I watched the board and the 6 dropped to 9
after a first flash of 18 from a morning line
of 12...two minutes to post and a fat man
kept jamming against my back, but I made it,
I bet 20 to win and walked out to the deck
looking down at my program:
purple and cerise quarters, cerise sleeves
and cap; b.f.3., Indian Red—Impetuous, by Top Row,
and people kept walking into me
although there was no place to go,
they were putting them in the gate
and the people were walking like ants over spilled
sugar,
the machine had cranked them up to die
and they were blind with it,
and now by the 7th race
stinking sweating broke ugly
reamed
there was no way back to the dream,
and the horses came out of the gate
and I looked for my colors—
I saw them, and the boy seemed to be riding sideways
he had the horse running in and was pulling his head back
toward the outer rail,
and I could tell by the way the horse was striding
that he was out of it;
the action had been all wrong
and I walked to the bar
while the winners turned into the stretch,
and they were making the final calls as I ordered my drink,
and I leaned there thinking
I once knew places that sweetly cried
their walls’ voices
where mirrors showed me chance,
I was once saddened when an evening became
finally a night to sleep away.
—the bartender said, I hear they are going to send
in the 7 horse in the next one.
I once sang operas and burned candles
in a place made holy by nothing but myself
and whatever there was.
—I never bet mares in the summer, I told him.
then the crowd came on in complaining
explaining
bragging
thinking of suicide or drunkenness or sex,
and I looked around
like a man waking up in jail
and whatever there was
became that,
and I finished my drink and walked away.
Other works by Charles Bukowski...
