Charles Bukowski — Poems by Charles Pt. 1

At the end of feat, the blackbird walks Shocked by palisades of ice and worn out shoes Shocked by nerve gas Shock by pinnacles of spinach Shock by the broken-wing bluebird Ol' Notre Dame football teams run through my room, sands whirl inside stovepipes Never getting a Pulitzer prize Shakespeare is 401, Joe Lewis is 51 A young boy stands outside throwing dust dry rocks against the garage "THAP! THAP! THAP!" Shocked by the body's limpid drag disease flab Shocked by tourniquets of music and elevators Not shocked to learn that Beethoven was a drunkard The angular daydream huddles against the fence like an old man "Jesus Charlie," it says, "Jesus Charlie they surely got us now," Hm Then, night fear Fear of never sleeping with a young girl who'd never heard of Rimbaud Fear of platitude and poverty Fear of a long death Fear of cameras and landlords and bosses Fear of children and wives Fear of cancer and round shoulders Fear that Sartre's asleep Fear that [?] is kidding Fear that there isn't anybody here In a dozen years, I'll be grey and almost dead In a dozen years I will be dead At the end of of feat the blackbird walks The woman behind me dries her pants on the heater China and Russia curse at the bar France sits back holding a small blade in pocket I wish I were truly gross not this way, the way people say I am I wish I were truly gross, weighed 366 pounds And sat at a back table in Paris, six novels behind me About ready to die and waiting Eating something out of a pot A one half-lived rabbit Regarding the women as soot, the world is soot Knowing the ground will bring up potatoes, coal, old graves, diamonds Knowing a joke about the sun and partly about what god is up to Sitting there, in accumulation Spooning it down Glowing pink and famed and not caring under electric lights And I, with only a temporary will All the waitresses frightened, trembling in their silly flower panties All the young boys wanting to know how its done, what the equation is: And I am, after all, truly gross I get up and walk out, electric into darkness And cracked my cane head against the building (Bang) "THAP!" And that is it- Two jet planes passed to left now I see a white and yellow roof through a dead walnut tree The shock is in seeing and feeling and never knowing It is a knowing that makes you gross There's nothing to know