The People Look Like Flowers at Last: New Poems

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The People Look Like Flowers at Last: New Poems Page 8

by Charles Bukowski


  proud of you.”

  on the couch I finally got hold of

  her. under that loose orange gown

  was enough woman to kill an

  ox.

  “I lived in that hotel in Paris,” she said. “I slept with all of

  them. Burroughs, the whole

  gang. I knew Pound at St. Liz.”

  “you slept with Ezra?”

  “more than any!”

  “oh fuck!”

  “go,” she laughed, “ahead.”

  it had been good

  soup. those Paris boys and

  Ezra had known a good

  mare.

  I rolled

  off.

  when she came out of the bathroom she

  had a bottle in her hand and began sprinkling me

  with the

  contents.

  “hey, what’s this shit?”

  “the tears of the

  gods.”

  “the tears of the gods?”

  “yes, the tears of the

  gods.”

  I laid there until she was

  finished.

  then I got up and

  dressed.

  “when can I see you

  again?”

  “in 2 hours or

  tomorrow.”

  I walked to the door.

  “you walk like a

  poem,” she said.

  “see you in 2

  hours,” I told

  her.

  the door closed. what a man had to go through for a

  piece of ass

  in this modern age was

  highly

  suspect.

  peacock or bell

  I am laughing mouth closed;

  as I turn the pages of my newspaper

  it’s like a symphony gone wrong;

  seeing much to make me doubt

  flashing there across the page

  it’s like a cheap movie gone haywire;

  my clothing sits in chairs

  like the dead emptied out,

  husks of things wrinkling the vision;

  it’s colder than hell (yes) but

  the blankets are thin,

  and the pulled-down shades

  are as full of holes as love is.

  I think you’ve got to be a sportsman;

  yes, for the sportsman it’s all right:

  you just crack out the gun

  and blow the head off something

  perhaps off the maiden sitting in

  the chair that grandma sat in,

  but not having a gun,

  I go to the phone

  and phone a woman as old as the chair and grandma,

  and she promises to come and charm me;

  she has a toothbrush but no teeth

  and I will probably dance naked for her

  my blob of belly a white sack.

  each man has his own way out: mine is doubtful

  but has been working well of late

  and the music of it sometimes frightens me,

  but then

  I wake up, buy a paper,

  kick a can,

  pull up the shade,

  start again.

  purple and black

  a girl in purple pants and black sweater

  crossing the street

  with a camper and high-rise background,

  a Saturday afternoon graveyard Hollywood

  background,

  is quite interesting:

  something moving,

  something moving in purple and black as

  her hair waves in the wind as she turns,

  the sun like the eye of a frog,

  winter is where it’s at

  here, and the street is insipid, vapid,

  I could pound myself against that asphalt until

  I bled mad

  and it wouldn’t care;

  the girl in purple and black

  gives the street destination and direction

  until she is out of range of my window,

  and now it is again

  what it was, and a small spider

  almost like something made out of a lost hair,

  an eyelid hair,

  crawls along the wall to my left

  and I don’t have even the desire to

  kill it. outside my window

  it is ghost-shivered and

  stinks of the malice of men.

  I wait for new arrangements

  but meanwhile endure

  as the phone rings

  as I leap from my chair

  like a man shot in the

  back.

  fulfillment

  she disciplined herself in

  anger

  hatred and cunning

  strategy.

  I always thought that it would

  finally pass

  that she was giddy with

  misconception and bad

  advice.

  I always felt it would

  pass.

  I listened to the charges against me

  knowing some of them to be true

  but certainly not

  important enough

  to become the target of

  violence, envy,

  vengeance.

  I thought it would surely

  pass.

  I commandeered no

  defense

  thinking that easy

  reason

  would save us

  both

  but her determination

  strengthened—

  even then

  I summed it up as headstrong, overzealous

  energy

  but the moment I gave ground

  more ground was

  taken.

  lord, I thought, it’s just simple

  violence

  and so I trotted my horse

  out of the stable

  sharpened my knives and

  began a

  counterattack.

  she’d finally found

  as good an opponent as could be

  found.

  her determination demanded her own

  destruction.

  she’d found her

  match

  I mounted my steed

  sword ready

  ready even for the sun.

  she’d always wanted war

  I’d grant her wish

  love be damned now

  as love was damned when it

  first arrived.

  my reluctance would

  now be gone

  forever

  and the blood

  would flow

  hers and mine

  just as she desired.

  yours

  my women of the past keep trying to locate me.

  I duck into dark closets and pull the overcoats

  over my head.

  at the racetrack I sit in the clubhouse

  smoking cigarette after cigarette

  watching the horses come out for the post parade

  and looking over my shoulder.

  I go to bet and this one’s ass looks like that one’s

  ass used to.

  I duck away from her.

  then that one’s hair might have her under it.

  I get the h
ell out of the clubhouse and go

  to the grandstand.

  I don’t want a return of the past.

  I don’t want a return of those

  ladies of my past,

  I don’t want to try again, I don’t want to see

  them again even in silhouette;

  I give them all, all of them to all the other eager

  men, they can have those darlings,

  those tits those asses those thighs those minds

  and their mothers and fathers and sisters and

  brothers and children and dogs and x-boyfriends

  and current boyfriends, they can have them all and

  fuck them all

  if they want to.

