Monday, February 16, 2015

CHARLES BUKOWSKI ~










A RIOT IN THE STREETS



it's a good day, a good time, anybody can

blow a hole through you at any minute.



they are shooting from the rooftops now

and the night sky is smoking,

red.



what more could you want?

you can watch it on your tv or you

can look outside, it's the same

thing.



they are letting it all out again.

airing it out.

it's healthy.



the cops are hiding.

nobody is bored tonight.

the safest people are already in jail.



everybody feels curiously alive,

at last. 



it's party time!



this city is the whole world

and it's running right at you.



it's a good day, a good time!



hell is coming out to play



with you.









9 BAD BOYS



Celine will bat

lead off,

Shostakovich is in the

second

spot,

Dostoevsky should hit

3rd,

Beethoven will definitely bat

clean-up,

Jeffers is in the 5th

spot,

Dreiser can hit

6th

and batting 7th

let's have

Boccaccio

and 8th the

catcher:

Hemingway.



the pitcher?

hell, give me the

fucking

ball.





BARFLY



Jane, who has been dead for 31 years,

never could have

imagined that I would write a screenplay of our drinking

days together

and

that it would be made into a movie

and

that a beautiful movie star would play her

part.



I can hear Jane now: "A beautiful movie star? oh,

for Christ sake!"



Jane, that's show biz, sp go back to sleep, dear, because

no matter how hard they tried they

just couldn't find anybody exactly like

you.



and neither can

I.







SILLY DAMNED THING ANYHOW



we tried to hide it in the house so that the
neighbors wouldn't see.
it was difficult, sometimes we both had to
be gone at once and when we returned
there would be excreta and urine all
about.
it wouldn't toilet train
but it had the bluest eyes you ever
saw
and it ate everything we did
and we often watched tv together.

one evening we came home and it was
gone.
there was blood on the floor,
there was a trail of blood.
I followed it outside and into the garden
and there in the brush it was,
mutilated.
there was a sign hung about its severed
throat:
"we don't want things like this in our

neighborhood."

I walked to the garage for the shovel.
I told my wife, "don't come out here."
then I walked back with the shovel and
began digging.
I sensed
the faces watching me from behind
drawn blinds.
they had their neighborhood back,
a nice quiet neighborhood with green
lawns, palm trees, circular driveways, children,
churches, a supermarket, etc.

I dug into the earth. 


___________________________

CHARLES BUKOWSKI
NEW POEMS BOOK 3
edited by John Martin
Virgin Books, 2004