Traffic Ticket
I walked off the job again
and the police stopped me
for running a red light at Serrano Ave.
my mind was rather gone
and I stood in a patch of leaves
ankle-deep
and kept my head turned
so they couldn’t smell the liquor
too much
and I took the ticket and went to my room
and got a good symphony on the radio,
one of the Russians or Germans,
one of the dark tough boys
but still I felt lonely and cold
and kept lighting cigarettes
and I turned on the heater
and then down on the floor
I saw a magazine with my photo
on the cover
and I walked over and picked it up
but it wasn’t me
because yesterday is gone
and today is only catsup
and racing hounds
and sickness
and women some women
momentarily as beautiful
as any of the cathedrals,
and now they play Bartok
who knew what he was doing
which meant he didn’t know what he was doing,
and tomorrow I suppose I will go back
to the fucking job
like a man to a wife with four kids
if they’ll have me
but today I know that I have gotten out of
some kind of net,
30 seconds more and I would have been dead,
and it is important to recognize
one should recognize
that type of moment
if he wants to continue
to avail the gut and the sacked skull of a
flower a mountain a ship a woman
the code of the frost and the stone
everything lapsing into a sense of moment
that cleans like the best damn soap on the market
and brings Paris, Spain, the groans of Hemingway,
the blue madonna, the new-born bull,
a night in a closet with red paint
right down in on you,
and I hope to pay the ticket
even though I did not (I think) run the red light but
they said I did.
Other works by Charles Bukowski...
