ah, Merryman,
fighter on the docks,
killed a man while they were unloading
bananas.
mean the man he killed
clubbed him first
from behind
with an anchor chain
something about a woman)
and we all circled around
while
Merryman
did him in
under a hard-on sun,
finally strangling him to death
throwing him into the
ocean.
Merryman leaped to the dock
and walked
away, nobody tried to stop
him.
then we went back to work and
unloaded the rest of the bananas.
nothing was ever said about the murder
between any of us
and I never saw anything about it
in the papers.
although I saw some of the bananas
later in the
markets:
lbs. for a quarter
they seemed a
bargain.
Other works by Charles Bukowski...
