I would, of course, prefer to be with the fox in the ferns
instead of with a photograph of an old Spad in my pocket
to the sound of the anvil chorus and legs legs legs
girls kicking high, showing everything but the pisser,
but I might as well be dead right now
everywhere the ill wind blows
and Keats is dead
and I am dying too.
for there is nothing as crappy dissolute
as an old poet gone sour
in body and mind
and luck, the horses running nothing but out,
the Vegas dice cancer to the thin green wallet,
Shostakovich heard too often
and cans of beer sucked through a straw,
with mouth and mind broken in
young men’s alleys.
in the hot noon window
I swing and miss a razzing fly,
and ho, I fall heavy as thunder
but downstairs they’ll understand:
he’s either drunk or dying,
an old poet nodding vaguely in halls,
cracking his stick across the backs
of innocent dogs
and spitting out
what’s left of his sun.
the mailman has some little thing for him
which he takes to his room
and opens like a rose,
only to scream loudly and vainly,
and his coffin is filled
with notes from hell.
but in the morning you’ll see him
packing off little envelopes,
still worried about
rent
cigarettes wine
women horses,
still worried about
Eric Coates, Beethoven’s 3rd and
something Chicago has held for three months
and his paper bag of wine
and Pall Malls.
42 in August, 42,
the rats walking his brain
eating up the thoughts before they
can make the keys.
old poets are as bad as old queers:
there’s something quite unacceptable:
the editors wish to thank you for
submitting but
regret...
down
down down
the dark hall
into a womanless hall
to peel a last egg
and sit down to the keys:
click click a click,
over the television sounds
over the sounds of springs,
click clack a clack:
another old poet
going off.
Other works by Charles Bukowski...
