Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame

by Charles Bukowski

  like I have it

  now.

  the trash men

  here they come

  these guys

  grey truck

  radio playing

  they are in a hurry

  it’s quite exciting:

  shirt open

  bellies hanging out

  they run out the trash bins

  roll them out to the fork lift

  and then the truck grinds it upward

  with far too much sound…

  they had to fill out application forms

  to get these jobs

  they are paying for homes and

  drive late model cars

  they get drunk on Saturday night

  now in the Los Angeles sunshine

  they run back and forth with their trash bins

  all that trash goes somewhere

  and they shout to each other

  then they are all up in the truck

  driving west toward the sea

  none of them know

  that I am alive

  REX DISPOSAL CO.

  zoo

  the elephants are caked with mud and tired

  and the rhinos don’t move

  the zebras are stupid dead stems

  and the lions don’t roar

  the lions don’t care

  the vultures are overfed

  the crocodiles don’t move

  and there was a strange type of monkey,

  I forget the name,

  he was on a shelf up there, this male,

  he topped the female and worked one off,

  finished,

  fell on his back and grinned,

  and I said to my girlfriend,

  let’s go, at last something’s happened.

  back at my place we talked about it.

  the zoo is a very sad place, I said,

  taking my clothes off.

  only those 2 monkeys seemed happy, she said,

  getting out of her

  clothes.

  did you see that look on the male monkey’s face?

  I asked.

  you look just like that afterwards, she

  said.

  later in the mirror I saw

  a strange type of monkey. and

  wondered about the giraffes and the

  rhinos, and the elephants, especially the

  elephants.

  we’ll have to go to the zoo

  again.

  tv

  I went to this place to see a movie

  on tv

  Alexander the Great,

  and here come the armies

  ta ta ta

  horses, spears, knives, swords, shields,

  men falling…

  then turn to a roller derby—

  here’s a girl strangling another,

  then back to Alexander—

  a guy jumps out and assassinates Alex’s father,

  Alex kills the guy, Alex is king,

  back to the roller derby—

  a man is down across the track and another man rams his head

  with his skates—

  and here come the armies

  they appear to be fighting in a cave, there’s smoke and

  flame, swords,

  men falling—

  the Thunderbirds are behind,

  one girl dives under another girl’s ass,

  throws her into the rail—

  Alexander stands there listening to a guy who is holding

  a glass of wine in his hand, and this boy is really telling

  Alex wherehow, you know, and he turns his back to walk away

  and Alex spears him—

  the Thunderbirds are behind, they send out

  Big John—

  ta ta ta, here come the armies

  they are splashing through water

  through forests, they are going to get it

  all

  ta ta ta—

  Big John didn’t make it,

  the girls are out again now—

  Alexander is dying

  Alexander the Great is dying

  and they pass by his pallet in the open

  he is dressed in fancy black garb and looks like

  Richard Burton

  the boys have their helmets off as they pass

  and there’s Alex’s love by the pallet, and then

  Alex begins to go, some men rush up,

  one asks, Alex, who do you turn the rule over to?

  who will rule now?

  they wait.

  he says, the strongest, and he dies

  we are shown the clouds, the heavens,

  way up there, and—

  the Thunderbirds pull it out

  in the last 12 seconds, they win it

  112 to 110,

  the crowd is consumed with Joy,

  mercury bleeds into the light,

  good night, sweet prince,

  hail Mary,

  Jesus Christ, what a

  night.

  lost

  no

  we can’t we can’t win it

  I’ve decided we can’t win it

  just for a while we thought we could

  but that was just for a while

  now we know we can’t win it

  we can’t stand still and win it

  or run and win it

  or do right and win it

  or do wrong and win it

  somebody else is going to win it

  that’s why somebody else is there and

  we are here

  it is terrible to be defeated

  in what seems to count

  it will happen

  to accept it is impossible

  to know it is more important

  than doves or switchbrakes or

  love.

  hot

  she was hot, she was so hot

  I didn’t want anybody else to have her,

  and if I didn’t get home on time

  she’d be gone, and I couldn’t bear that—

  I’d go mad…

  it was foolish I know, childish,

  but I was caught in it, I was caught.

  I delivered all the mail

  and then Henderson put me on the night pickup run

  in an old army truck,

  the damn thing began to heat halfway through the run

  and the night went on

  me thinking about my hot Miriam

  and jumping in and out of the truck

  filling mailsacks

  the engine continuing to heat up

  the temperature needle was at the top

  HOT HOT

  like Miriam.

  I leaped in and out

  3 more pickups and into the station

  I’d be, my car

  waiting to get me to Miriam who sat on my blue couch

  with scotch on the rocks

  crossing her legs and swinging her ankles

  like she did,

  2 more stops…

  the truck stalled at a traffic light, it was hell

  kicking it over

  again…

  I had to be home by 8, 8 was the deadline for Miriam.