  I was a terrible and jealous lover who mistreated

  and failed to understand

  them and it’s best that they are with others now

  for that will be better for them and that will be

  better for me

  so when they phone or write or leave

  messages

  I will forward them all to their new

  fine fellows.

  I don’t deserve what they have and I want to

  keep it that way.

  kissing me away

  she was always thinking about it

  and she was young and beautiful and

  all my friends were jealous:

  what was an old fuck like me

  doing with a young girl like

  her?

  she was always thinking about

  it.

  we’d be driving along and

  she’d say, “see that little

  place? park over there.”

  I’d hardly get parked and

  she’d be down on me.

  once I drove her to Arizona

  and halfway there

  late at night

  after coffee and doughnuts

  at an all-night joint

  she bent over

  and started in

  while I was navigating the

  dark curves through the

  low hills

  and as I kept driving

  it inspired her to

  new heights.

  another time

  in L.A.

  we’d purchased hot dogs and cokes

  and fries and we were eating in

  Griffith Park

  families there

  children playing

  and she unzipped me

  and started in.

  “what the hell are you doing?”

  I asked her.

  later

  when I asked her

  why

  in front of everybody

  she told me it was

  dangerous and thrilling

  that way.

  she asked me one

  time, “why am I staying with an

  old guy like you

  anyhow?”

  “so you can give me blow

  jobs?” I replied.

  “I hate that term!” she

  said.

  “sucking me off,” I

  suggested.

  “I hate that term

  too!” she said.

  “what would you prefer?”

  I asked.

  “I like to think that

  I’m ‘kissing you away,’”

  she said.

  “all right,” I said.

  it was like any other

  relationship, there was

  jealousy on both sides,

  there were split-ups and

  reconciliations.

  there were also fragmented moments of

  great peace and beauty.

  I often tried to get away from her and

  she tried to get away from me

  but it was difficult:

  Cupid, in his strange way, was really

  there.

  whenever I had to leave town

  she kissed me away

  good

  a couple of nights in a

  row

  ensuring my

  fidelity.

  then all I had to

  do was

  worry about

  her.

  when she wasn’t

  kissing me away

  we also found time

  to do it

  in several other strange

  ways.

  but all that time with

  her it

  was mostly just

  being

  kissed away or

  waiting to be.

  we never thought about

  much else.

  we never went to

  movies (which I hated

  anyhow).

  we never ate

  out.

  we were not curious

  about

  world affairs.

  we just spent our time

  parked in

  secluded places or picnic

  grounds or

  driving dark

  roads to New Mexico,

  Nevada and Utah.

  or

  we were in her big oak

  bed

  facing south

  so much of the rest of the

  time

  that I memorized

  each wrinkle in the

  drapes

  and especially

  all the cracks in the

  ceiling.

  I used to play games with

  her with that ceiling.

  “see those cracks up

  there?”

  “where?”

  “look where I’m pointing…”

  “o.k.”

  “now, see those cracks, see the

  pattern? it forms an image. do you see

  what it is?”

  “umm, umm…”

  “go on, what is it?”

  “I know! it’s a man on top of a

  woman!”

  “wrong. it’s a flamingo standing

  by a stream.”

  we finally got free of

  one another.

  it’s sad but it’s

  standard operating procedure

  (I am constantly confused by

  the lack of durability in human

  affairs).

  I suppose the parting was

  unhappy

  maybe even ugly.

  it’s been 3 or 4

  years now

  and I wonder if she

  ever thinks of

  me, of what I am

  doing?

  of course, I know what she’s

  doing.

  and she did it better

  than anybody

  I ever knew.

  and I guess that’s worth this

  poem, maybe.

  if not, then at least a

  footnote: that such affairs are

  not without joy and humor for both

  parties

  and as Saigon and the enemy tanks get

  scrambled in old dreams

  as old and infirm dogs get

  killed crossing roads

  as the drawbridge rises to let

  the drunken fishermen out to

  sea

  it wasn’t for nothing

  that

  s
he was thinking

  about it

  all the

  time.

  goodbye, my love

  deadly ash of everything

  we’ve mauled it to pieces

  ripped the head off

  the arms

  the legs

  cut away the sexual organs

  pissed on the heart

  deadly ash of everything

  everywhere

  the sidewalks are now harder

  the eyes of the populace crueler

  the music more tasteless

  ash

  I’m left with pure

  ash

  first we pissed on the heart

  now we piss on the ash.

  heat

  if you have ever drawn up your last plan on

  an old shirt cardboard in an Eastside hotel room of winter

  with last week’s rent due and a dead radiator

  you’ll know how large small things are

  like yourself coming up the stairway

  maybe for the final time

  with your bottle of wine

  thinking of the lady in #9

  putting on her garters

  and on her dresser there is a

  dark red drinking glass

  which catches the overhead light like a

  soft dream of Jerusalem

  and she dusts herself

  slips into silk and sheath and

  spiked feet

  and unemployed and looking for work

  and maybe looking for you

  she passes you on the

  stairway;

  such disturbing grace

  transforms one.

  like a blue-winged fly exploding into

  the summer sky

  you decide to hang around and

  die later; you enter your room and pour wine like

  blood, inward, and decide in the morning you’ll

  get up early and

  read the want

  ads.

  the police helicopter

 

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