Mockingbird Wish Me Luck

by Charles Bukowski

  eradicate but that he COULD and KNEW IT and it was easier to turn

  it over to God because you would finally have to eradicate

  everything including self (though u usually began with self and

  by eradicating self you eradicated the rest) and that would make God

  a failure and that would not do because if you eliminate God

  you have to come down to self and Self built in 20 or 30 or 60 years

  cannot match a 2000 year backlog of root and tradition and so Dos

  did the wise thing in admitting that he could be wrong although he

  felt right and i let the old man shit and spew tara bubu and slept

  in wool blankets

  they broke up the crap game from the tower

  the screw pointed his m.g. down

  the guy with the dice was taking too big a chunk from

  each pot and the losers were getting hot I guess i should have

  said it to the old man that way but one guy said to the furnisher

  of dice DON’T PUT YOUR HAND IN THERE AGAIN UNTIL I TELL

  U TO

  and that was that until the screw got busy pointed his

  steel nose

  they came back for me and put me in some kind of room

  they were making out a report

  they asked me how to spell some words

  like Andernach and so forth

  i had a long red beard by then

  and they asked me why

  and i said

  have you ever had the end cell where they

  pass out one razorblade at the first cell and that same razor blade is

  used by the last man in the last cell, and have you ever celled with an

  old man whose only joy in life is eating and shitting and shaving and

  wd u take 1/3 of his joy by taking the blade and shaving FIRST?

  besides i use this red beard to fight the wool blankets with

  i believe the kid is psycho one of them said

  anyhow 3 or 4 days later

  they let me out

  only first i had to go through another physical for the army

  but once again

  i couldn’t get past the sike

  and that same day

  when they let me out

  even before i tried to get

  a room i lay down in that park outside the philly library

  i got on

  my back and i felt little grass bugs crawling upon me and i let them

  crawl they were beautifully clean

  and i let the clouds come down

  into my head but the sky was a bad color it hurt my eyes it was all

  not good i began to fill up with sadness

  and i heard some girls come by

  talking and laughing and one of them tripped over my ankle

  and she said OOOh OOOH and then laughed

  and i glared

  up at them outa my red wool beard and one of them said

  OOOOOH I WANT HIM !!!

  and then i fell back and went back to the clouds

  until later

  clambering up out of the misery of the tomb

  i sat upon a park bench watching traffic go by

  and then it came a long caravan of trucks

  filled with good young soldiers who only wanted to live

  and i was young and watching and for a moment i loved them the crowd

  but once again they turned on me and from the first truck

  came a hissing and a cursing and then a booing a racket of vile hate

  they wanted me with them and the whole avenue filled with hot sound

  and more trucks came by slowly and it was an opera it was an

  opera of condemnation, but i had not wanted war never will and

  the gods the gods the dice had been good and i waved an arm

  and smiled somebody screamed YOU BASTARD GET OFF YOUR

  DEAD ASS !

  but i did not i watched them go where they were going

  i imagine the one who fainted he was in there too

  we were all

  very young i was young they were young

  but i imagine

  war being swine mob being swine

  i was not as young as they

  ants

  I used to be a great

  traveler, even without

  money. some cities I’d say in 2

  weeks, some 3 days…for years I went through the

  cities, sometimes coming up against the same one

  2 or 3 times.

  now I’m here…not only the same city…

  the same apartment…for ten years…

  ten years…

  the last person in here before me was

  crazy, they carried her off

  screaming

  in a big white

  sheet, and I moved

  in.

  it’s all right…there have been various

  jobs, various women, various

  ways…

  one bungles through, it seems…

  but it’s the ants here,

  the ants here are crazy, they keep building nests

  in the bathtub drain…in the water basin

  drain…

  it’s delicious and sanitary and ugly:

  I turn on the hot water tap

  and watch them go spinning to a

  burning drowning hell…

  it’s neat…

  but they keep coming back…

  more and more ants…

  the ants come back faster than the women.

  today I was about to do in a new

  batch, both tub and water basin,

  the phone rang,

  it was my friend Danny. he said,

  listen, you are the only real man I know. I’m

  going to kill myself…

  go, I said, ahead…

  she left me, he said, she left me like that,

  hardly any notice…I really loved

  her. (he began to cry.)

  listen, I said, meeting a bitch is an accident,

  having one leave you is a basic reality,

  be glad you’re coming up against

  basic reality…

  thanks, he said (sobbing), and hung

  up.

