Mockingbird Wish Me Luck (8 page)

 

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.

 

 

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.

 

 

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 lights 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.

 

 

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

 

 

I’m on fire in my bed alone

I’m on fire with you

 

 

I’m on fire reading a book

about Trotsky, Hitler, Alexander the Great,

anybody at all, any walking living dead

human once upon the

earth

 

 

I’m on fire looking at the grass

I’m on fire looking at birds sitting on telephone wires

I’m on fire answering the phone—

I leap straight up when it rings

I am burning

 

 

I’m on fire looking at velvet

I’m on fire looking at a sleeping cat

 

 

I am a helpless burning thing

among other helpless burning things

 

 

I lay on my left side and look at the tombstones

then I lay on my right side and look at the tombstones—

they are all

burning

 

 

I’m on fire putting a stamp on an envelope

I’m on fire wrapping garbage into a newspaper

I’m on fire with heroes and dwarfs and poverty and hope

I’m on fire with love and anger

I’m on fire like a bat hanging upsidedown

like a bellboy hating the rich and smiling at their tips

 

 

I’m on fire in a supermarket

watching a most womanly woman

bend over to pick up some potato salad

 

 

I’m on fire like a scissors cutting the eyes out of the sky

I’m on fire like onehundredthousand monkeys boiled into one heart

and sobbing through centuries of

hopelessness

 

 

I’m on fire like a clean sharp knife in a kitchen drawer

 

 

I’m on fire like a beggar in India

a beggar in New York

a beggar in Los Angeles…

the smoke and burning rises

and the ash is crushed under…

 

 

I’m on fire like the circus that went away

the champion who quit on one knee

all burning

all alone

all one

ash

 

 

I’m on fire like a dirty bathtub in a lonely roominghouse

I’m on fire like the roach I kill with my shoe

 

 

I’m on fire with men and woman and animals

who are being tortured and mutilated in dark and

isolated places

 

 

I’m on fire with the armies and anti-armies

I’m on fire with the man I hate most in the world

 

 

I’m on fire without a chance

 

 

the fat is in the fire, the lamb is over it

the sacrifice seems forever

the enduring seems forever

the sun is on fire…

 

 

and the glazed horizon is red

and the weeping

and the weeping

and you and me

 

 

the sun is burning everything:

 

 

the dogs, the clouds, the icecream

 

 

the end

 

 

the end of the stairway

the end of the ocean

the last scream

 

 

the bug in the jar

spouts into flame

and the inside of the skull

gives up

at last

 

 

the smoke blows

away.

 

since fact is an artifice of fiction

let’s call this fiction so like all good boys and girls

we can relax

                i was in frisco a dandy place with lakes or something

i could see the gold bridge and it wasn’t teeth from my window

enough to drink almost always enough to drink

i wrote the old man down in l.a. you might as well get a story

ready for your god damned neighbors because i am not going to yr

war

      if it were not for the war the last war
you would not be here

i would not have met your mother and you would not have been born

          SON, YOUR COUNTRY IS AT WAR ! ! ! !

the fact that i was born because of circumstances of war

did not seem to me a proper argument to create further circumstances

 

      i went out and got drunk properly

 

then the next morning i went down to the draft board

a boy fainted when they took blood out of his arm and i looked at the

needle dip into my vein and watched the red of me run up into the tube

and felt rugged

 

they looked up my ass

and then i went in to see the sike

 

u have yr shorts on backwards he told me

i got up and switched them

he sat there looking at me

 

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF PICASSO?

at first i said all right now not much

 

do you write or paint?

yes

 

and?

    and what? I ASKED IF YOU WROTE OR PAINTED. leave me alone

i told him

WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN PUBLISHED? PAINTINGS HUNG?

        nothing accepted

nothing accepted anywhere

 

do you believe in the war? he asked no i said

ARE YOU WILLING TO GO TO WAR? he asked no i said

WHY DON’T YOU BE A CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTOR? because i said

i am not sure there is a God

NEXT WEDNESDAY NIGHT WE ARE HAVING A MEETING, A PARTY

FOR DOCTORS, WRITERS AND ARTISTS I WANT YOU TO BE

THERE I AM INVITING YOU WILL YOU COME?

 

no

 

all right he said u don’t have to go

u mean i asked the party or the war?

either one he said you didn’t think we’d understand did you?

no

he wrote something on a slip of paper and folded it and stuck it to my card

with a paperclip give them this, up the line

he had written a hell of a lot on the slip as i walked i managed

to lift the edge of the slip but all i cd see was

HIDES AN EXTREME,

 

