Charles Bukowski

I am eaten by butterflies

maybe I’ll win the Irish Sweepstakes
maybe I’ll go nuts
maybe Harcourt Brace will call
or maybe unemployment insurance or
rich lesbian at the top of a hill.
 
maybe reincarnation as a frog...
or $70,000 found floating in a plastic sack
in the bathtub.
 
need help
am a thin man being eaten by
green trees
butterflies and
you.
 
turn turn
light the lamp
my teeth ache the teeth of my soul ache
can’t sleep I
pray for the dead
the white mice
engines on fire
blood on a green gown in an operating room
and I am caught
ow ow
wild: my body being there filled with nothing but
me
me caught halfway between suicide and
old age
hustling in factories next to the
young boys
 
keeping pace
burning my blood like gasoline and
making the foreman
grin.
 
my poems are only bits of scratchings
on the floor of a
cage.
Other works by Charles Bukowski...



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