first they used to, he told me,
gun and bomb the elephants,
you could hear their screams over all the other sounds;
but you flew high to bomb the people,
you never saw it,
just a little flash from way up
but with the elephants
you could watch it happen
and hear how they screamed;
i’d tell my buddies, listen, you guys
stop that,
but they just laughed
as the elephants scattered
throwing up their trunks (if they weren’t blown off)
opening their mouths
wide and
kicking their dumb clumsy legs
as blood ran out of big holes in their bellies.
then we’d fly back,
mission completed.
we’d get everything:
convoys, dumps, bridges, people, elephants and
all the rest.
he told me later, I
felt bad about the
elephants.
Other works by Charles Bukowski...
