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The People Look Like Flowers At Last
Charles Bukowski
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eBook - ePub
The People Look Like Flowers At Last
Charles Bukowski
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About This Book
"if you read this after I am dead
It means I made it"
-"The Creation Coffin"
The People Look like Flowers at Last is the last of five collections of never-before published poetry from the late great Dirty Old Man, Charles Bukowski.
In it, he speaks on topics ranging from horse racing to military elephants, lost love to the fear of death. He writes extensively about writing, and about talking to people about writers such as Camus, Hemingway, and Stein. He writes about war and fatherhood and cats and women.
Free from the pressure to present a consistent persona, these poems present less of an aggressively disruptive character, and more a world-weary and empathetic person.
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three
while most people
converse it all away
I
write it down.
converse it all away
I
write it down.
poem for my daughter
I spoon it
in: strained chicken noodle dinner
junior prunes
junior fruit dessert.
spoon it in and
for Christâs sake
donât blame the
child
donât blame the
govt.
donât blame the bosses or the
working classesâ
spoon it down
into that little mouth
like melted
wax.
a friend phones:
âwhatya gonna do now, Hank?â
âwhat the hell ya mean, what am I gonna
do?â
âI mean ya got responsibility now, ya gotta bring the
kid up
right.â
I feed her instead:
spoon it in!
may she achieve
a place in Beverly Hills
with never any need for unemployment compensation
and never have to sell to the highest
bidder.
and never fall in love with a soldier or a killer of any
kind.
and may she
appreciate Beethoven and Jelly Roll Morton and
beautiful dresses.
sheâs got a real
chance:
there was once the
Theoric Fund and now thereâs the
Great Society.
âare ya still gonna play the horses? are ya still gonna
drink? are ya still gonnaâ?â
âyes.â
she is a waving flower in the wind and the dead center of
my heartâ
now she sleeps beautifully like a
boat on the Nile.
maybe some day she will
bury me.
that would be nice
if it werenât a
responsibility.
sheets
those sheets youâve got there,
said the old dame
in the housewares dept.,
are for a double bed.
do you have a double bed or a
single bed?
well, you see, I answered,
my bed is an unusual bed, itâs
kind of a single-and-a-
half.
describe your bed, she said.
what?
describe your
bed.
Iâd rather not, I said.
well, said the old dame, I want you to
know the sheets youâve got there are
for a double bed, and if youâve got a single
bed, itâs against the state
law.
what? I asked. say that
again.
I said, itâs against the state
law.
you mean? I asked.
I mean, you canât bring these sheets back
after youâve opened the
package.
all right, I said, give me a couple of
singles.
she treated me then with comfortable
disdain. I believe the old dame had been in
sheets all her
life. I think they should put young girls
in the sheets dept.
after all, sheets donât make me think of sleep
at all
but something else
entirely. especially crisp white new
sheets.
they ought to put old dames like her in
dog food. or garden supplies. and
when she gave me the singles I knew she knew I slept
alone. like she
did.
sick leave
there I am flat on my belly, Hem is dead, Shake is dead,
the fish I have caught and eaten and shitted are dead
and the doc is ramming a glass tube up my ass,
a glass tube with a little light on the end of it,
and I am hoping for a medical excuse
for 2 more days of sick leave
and the doc plays right along: âya got some beauts there,
you oughta be cutâŚâ well, the White Russians used to
cut a hole in a man and take hold of the end of the intestine
and nail it to a tree and then force the man to
run around and around the tree.
he pulls the glass tube out of my ass
and part of me along with it
he has a face like a walnut and when his nurse
bends over (which is often)
her butt is like a big soft pillow or
powdered doughnut, no blood, just clouds,
and I say, âDoc, add a day to the excuse,
I can feel the pain all the way down to my nutsâŚâ
âsure,â he says, âsure, I know a lot of boys
from the Post Office, all nice boys.â
at home I screw the cap off the bottle
and have the first good one; it rained while he rammed me:
the rain sits glittering in the screen
like sugar flies eating dreams,
and I split the Racing Form with my thumb,
then call my bookie,
ââŚgive me 2 across on Indian Blood,
5 win on Lady Fanfare, 5 place on The Rage.â
I hang up and think softly of Kafka
sleeping under the paws of gophers
as the lady across the hall sings to her canary.
love has clicked off and on
like a cigarette lighter
and now her love is a
bird.
it gets like that when not much happens
and you play on a small stage,
and I pin my medical exemption to
the front of one of my old paintings
rub some salve up my ass
and pour another drink.
my father
my father liked rules and doing things
the hard way.
he spoke of responsibilities and laws
and things that just had to be done correctly.
a man must work, a man must eat.
a man must own property and mow his lawn.
I turned out to be a drunkard and wanderer
and his hard-packed letters followed me everywhere.
I watched the pigeons in the rain in
New Orleans while his letters said,
get going, make something of yourself!
how hard the world tries and how ha...