Mockingbird Wish Me Luck

by Charles Bukowski

  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.

  ww 2

  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

  WATC
H 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

  poetaster and counter of tombstones feeling the blade against my

  whimpering brain i i was more agile…and so psycho and public

  enemy number one pinched out the souls of bedbugs while the world

  grabbed its balls in more agony: ww 2

  and we forgot in our small dying to acknowledge the small nobility

  of whatever it was

  BUTTT as i wuz saying

  just as we were beginning to

  enjoy our bedbugs they rushed us out of the cell

  5 or 6 days after

  the original complaint to fumigate

  and they put me in with a polack

  or something

  old old old

  he tore up my bedsheet the first time

  i went to exercise yard to make a clothesline out of it

  and i have a very sensitive skin despite my poker face

  and the wool blankets only those who can’t stand rough wool will

  know what i mean and so i told the old man

  he was always on the crapper

  puffiing on an empty pipe and all these makeshift makeshit

  clotheslines hanging about dripping polack stockings and rags

  (forget my name i am a Prussian nobleman) (this is fiction)

  (isn’t it) (i am getting a little bored with this and could use a

  hot piece of ass as what man cd not?)

  he wuz always on the crapper

  puffing and saying

  TARA BUBU EAT TARA BUBU SHEET

  TARA BUBU EAT TARA BUBU SHEET

  over and over

  then he’d laugh

  he was telling me the facts of life but all i could feel

  as the bluebirds were driven away from the white cliffs of dover

  was that wool blanket against me all and everywhere

  LISTEN YOU OLD FUCK i told him I’VE KILLED TWO

  MEN ALREADY AND I’D JUST AS SOON KILL U AS SCRATCH

  MY ASS !!!

  and the old idiot just laughed at me and for a moment i saw it

  it was possible why not my hands about that wrinkled morgue of

  flesh hoo says u can’t kill what’s already dead the eyes pop out

  the tongue the lungs reach for air like kittens chasing a roll of

  yarn but it was too ugly i don’t think what got Dos in

  Crime and Pu
nishment was that a single man could not judge what to