Charles Bukowski — Bye to Everything

Farewell, Foolish Objects I've lain in bed all day but I’ve written one poem and up I'm now looking out the window And like a novelist might say drunk The clouds are coming at me like scullery maids with dish pans and bed pans in their hands Something that holds a gritty, dirty water But, I'm a drunken non-novelist but in clear shape now here sits the bottle of beer I’m warmly thinking in a kind of foam-shaped idle fancy working closely But all I can stoke up are squares and circles which do not fit So oh well [?] I'll tell you the truth again In bed I, read another article on D. Thomas And someday I'll get lucky and sit around and buy a French horn and a tame eagle and I'll sit on the porch all day A white porch always in the sun One of those white porches with green vines all around and I will read about Dylan, and D. H. until my eyes fall out of my head for [?] And I can play the French horn blind But even now it gets dark or the evening's singing tonight It's bones down here or the stars up there Somebody rattling the springs in Denver so another puker can be born I think everything is a sheet of sun and the best of everything is myself walking through it Wondering about the pure nerve of the life-thing going on After the jails, the hospitals, the factories, the good dog, the brainless butterfly But now I'm back at the window- there's an opera on the radio And a woman sits in a chair to my left Saying over and over again, "BROCK GROSH GROT" And she’s holding a book in her hand: How to Learn Russian Easily But, there’s nothing really you can do easily Live or die, or accept fame, or money, or defeat, it's all hard The opera says this, the dead bird, the dead countries, the dead love The man shot because somebody thought he was an elk The elk shot because somebody thought it was an elk All the pure nerve of going on This woman wanting to speak Russian, myself wanting to get drunk But we need something to eat "GRIME CYAT GRIME MEET" says the woman in Russian, so I figure she’s hungry And we haven't eaten in a couple of hours "GLOM BLAYM TURKEY PARK IM PARK" she says And I walk over and put on my pants and I'm going out to get something The forests are far away and I'm no good with the bow and arrow and somebody sings on the radio, "Farewell, Foolish Objects" All I can do is walk into a grocery store and pull out a wallet and hope that it’s loaded And this is about how I waste my Sunday The rest of the week goes better because there's something or somebody telling me what to do And although it seems madness, almost everybody is doing it whatever it is So now if you'll excuse me- she's eating an orange now I will put on my shoes and shirt and get out of here It'll be better for all of us