Vegas
there was a frozen tree that I wanted to paint
but the shells came down
and in Vegas looking across at a green sunshade
at 3:30 in the morning,
I died without nails, without a copy of the Atlantic Monthly,
the windows screamed like doves moaning the bombing of Milan
and I went out to live with the rats
but the lights were too bright
and I thought maybe I’d better go back and sit in a
poetry class:
a marvelous description of a gazelle
is hell;
the cross sits like a fly on my window,
my mother’s breath stirs small leaves
in my mind;
and I hitch-hiked back to L.A. through hangover clouds
and I pulled a letter from my pocket and read it
and the truckdriver said, what’s that?
and I said, there’s some gal up North who used to
sleep with Pound, she’s trying to tell me that H.D.
was our greatest scribe; well, Hilda gave us a few pink
Grecian gods in with the chinaware, but after reading her
I still have 140 icicles hanging from my bones.
I’m not going all the way to L.A., the truck driver said.
it’s all right, I said, the calla lilies nod to our minds
and someday we’ll all go home
together.
in fact, he said, this is as far
as we go.
so I let him have it; old withered whore of time
your breasts taste the sour cream of dreaming...
he let me out
in the middle of the desert;
to die is to die is to die,
old phonographs in cellars,
joe di maggio,
magazines in with the onions...
an old Ford picked me up
45 minutes later
and, this time,
I kept my mouth
shut.
Other works by Charles Bukowski...
