Bukowski no. 22

It was past last call but the bartender was still serving me,
either because I tipped well or because she liked my company.
I was having a vaguely academic discussion about drugs
with a woman who wore a string of pearls across her forehead
in imitation of a long-discarded style.
I do not think the pearls were real but I have been wrong before.

She was asking me questions I knew the answers to,
and I was fond of her because of it.

The conversation shifted to be about her life, which she spoke of
for a minute or two before suddenly asking me
“Have you ever been in love?”
as I lifted up a glass of whiskey and twisted it in the light.

If a car had been on fire in the parking lot
I would not have been able to look away.
I ordered four more whiskeys and I told her
“yes”
and the next morning I walked the three miles to work
and before I tried to sell anything over the phone
I went to a vending machine to buy a Sprite
and the next thing I knew my cheek was on the cool tile
and I saw the world like a mouse would.
I checked to make sure I wasn’t bleeding and I wasn’t
and soon people rushed over to me.
Someone took me home so that they wouldn’t have to fire me
and as soon as the bar opened at three in the afternoon
I went there again.

A History of Madness 7

I stood on a slab of concrete
killing ants.

When I was a younger man I knew their Latin name,
I could define their mandibles and thoraxes
but now I crush them
by the hundred beneath my heel.

I believe, though I do not know why,
that their dying sends a chemical signal to the others.
I see them shy away from a fallen friend,
but what does an ant know of death
and why should it be feared?

There were two carrying a corpse larger than they were,
the others scurried past them but they walked crab-legged
across the concrete slab without getting anywhere.
I chose one and smashed him right through the brain.
The other struggled, unaware that his comrade had died—
he carried the worm first one way and then the other,
he tangled it in the fallen leaves, he abandoned it
but none of the other hundreds took up that burden.
He waited for about fourteen seconds then walked along the line the other ants had made.

I watched him, my eyes focused on his black armor,
and I thought of her
so small against my chest,
her black hair flowing all around
while the devil told me his daughter’s name.

I let the ant go into the hive after he tore up a piece of a butterfly
and placed it in his jaws before beginning the long walk home.
I will kill him tomorrow.

Magicicada

She watched her father at the bar. She was about fourteen and already knew more about men than anyone could teach her. He does not talk to the women but he’ll talk to anyone else. Two boys are on the bar-stools beside her, but they do not stare at his glass of beer like she does, they do not count the refills with growing dread. Still she was not broken, only bored. Years later I was reading certain short stories of Guy de Maupassant until the barmaid mentioned that she had never read him. I wrote my name and address inside the book’s cover and handed it over. I paid my bill and said to her “Never let a man tell you that you are a pearl.” She did not understand and I did not understand and I walked home and went to sleep while the thirteen-year cicadas screamed into the night.

Bukowski no. 21

Not so long ago, my brother’s truck had a handful of fluid leaks, sometimes it wouldn’t start up, and one of the speakers wouldn’t work unless you punched the dashboard pretty hard and even then you’d only get stereo sound for a few minutes before it cut out again.

One day I asked him why he did not take the truck to a mechanic, and he replied 

“What good would that do? I’d pay someone to tell me that a long list of things were wrong, and that they could fix it if I had more money than I have.”
I laughed and mentioned that I had used the same rationale to avoid doctors, dentists, and therapists for the last five years.

Though I am not qualified to make this judgement, I think one of my wisdom teeth is dying. It does not feel the way that it once did and when I look (carefully in mirrors while pulling my cheek out of the way) it appears quite different from every other tooth in my skull. I suppose I will ignore the goddamn thing until the pain becomes unbearable—then I’ll pull it out with a pair of needlenose pliers.

A History of Madness 6

The present controls the accuracy of memory

more than the past ever could.

Often, in some shitty sports bar or cup of coffee

I have tried to summon the ghosts that kiss me to sleep at night.

Who knows what lies I have whispered to those shadows and plumes of steam?

I find that I feel guilty for any injustice that could be imagined,

even if it existed in fiction. The mere names of countries can fill me with dread,

knowing that at any moment my brain will begin a demonic litany:

Years, numbers of the slain, names of villages that are no longer villages.

And why should I bear the hate of mankind

upon my shoulders as if they were broad enough to hold it all?

I do not mean to suggest that I identify with the victims or their families.

I do not believe that I am capable of any such emotions,

but many times I have worn the bloody boots of monsters as I drift through sleep.

When I created the world I never meant for any of this to happen.

A History of Madness 5

A History of Madness 5 is spurious.

A History of Madness 4

I could hear the wine pouring through the phone into her glass
and she said

“I want a baby. Did you know babies can learn in the womb?
Isn’t that beautiful? They would learn so much from me
and if it didn’t turn out well
I could just give it up for adoption.”

And I laughed in the terrible way that I know and later
she said “I don’t even think you can be sweet to a woman,”
and I said “I can be,”
and she asked me how, so I told her
that I am half-decent at giving massages
and don’t mind giving my money away
and that I know how to brush hair and make breakfast and get water
and hold someone when their cramps start up
and I told her I wasn’t really such a bad guy as I pretended to be
and then I started crying or maybe I was crying all along.

Later she explained to me that she did not want to date me or fuck me
and all I could think to say was “Man, I never asked you.”