  I went back to the ants and turned on both water

  taps at

  once.

  I burned and drowned them good.

  Then the phone rang,

  listen, he said, I’m going to do it,

  I’m really going to do it.

  I hung up.

  he wrote in lonely blood

  sitting here

  typing

  at a friend’s house

  I find a black book by the typer:

  Jeffers’: Be Angry at the Sun.

  I think of Jeffers often,

  of his rocks and his hawks and his

  isolation.

  Jeffers was a real loner.

  yes, he had to write.

  I try to think of loners who don’t break out

  at all

  in any fashion,

  and I think, no, that’s not strong,

  somehow, that’s dead.

  Jeffers was alive and a loner and

  he made his statements.

  his rocks and his hawks and his isolation

  counted.

  he wrote in lonely blood

  a man trapped in a corner

  but what a corner

  fighting down to the last mark

  “I’ve built my rock,” he sent the message to

  the lovely girl who came to his door,

  “you go build yours.”

  this was the same girl who had screwed Ezra,

  and she wrote me that Jeffers sent her away

  like that.

  BE ANGRY AT THE SUN.

  Jeffers was a rock who was not dead.

  his book sits to my left now as I type.

  I thin
k of all his people crashing down

  hanging themselves, shooting themselves,

  taking poisons…

  locked away against an unbearable humanity.

  Jeffers was like his people:

  he demanded perfection and beauty

  and it was not there

  in human form. he found it in non-human

  forms. I’ve run out of non-human forms,

  I’m angry at Jeffers. no,

  I’m not. and if the girl comes to my door

  I’ll send her away too. after all,

  who wants to follow old

  Ez?

  six chink fishermen

  the other night

  under a new moon

  with the cuckoo clocks wound

  tight

  they stopped 6 Chinese fishermen

  on skidrow

  San Pedro

  with 28 million dollars worth of

  shit

  in their boots.

  they say it was an old dwarf

  on a houseboat

  who painted butterflies

  on the sleeping body of his wife

  in their pitiful

  dream.

  Artists, they say, sell out cheapest and most

  quickly.

  meanwhile, a fat man in Hong Kong

  hearing,

  decided to do away with Art,

  and

  while irritated

  just to make Mr. Justice

  soil his new clean sheets

  he dialed a number

  and arranged

  the assassination of the

  next-to-last

  American

  hero.

  burning

  and the pleasures of the past,

  remembering the Goose Girl at Hollywood Park

  1950,

  red coats and trumpets

  and faces cut with knives and mistakes;

  I am ready for the final

  retreat;

  I have an old-time kerosene burner,

  candles, 22 cans of Campbell’s soup

  and an 80 year old uncle in Andernach,

  Germany

  who was once the burgermeister of that

  town I was born in

  so long ago.

  I ache all over with the melody of pain

  and people knock at my door

  come in and drink with me

  and talk,

  but they don’t realize I’ve quit,

  have cleaned up the kitchen

  chased the mice out from under the bed

  and am making ready

  for the tallest flame of them all.

  I look at buildings and clouds and ladies,

  I read newspapers as my shoelaces break,

  I dream of matadors brave and bulls brave

  and people brave and cats brave and

  can openers brave.

  my uncle writes me in trembling hand:

  “How is your little girl,

  and is your health good? You didn’t answer

  my last letter…”

  “Dear Uncle Heinrich,” I answer,

  “my little girl is very clever and pretty and

  also good. I hope that you are

  happy and well. I enclose a photo

  of Marina. Answer when you are

  able. Things here are the same as they

  have always

  been.

