the drowning
for five years I have been looking
across the way
at the side of a red apartment house.
there must be people in there
even love in there
whatever that means.
here blows a horn, there sounds a
piano, and yesterday’s newspapers are as
yellow as the grass.
five years.
man can drown in five years,
while the red bricks
stand forever.
hear sounds now like dancing in the
air
great bladders of blood are being loosed in
Mariposa Ave.
sweat drenches my temple like beads on a
cold beer can
as armies fight in my head.
see a woman come out of the redbrick
apartment house.
she is fat and comfortable
the slow horse of her body moves
under a dress of pink carnations
playing tricks with my better sense
and now she is gone and
the bricks look back at me
the bricks with their
windows and the windows look at me
and a bird on a telephone wire looks
and I feel naked as I
try to forget all the good dead.
band plays wildly
LOOKAWAY, LOOKAWAY,
DIXIELAND!
as they empty bladders of poison
and bags of oranges over Mariposa Ave.
and the cars run through them like poor snow
and my pink woman comes back and I
try to tell her
wait! wait!
don’t go back in there!
but she goes inside as
my bird flies away
and it is just
another hot evening in
Los Angeles:
some bricks, a mongoose or two, Chimera and
disbelief.
Other works by Charles Bukowski...
