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Charles Bukowski - Vegas
Work rating: Low

there was a frozen tree that I wanted to paint 
but the shells came down 
and in Vegas looking across at a green sunshade 
at 3:30 in the morning, 
I died without nails, without a copy of the Atlantic Monthly, 
the windows screamed like doves moaning the bombing of Milan 
and I went out to live with the rats 
but the lights were too bright 
and I thought maybe I`d better go back and sit in a 
poetry class: 


             a marvelous description of a gazelle 
             is hell; 
             the cross sits like a fly on my window, 
             my mother’s breath stirs small leaves 
             in my mind; 


and I hitch-hiked back to L.A. through hangover clouds 
and I pulled a letter from my pocket and read it 
and the truckdriver said, what’s that? 
and I said, there`s some gal up North who used to 
sleep with Pound, she`s trying to tell me that H.D. 
was our greatest scribe; well, Hilda gave us a few pink 
Grecian gods in with the chinaware, but after reading her 
I still have 140 icicles hanging from my bones. 


I`m not going all the way to L.A., the truckdriver said. 


it`s all right, I sad, the calla lilies nod to our minds 
and someday we’ll all go home 
together. 


in fact, he said, this is as far 
as we go. 
so I let him have it; old withered whore of time 
your breasts taste the sour cream of dreaming . . . 
he let me out 
in the middle of the desert; 
to die is to die is to die, 


old phonographs in cellars, 
joe di maggio, 
magazines in with the onions . . . 


an old Ford picked me up 
45 minutes later 
and, this time, 
I kept my mouth 
shut.
Source
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