  I made the last pickup and the truck stalled at a signal

  1/2 block from the station…

  it wouldn’t start, it couldn’t start…

  I locked the doors, pulled the key and ran down to the

  station…

  I threw the keys down…. signed out…

  your god damned truck is stalled at the signal,

  I shouted,

  Pico and Western…

  …I ran down the hall, put the key into the door,

  opened it…. her drinking glass was there, and a note:

  sun of a bitch:

  I wated until 5 after ate

  you don’t love me

  you sun of a bitch

  somebody will love me

  I been wateing all day

 
; Miriam

  I poured a drink and let the water run into the tub

  there were 5,000 bars in town

  and I’d make 25 of them

  looking for Miriam

  her purple teddy bear held the note

  as he leaned against a pillow

  I gave the bear a drink, myself a drink

  and got into the hot

  water.

  love

  love, he said, gas

  kiss me off

  kiss my lips

  kiss my hair

  my fingers

  my eyes my brain

  make me forget

  love, he said, gas

  he had a room on the 3rd floor,

  rejected by a dozen women

  35 editors

  and half a dozen hiring agencies,

  now I’m not saying he was any

  good

  he turned on all the jets

  without lighting them

  and went to bed

  some hours later a guy on his

  way to room 309

  lit a cigar in the

  hall

  and a sofa flew out the window

  one wall shivered down like wet sand

  a purple flame waved 40 feet high in the air

  the guy in bed

  didn’t know or care

  but I’d have to say

  he was pretty good

  that day.

  burn and burn and burn

  I used to know a dutchman in a Philly bar

  he’d take 3 raw eggs in his beer,

  71, still

  working,

  strong,

  and there I sat down from him

  4 or 5 barstools away

  in my 20’s

  frightened

  suicidal

  unloved.

  well, you know, sorrows beget

  sorrows

  burn and burn and burn and burn,

  then something else takes

  place.

  I’m not saying it’s as good

  but it’s certainly

  more comfortable,

  and often nights now

  I think of that old dutchman—

  I can look back on almost

  a lifetime—

  yet still remember him there

  my master, then and

  now.

  the way

  murdered in the alleys of the land

  frost-bitten against flagpoles

  pawned by females

  educated in the dark for the dark

  vomiting into plugged toilets

  in rented rooms full of roaches and mice

  no wonder we seldom sing

  day or noon or night

  the useless wars

  the useless years

  the useless loves

  and they ask us,

  why do you drink so much?

  well, I suppose the days were made

  to be wasted

  the years and the loves were made

  to be wasted.

  we can’t cry, and it helps to laugh—

  it’s like letting out

  dreams, ideals,

  poisons

  don’t ask us to sing,

  laughing is singing to us,

  you see, it was a terrible joke

  Christ should have laughed on the cross,

  it would have petrified his killers

  now there are more killers than ever

  and I write poems for them.

  out of the arms…

  out of the arms of one love

  and into the arms of another

  I have been saved from dying on the cross

  by a lady who smokes pot

  writes songs and stories,

  and is much kinder than the last,

  much much kinder,

  and the sex is just as good or better.

  it isn’t pleasant to be put on the cross and left there,

  it is much more pleasant to forget a love which didn’t

  work

  as all love

  finally

  doesn’t work…

  it is much more pleasant to make love

  along the shore in Del Mar

  in room 42, and afterwards

  sitting up in bed

  drinking good wine, talking and touching

  smoking

  listening to the waves…

  I have died too many times

  believing and waiting, waiting

  in a room

  staring at a cracked ceiling

  waiting for the phone, a letter, a knock, a sound…

  going wild inside

  while she danced with strangers in nightclubs…

  out of the arms of one love

  and into the arms of another

  it’s not pleasant to die on the cross,

  it’s much more pleasant to hear your name whispered in

  the dark.

  death of an idiot

  he spoke to mice and sparrows

  and his hair was white at the age of 16.

  his father beat him every day and his mother

  lit candles in the church.

  his grandmother came while the boy slept

  and prayed for the devil to let loose his hold upon

  him

  while his mother listened and cried over the

  bible.

  he didn’t seem to notice young girls

  he didn’t seem to notice the games boys played

  there wasn’t much he seemed to notice

  he just didn’t seem interested.

  he had a very lárge, ugly mouth and the teeth

  stuck out

  and his eyes were small and lusterless.

  his shoulders were slumped and his back was bent

  like an old man’s.

  he lived in our neighborhood.

  we talked about him when we got bored and then

  went on to more interesting things.

  he seldom left his house. we would have liked to

  torture him

  but his father

  who was a huge and terrible man

  tortured him for

  us.

  one day the boy died. at 17 he was still a

  boy. a death in a small neighborhood is noted with

  alacrity, and then forgotten 3 or 4 days

  later.

  but the death of this boy seemed to stay with us

  all. we kept talking about it

  in our boy-men’s voices

  at 6 p.m. just before dark

  just before dinner.

  and whenever I drive through that neighborhood now

  decades later

  I still think of his death

  while having forgotten all the other deaths

  and everything else that happened

  then.

  tonalities

  the soldiers march without guns

  the graves are empty

  peacocks glide in the rain

  down stairways march great men smiling

  there is food enough and rent enough and

  time enough

  our women will not grow old

  I will not grow old

  bums wear diamonds on their fingers

  Hitler shakes hands with a Jew

  the sky smells of roasted flesh

  I am a burning curtain

  I am steaming water

  I am a snake I am an edge of glass that cuts

  I am blood

  I am this fiery snail

  crawling home.

  hey, dolly

  she left me 5 weeks ago and went to Utah.

  that is, I think she left.

  the other day I went out to mail her a letter

  and I saw her sitting on the bus stop bench,

  it was her hair there

  from behind

  and all the pounding started in me again

  I walked
up quickly and looked at the face—

  it was somebody else. freckles, pugnose, greeneyes,

  nothing, nothing.

  then I was on Western Avenue going from bar to bar