is an orange
animal
with
hand grenades
fire power
big teeth and
horn of smoke
colored man
with cigar
yanks at
gears and the damn thing never gets
tired
my neighbor
....n old man in blue
bathing trunks
....n old man
fetid white obscene
thing—
the old man
lifts apart some purple flowers
and peeks through the fence at the
orange animal
and like a horror movie
see the orange animal open its
mouth—
belches it has teeth fastened onto a giraffe’s
neck—
and it reached over the fence and it gets the
old man in his blue
bathing trunks
neatly
gets him
from behind the fence of purple flowers
and his whiteness is like
garbage in the air
and then
he’s dumped into a
shock of lumber
and then the orange animal
backs off
spins
turns
runs off into the Hollywood Hills
the palm trees the
boulevards as
the colored man
sucks red steam
from his
cigar
I’ll be glad when it’s all
over
the noise is
terrible and I’m afraid to go and
buy a
paper.
Other works by Charles Bukowski...