  Love,

  Henry”

  a sound in the brush

  the sorrow of Scibelli,

  friend,

  as he turned at a sound in the brush

  and was bayonetted

  by a man 5 feet tall who didn’t even know

  his name,

  who then sliced his jugular vein,

  took the gold from his teeth,

  both ears,

  then opened his wallet

  and tore up the photo of a soft-faced

  girl named

  simply, “Laura,”

  who was waiting in Kansas City

  for an earless, tooth-ravished

  bloody

  Scibelli

  who just happened to die a little earlier

  than most of the rest of us,

  also for

  Cause

  Unknown.

  the wild

  once in lockup, being fingerprinted and photographed, all

  that,

  I dropped ashes from my cigarette on the floor

  and the cop got mad, he said,

  “by god, where the hell do you think you are?”

  “County jail,” I said, and he said, “All right, wise guy, now you

  walk down

  that corridor and then

  take a left.”

  I walked on down

  took my left and

  here it came—

  they had this beast of a thing

  in a huge cellblock, alone, alone,

  and there were wires across the bars

  it was the L.A. County drunktank

  and it was their pet

  the thing saw me

  came running

  and threw itself snarling against the bars and wire

  wanting to kill me, and I stood there and watched it,

  then spoke:

  “Cigarette? how about a smoke?”

  the thing rattled the wire and snarled a few more times

  and I pulled out a smoke.

  the thing grinned at me and I poked a cigarette through the wire

  put it in his lips and lit him

  up.

  “I dislike them too,” I said.

  the thing grinned and bobbed its head

  yes.

  the cop came and took me away

  and put me in a cell with

  5 less living.

  4th of july

  it’s amazing

  the number of people who can’t feel

  pain.

  put 40 in a room

  squeezed against each other

  hours of lethargic talk

  and they don’t

  faint

  scream

  go mad or even

  wince.

  it appears as if they are waiting for

  something that will never

  arrive.

  they are as comfortable as chickens or

  pigs in their pens.

  one might even consider it wisdom

  if you can overlook the faces

  and the conversation.

  when the 4th is over

  and they go back to their separate holes

  then the sun will kiss me hello

  then the sidewalks will look good again.

  back in their cages

  they’ll dream of the next great

  holiday.

  probably Labor Day

  smashing together on the freeways

  talking together

  40 in a room,

  cousins, aunts, sisters, mothers, brothers, uncles,

  sons, grandfathers, grandmothers, wives, husbands,

  lovers, friends, all the rest,

  40 in a room

  talking about nothing,

  talking about themselves.

  carnival

  he got drunk and went to sleep

  in his bed

  and the fire started

  and he layed in there

  burning

  until a friend in the next room

  smelled it

  and ran in

  and tried to pull him out of the fire

  by his arms

  and the skin rolled right off the arms

  and he had to grab again

  deeper

  near the bone,

  and he got him out and up

  and the guy started screaming

  and running blind,

  he hit some walls

  finally made 2 doorways

  and with half a dozen men tr
ying

  to hold him

  he broke free

  and ran into the yeard

  screaming

  still running

  he ran right into some barbed wire

  and tangled in the barbed wire

  screaming

  and they had to go up

  and get him loose

  from the wire

  he lived for 3 nights and 3

  days

  drinking and smoking

  are bad for the

  health.

  99 degrees

  September after Labor Day,

  99 degrees in Burbank, Calif.

  I am looking at a fly

  a small brown fly on a yellow curtain;

  the Mexicans would be wise enough to sleep under trees

  on a day like this

  but Americans are stricken with ambition

  they will survive as powerful and unhappy

  neurotics,

  right now my tax money is dropping bombs

  on starving people in Asia

  as I fight the small fly that has arrived from the

  curtain by my elbow;

  I swing and miss the fly,

  neurotic American me,

  the boys who pilot those planes are nice boys, gentle,

  they kill apathetically

  with honor and grace,

  without hate.

  I know one, he is now a prof who teaches American