The Curtains are Waving and People Walk Through the Afternoon Here and in Berlin and in New York City and in Mexico
I wait on life like a pregnancy, put the stethoscope to
the gut
but all I hear now is
the piano slamming its teeth through areas of my
brain
(somebody in this neighborhood likes
Gershwin which is too bad
for
me)
and the woman sits behind me
sits there sits there
and keeps lighting cigarettes
and now the nurses leave the hospital near here
and they wear dresses that are naked in the sun
to cheer the dead and the dying and the doctors
but it does not help
me
if I could rip them with moans of delight it
would neither add or take away
anything
now now
a horn blows a tired
summer like a gladiola given up and leaning against a
house and
the bottles we have emptied would strangle the
sensibilities... of God
now I look up and see my face in the mirror:
if I could only kill the man who killed the
man
more than coffeepots and cheroots have done me
in more than myself has done me
in
madness comes like a mouse out of the cupboard and
they hand me a photograph of the
moon
the woman behind me has a daughter who falls in love
with men in beards and sandals and berets
who smoke pipes and carefully comb their hair and
play chess and talk continually of the
soul and of Art
this is good enough: you’ve got to love
something
now the landlord waters outside dripping the
plants with false rain
Gershwin is finished now it sounds like
Greig
o, it’s all so common and hard! impossible!
I do wish somebody would go blackberry
wild
but no
I suppose it will be the
same: a beer and then another
beer and then another
beer
maybe then a halfpint of
scotch
three cigars—smoke smoke
yes smoke
under the electric sun of night
hidden here in these walls with this woman and her
life while
the police are taking the drunks off the
streets
I do not know how much longer I can
last
but I keep thinking
ow! my god!
the
gladiola will straighten hard and
full of
color like an
arrow pointing at the
sun
Christ will shudder like
marmalade
my cat will look like Gandhi once
looked
everything everything
even the tiles in the men’s room at
the Union Station will be
true
all those mirrors there
finally with faces in them
roses
forests
no more policemen
no more
me.
Other works by Charles Bukowski...
