the mockingbirdthe mockingbird had been following the cat
all summer
mocking mocking mocking
teasing and cocksure;
the cat crawled under rockers on porches
tail flashing
and said something angry to the mockingbird
which I didn't understand
yesterday the cat walked calmly up the driveway
with the mockingbird alive in its mouth,
wings fanned, beautiful wings fanned and flopping,
feathers parted like a woman's legs
and the bird was no longer mocking,
it was asking, it was praying
but the cat
striding down through centuries
would not listen.
I saw it crawl under a yellow car
with the bird
to bargain it to another place
summer was over.
silly damned thing anyhowwe 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 around 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.
millionairesyou
no faces
no faces
at all
laughing at nothing —
let me tell you
I have drunk in skid row rooms with
imbecile winos
whose cause was better
whose eyes still held some light
whose voices retained some sensibility
and when the morning came
we were sick but not ill,
poor but not deluded,
and we stretched in our beds and rose
in the late afternoons
like millionaires.
putrefactionof late
I've had this thought
that this country
has gone backwards
4 or 5 decades
and that all the
social advancement
the good feeling of
person toward
person
has been washed
away
and replaced by the same
old bigotries.
we have
more than ever
the selfish wants of power
the disregard for the
weak
the old
the impoverished
the
helpless.
we are replacing want with
war
salvation with
slavery.
we have wasted the
gains
we have become
rapidly
less.
we have our Bomb
it is our fear
our damnation
and our
shame.
now
something so sad
has hold of us
that
the breath
leaves
and we can't even
cry.
crucifix in a deathhandyes, they begin out in a willow, I think
the starch mountains begin out in the willow
and keep right on going without regard for
pumas and nectarines
somehow these mountains are like
an old woman with a bad memory and
a shopping basket.
we are in a basin. that is the
idea. down in the sand and the alleys,
this land punched-in, cuffed-out, divided,
held like a crucifix in a deathhand,
this land bought, resold, bought again and
sold again, the wars long over,
the Spaniards all the way back in Spain
down in the thimble again, and now
real estaters, subdividers, landlords, freeway
engineers arguing. this is their land and
I walk on it, live on it a little while
near Hollywood here I see young men in rooms
listening to glazed recordings
and I think too of old men sick of music
sick of everything, and death like suicide
I think is sometimes voluntary, and to get your
hold on the land here it is best to return to the
Grand Central Market, see the old Mexican women,
the poor. . .I am sure you have seen these same women
many years before
arguing
with the same young Japanese clerks
witty, knowledgeable and golden
among their soaring store of oranges, apples
avocados, tomatoes, cucumbers —
and you know how
these look, they do look good
as if you could eat them all
light a cigar and smoke away the bad world.
then it's best to go back to the bars, the same bars
wooden, stale, merciless, green
with the young policeman walking through
scared and looking for trouble,
and the beer is still bad
it has an edge that already mixes with vomit and
decay, and you've got to be strong in the shadows
to ignore it, to ignore the poor and to ignore yourself
and the shopping bag between your legs
down there feeling good with its avocados and
oranges and fresh fish and wine bottles, who needs
a Fort Lauderdale winter?
25 years ago there used to be a whore there
with a film over one eye, who was too fat
and made little silver bells out of cigarette
tinfoil. the sun seemed warmer then
although this was probably not
true, and you take your shopping bag
outside and walk along the street
and the green beer hangs there
just above your stomach like
a short and shameful shawl, and
you look around and no longer
see any
old men.
barflyJane, 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's sake!"
Jane, that's show biz, so 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.
about the PEN conferencetake a writer away from his typewriter
and all you have left
is
the sickness
which started him
typing
in the
beginning.
Crucifix in a deathhand — this may be Bukowski's finest poem, amongst a cast of thousands. It may in fact be one of the best poems ever written by an American in the past century. It does rival Howl and The Waste Land parts, both poems written in madness. Bukowski would never submit to madness. He looked at and lived with the mad, worked with the mad, presupposed a Spanish North America fluent with landscape, vegetables, color, neglect, duende, death and redemption. He laughed at the Beats having no time to be Beat: he had mail to deliver, a warehouse to get to and then quit and move on, neighborhood bars and racetracks to tend to and rehustle the hustlers. Poems to write by the bucketload so his cartons of original books could dominate bookstore shelves to this day — more than anyone, if we are to be fair, even Mary Oliver. His overall text admits he could be cruel, he could be lovable. His range sweeps with Whitman, Dickinson, Villon, Poe, DH Lawrence, Joe Hill, Nietzche, Walt Disney, Sherwood Anderson, George Grosz, Woody Guthrie, all beer, Joe Blow, classical music by radio, juvenile delinquency. He was preposterous. He saw God, and kept on walking, tail swishing.
