later in my room

there’s scotch and beer:

the blood of a coward.

 

 

this then

will be my destiny:

scrabbling for pennies in dark tiny halls

reading poems I have long since become tired

of.

 

 

and I used to think

that men who drove busses

or cleaned out latrines

or murdered men in alleys were

fools.

 

 

there are 4 guys at the door

all 6 feet four

and checking in at

around 210 pounds,

slim killers.

come in, I say,

and they walk in with their drinks

and circle the old man—

so you’re Bukowski, eh?

yeh, you fucking killers, what do you

want?

well, we don’t have a car

and Lee needs a ride to this nightspot

in Hollywood.

let’s go, I say.

we get into my car

all of us drunk, and

somebody in back says,

we’ve been reading your poetry a long time,

Bukowski, and I say,

I’ve been writing it a long time,

kid. we dump Lee at the nightspot

then stop off for enough beer and cigars

to demolish the

stratosphere.

back at my place I sit with the killers and

we drink and smoke.

it is somehow enjoyable.

I find I can outdrink and outsmoke them

but I realize that in areas such as fights on

the front lawn

my day is done.

the motherfuckers are just getting too young and

too big.

after they pass out

I give each of them a pillow and a blanket

and make sure all the cigars are

out.

 

 

in the morning they were just 3 big kids

untrapped, a couple of them

heaving in the bathroom.

an hour later

they were gone.

 

 

readers of my poems

I can’t say that

I disliked them.

 

 

I can see myself now

after all these suicide days and nights,

being wheeled out of one of those sterile rest homes

(of course, this is only if I get famous and lucky)

by a subnormal and bored nurse…

there I am sitting upright in my wheelchair…

almost blind, eyes rolling backward into the dark part of my skull

looking

for the mercy of death…

 

 

“Isn’t it a lovely day, Mr. Bukowski?”

 

 

“O, yeah, yeah…”

 

 

the children walk past and I don’t even exist

and lovely women walk by

with big hot hips

and warm buttocks and tight hot everything

praying to be loved

and I don’t even

exist…

 

 

“It’s the first sunlight we’ve had in 3 days,

Mr. Bukowski.”

 

 

“Oh, yeah, yeah.”

 

 

there I am sitting upright in my wheelchair,

myself whiter than this sheet of paper,

bloodless,

brain gone, gamble gone, me, Bukowski,

gone…

 

 

“Isn’t it a lovely day, Mr. Bukowski?”

 

 

“O, yeah, yeah…” pissing in my pajamas, slop drooling out of

my mouth.

 

 

2 young schoolboys run by—

“Hey, did you see that old guy?”

 

 

“Christ, yes, he made me sick!”

 

 

after all the threats to do so

somebody else has committed suicide for me

at last.

 

 

the nurse stops the wheelchair, breaks a rose from a nearby bush,

puts it in my hand.

 

 

I don’t even know

what it is. it might as well be my pecker

for all the good

it does.