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wha’, what did you expect? a schoolboy lisping Donne? or
some more practical lover filling you with the stench of Life?
I’m a fool and no gentleman: I walked the Brooklyn Bridge
with Crane in pajamas, but suicide fails as you get older:
there’s less and less to kill.
 
so among the skin and lambchops, the sick neckties of
other closets, I scheme schemes round as oranges
filled with the music of my crafty mumbling.
 
Brooke? no. I am a monkey with an olive lost in the
circus sand of your laughter, circus apes, circus tigers,
circus madmen of finance screwing their secretaries before
the 5:15...and what did you expect?
 
a pink-cheek dribbling Picasso colors on your dry brain?
 
so, the room was blue with the smoke of my boiling, hell,
a senseless sea
and I fell fingers sotted to the last pinch of your juice,
fell through the thorned vines cursing your name,
no gentleman
no gentleman,
kissed-off love like snake-bite,
the veranda buzzed with flies, buzzed with flies
and lies, and your red mouth screamed,
your lamps screamed
breaking like overdue bills:
 
DRUNK! DRUNK AGAIN!
O, YOU IDIOT!
 
so, Yeats, Keats, teats... nothing but an apricot!
 
wha’, what happened to Spain? my boy Lorca?
the revolution? must join the brigade!
lemme outa here!
Other works by Charles Bukowski...



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