Read Mockingbird Wish Me Luck Online
Authors: Charles Bukowski
a symphony orchestra.
there is a thunderstorm,
they are playing a Wagner overture
and the people leave their seats under the trees
and run inside to the pavilion
the women giggling, the men pretending calm,
wet cigarettes being thrown away,
Wagner plays on, and then they are all under the
pavilion. the birds even come in from the trees
and enter the pavilion and then it is the Hungarian
Rhapsody #2 by Lizst, and it still rains, but look,
one man sits alone in the rain
listening. the audience notices him. they turn
and look. the orchestra goes about its
business. the man sits in the night in the rain,
listening. there is something wrong with him,
isn’t there?
he came to hear the
music.
it is a highrise apt. next door
and he beats her at night and she screams and nobody stops it
and I see her the next day
standing in the driveway with curlers in her hair
and she has her huge buttocks jammed into black
slacks and she says, standing in the sun,
“god damn it, 24 hours a day in this place, I never go anywhere!”
then he comes out, proud, the little matador,
a pail of shit, his belly hanging over his bathing trunks—
he might have been a handsome man once, might have,
now they both stand there and he says,
“I think I’m goin’ for a swim.”
she doesn’t answer and he goes to the pool and
jumps into the fishless, sandless water, the peroxide-codein water,
and I stand by the kitchen window drinking coffee
trying to unboil the fuzzy, stinking picture—
after all, you can’t live elbow to elbow to people without wanting to
draw a number on them.
every time my toilet flushes they can hear it. every time they
go to bed I can hear them.
soon she goes inside and then comes out with 2 colored birds
in a cage. I don’t know what they are. they don’t talk. they
just move a little, seeming to twitch their tail-feathers and
shit. that’s all they do.
she stands there looking at them.
he comes out: the little tuna, the little matador, out of the pool,
a dripping unbeautiful white, the cloth of his wet suit gripping.
“get those birds in the house!”
“but the birds need sun!”
“I said, get those birds in the house!”
“the birds are gonna die!”
“you listen to me, I said, GET THOSE BIRDS IN THE HOUSE!”
she bends and lifts them, her huge buttocks in the black slacks
looking so sad.
he slams the door behind them. then I hear it.
BAM!
she screams
BAM! BAM!
she screams
then: BAM!
and she screams.
I pour another coffee and decide that that’s a new
one: he usually only beats her at
night. it takes a man to beat his wife night and
day. although he doesn’t look like much
he’s one of the few real men around
here.
I have read your stuff with
sharp inter…
he said,
falling forward
and knocking over his wine.
get that bum
OUTA here! screamed my old
lady.
but ma, I said, he’s my
agent
! got a joint inPlaza
Square
!
well, kiss my bubs, she said.
(she poured wine
all around,
the bat.)
I’ve represented, he said,
raisen his head, somerset mawn, ben heck
and tomas carylillie.
an’ as you might ’ave surmised, ’e said,
mah cut, daddy-o, is
ten percent
!
’is haid fell
forshafts.
Ma? I asked. who’s
forshafts?
Somerset Maun
! she answered,yo hashole
!
ignore all possible concepts and possibilities—
ignore Beethoven, the spider, the damnation of Faust—
just
make
it, babe, make it:a house a car a belly full of beans
pay your taxes
fuck
and if you can’t fuck
copulate.
make money but don’t work too
hard—make somebody else
pay
tomake it—and
don’t smoke too much but drink enough to
relax, and
stay off the streets
wipe your ass real good
use a lot of toilet paper
it’s bad manners to let people know you shit or
could
smell like itif you weren’t
careful.
I hold to the edge of the table
with my belly dangling over my
belt
and I glare at the lampshade
the smoke clearing
over
North Hollywood
the boys put their muskets down
lift high their fish-green beer
as I fall forward off the couch
kiss rug hairs like cunt
hairs
close as I’ve been in a
long time.
at high noon
at a small college near the beach
sober
the sweat running down my arms
a spot of sweat on the table
I flatten it with my finger
blood money blood money
my god they must think I love this like the others
but it’s for bread and beer and rent
blood money
I’m tense lousy feel bad
poor people I’m failing I’m failing
a woman gets up
walks out
slams the door
a dirty poem
somebody told me not to read dirty poems
here
it’s too late.
my eyes can’t see some lines
I read it
out—
desperate trembling
lousy
they can’t hear my voice
and I say,
I quit, that’s it, I’m
finished.
and later in my room
there’s scotch and beer:
the blood of a coward.
this then
will be my destiny:
scrabbling for pennies in dark tiny halls
reading poems I have long since become tired
of.
and I used to think
that men who drove busses
or cleaned out latrines
or murdered men in alleys were
fools.
there are 4 guys at the door
all 6 feet four
and checking in at
around 210 pounds,
slim killers.
come in, I say,
and they walk in with their drinks
and circle the old man—
so you’re Bukowski, eh?
yeh, you fucking killers, what do you
want?
well, we don’t have a car
and Lee needs a ride to this nightspot
in Hollywood.
let’s go, I say.
we get into my car
all of us drunk, and
somebody in back says,
we’ve been reading your poetry a long time,
Bukowski, and I say,
I’ve been writing it a long time,
kid. we dump Lee at the nightspot
then stop off for enough beer and cigars
to demolish the
stratosphere.
back at my place I sit with the killers and
we drink and smoke.
it is somehow enjoyable.
I find I can outdrink and outsmoke them
but I realize that in areas such as fights on
the front lawn
my day is done.
the motherfuckers are just getting too young and
too big.
after they pass out
I give each of them a pillow and a blanket
and make sure all the cigars are
out.
in the morning they were just 3 big kids
untrapped, a couple of them
heaving in the bathroom.
an hour later
they were gone.
readers of my poems
I can’t say that
I disliked them.
I can see myself now
after all these suicide days and nights,
being wheeled out of one of those sterile rest homes
(of course, this is only if I get famous and lucky)
by a subnormal and bored nurse…
there I am sitting upright in my wheelchair…
almost blind, eyes rolling backward into the dark part of my skull
looking
for the mercy of death…
“Isn’t it a lovely day, Mr. Bukowski?”
“O, yeah, yeah…”
the children walk past and I don’t even exist
and lovely women walk by
with big hot hips
and warm buttocks and tight hot everything
praying to be loved
and I don’t even
exist…
“It’s the first sunlight we’ve had in 3 days,
Mr. Bukowski.”
“Oh, yeah, yeah.”
there I am sitting upright in my wheelchair,
myself whiter than this sheet of paper,
bloodless,
brain gone, gamble gone, me, Bukowski,
gone…
“Isn’t it a lovely day, Mr. Bukowski?”
“O, yeah, yeah…” pissing in my pajamas, slop drooling out of
my mouth.
2 young schoolboys run by—
“Hey, did you see that old guy?”
“Christ, yes, he made me sick!”
after all the threats to do so
somebody else has committed suicide for me
at last.
the nurse stops the wheelchair, breaks a rose from a nearby bush,
puts it in my hand.
I don’t even know
what it is. it might as well be my pecker
for all the good
it does.