SENSITIVITY UNDER A POKER FACE

which was news to me

 

and then some guy in a uniform screamed at me

ALL RIGHT SON UNCLE SAM DOESN’T WANT YOU

and i walked out into

 

the clear and beautiful air

are you going to war my landlady asked me no i said bad heart

that’s too bad i’m sorry she said and i went upstairs and poured

a good one

      bad heart bad heart bad heart have u done the wrong thing

maybe u ought to go maybe you ought to go and walk right into it

hell, friend they turned you down uncle sam does not want you

you are insane

i smiled and poured another one

 

i don’t know how much later but some time later i am sitting in another

cheap room philly i am drinking a bottle of port have a record

player and i am listening to the 2nd movement of brahms’ 2nd symphony

when there is a knock on the door

it is a very polite knock

 

and since i do not know anybody much i figure it is either

one of the whores down at the corner in love with me

or somebody come to give me the nobel prize

 

and i opened the door and 2 big men were there and one of them said

F.B.I. and the other one said yr under arrest

i went over and took the needle out of brahms’ arm

we want to question u they said downtown

all right

u better put on a coat you might be gone some time

we walked down the stairs and out into the street and got into the car

and it seemed as if each window had a face hanging out of it

and there was another guy in the back and he said keep one hand

on each knee and don’t move them

we drove along a while and then

 

i reached up to scratch my nose

WATCH THAT HAND! one of them screamed

 

this guy is pretty casual another one said

i think we got a good one yep i think we got a good one

oh lord oh christ i thought i wonder what i done

i wonder what i done

they took me into a room that was mostly empty except for pictures

photos on the walls

 

you see those one of them pointed voice most serious

yes i said

 

those are men who died in the service of the fbi

 

they took me into another room where a man

 

sat behind his desk with his shirtsleeves rolled up

 

BUKOWSKI?

yes

      HENRY C. JR.?

                  yes

    WHERE THE HELL’S YOUR UNCLE JOHN?

 

my what?

WHERE THE HELL’S YOUR UNCLE JOHN?

i thought he meant i had some

 

kind of secret thing i was murdering people with

YOUR UNCLE: JOHN BUKOWSKI!

oh hell john he’s dead

 

NO WONDER we can’t find the son of a bitch!

WHY DID YOU DODGE THE DRAFT?

i’m 4f

 

4f eh?

psycho yes

why did you move without notifying your draft board?

 

i didn’t bother jesus i thought it was over

why did you move?

i got kicked out for being drunk all the time

 

landlady said i got blood on the sheets

 

WHY DIDN’T YOU NOTIFY YOUR DRAFT BOARD?

 

look are you guys crazy i only moved around the corner 80 yards

away gave the post office my forwarding address if i wanted

to hide i could do better than that

NOW WE DIDN’T BEAT YOU, DID WE?

no

 

AND WE DIDN’T PUT HANDCUFFS ON YOU, DID WE?

        no

 

WE ARE GOING TO HAVE TO HOLD YOU FOR FURTHER INVESTIGATION….

 

they took me down to a small cell with toilet and sink

 

no bunk no chair i stood by the window and looked out the bars

it was Saturday morning and it was one of the main downtown

streets and it was sunny it looked good ouside people

walking along easily unnervous a record shop speakered its

music onto the street i did not feel good you only begin to

miss the simple life after it is taken away from u after u go

into a hospital and u are on a bed maybe to die or go back

or in a jail never knowing when or if you’ll get out

that’s when you think that’s when the sunshine looks good

that’s when just walking down to the corner to buy a paper

is something like beethoven’s 9th

i was transferred to a prison a much larger prison the next day

they put me in a cell with a little fat man who looked like

a businessman

 

he put out his hand: I am Courtney Taylor

public enemy number one

i shook his hand

 

what are you in for? he asked

they say i’m a draft dodger

 

listen he said there’s just one thing we don’t like around here

one kind we have no use for and that’s the draft dodger

honor among thieves

eh?

      what do you mean?

I mean u fucker,

 

leave me alone

leave me alone

if u want to kill yourself i’ll tell you how he said

i don’t want to hear it i said

 

all you do is take that bucket over there fill it with water

take your shoe off put your foot in it but first bring down

the overhead light i’ll hold you on my shoulders and you can work

the screws loose from the pipe then u bend it down take the

globe out stick your finger in the hole yr foot in the bucket

and yr out of here

it sounded good to me but there was something grotesque and

 

embarrassing about it somehow so i decided not to do it

 

i stretched out on the bunk and pretty soon i felt things

 

biting me bedbugs

      look i said do u gamble?

what do u mean?

 

i mean i said let’s bet a nickel a bed bug i bet i can catch

more than u

they don’t really come out till lights out he said

u mean it gets worse i asked

multiply by 30,

 

have u told the guard?

the screw? i’ll tell him again

 

HEY SCREW SCREW !!! WE GOT BUDBUGS IN HERE ! GET

THESE GOD DAMNED BEDBUGS OUT OF HERE HEY SCREW !

nobody showed up

 

we began playing 21 blackjack and 5 minutes later the screw

walked in

let’s not have so much screaming and you bastards probably

 

brought those things in here with you

i got hot in a crapgame in the exercise

 

yard and stayed hot 3, 4, 5 days and began to feel better i was

making more money than i ever made on the outside we were always

hungry there but after lights out the cook would come down with

jello and whipcream and coffee and bits of tenderloin and i’d slip

him a dollar or 2 and my public enemy friend stopped talking about

the evils of celling with a 4f and just when we were beginning to

enjoy our nickel a bedbug bets Taylor being a swindler of grand

order couldn’t resist breaking some of his in half but i being