starve, go mad, or kill yourself I’m
I’m not going to die
easy;
I’ve sat on your suicide beds
in some of the worst
holes in America,
penniless and mad I’ve been,
mean, insane, you know;
big tears, each one the size of your bastard hearts,
flowing down,
roaches crawling into my shoes,
one dirty 40-watt lightbulb overhead
and a room that smelled like piss;
while your rich
your falsely famous
laughed in safe stale places
far away,
you gave me a suicide bed and two choices,
no three:
starve, go mad, or kill yourself.
for now enjoy your trips to Paris where
you consort with great painters and dupes,
but I am getting ready for your eyes and your brain and
your dirty dishwater souls;
you men who have created a pigpen for millions
to choke soundlessly in—
from India to Los Angeles
from Paris to the tits of the Nile—
you’re fucked up
you rich you warty you insecure you pricky
damned imbecile pasty white
idiots with your starched shirts and your starched wives and, yes yes,
your starched lives,
get away get away
get away
go to Paris
while you can
while I let you.
the jolly damned man with the hoe (see Markham)
didn’t answer the call,
but your children will be raped and your pigs will be eaten
and the skies will burn black with crows and your cries,
as you answer for centuries of
unbearable indignity and bullshit.
you will be dealt with
we know you now
we’ve known you forever;
the might of the timorous
flies forth like a tremendous and ever beautiful swan,
no shit, friend,
look up look up look up look up
the jolly damned man with the hoe
is now flying over Milwaukee
grinning
more lovely than the sun
more graceful than all the ugly wounds
more real than you
or I or anything.
Other works by Charles Bukowski...
