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"My Father"
was a truly amazing man he pretended to be rich even though we lived on beans and mush and weenies when we sat down to eat, he said, "not everybody can eat like this."
and because he wanted to be rich or because he actually thought he was rich he always voted Republican and he voted for Hoover against Roosevelt and he lost and then he voted for Alf Landon against Roosevelt and he lost again saying, "I don't know what this world is coming to, now we've got that god damned Red in there again and the Russians will be in our backyard next!"
I think it was my father who made me decide to become a bum. I decided that if a man like that wants to be rich then I want to be poor.
and I became a bum. I lived on nickles and dimes and in cheap rooms and on park benches. I thought maybe the bums knew something.
but I found out that most of the bums wanted to be rich too. they had just failed at that.
so caught between my father and the bums I had no place to go and I went there fast and slow. never voted Republican never voted.
buried him like an oddity of the earth like a hundred thousand oddities like millions of other oddities, wasted.
"The Great Slob"
I was always a natural slob I liked to lay upon the bed in undershirt (stained, of course) (and with cigarette holes) shoes off beerbottle in hand trying to shake off a difficult night, say with a woman still around walking the floor complaining about this and that, andI'd work up a belch and say, "HEY, YOU DON'T LIKE IT? THEN GET YOUR ASS OUT OF HERE!"
I really loved myself, I really loved my slob- self, and they seemed to also: always leaving but almost always coming back.
"The Blackbirds are Rough Today"
lonely as a dry and used orchard spread over the earth for use and surrender.
shot down like an ex-pug selling dailies on the corner.
taken by tears like an aging chorus girl who has gotten her last check.
a hanky is in order your lord your worship.
the blackbirds are rough today like ingrown toenails in an overnight jail— wine wine whine, the blackbirds run around and fly around harping about Spanish melodies and bones.
and everywhere is nowhere— the dream is as bad as flapjacks and flat tires:
why do we go on with our minds and pockets full of dust like a bad boy just out of school— you tell me, you who were a hero in some revolution you who teach children you who drink with calmness you who own large homes and walk in gardens you who have killed a man and own a beautiful wife you tell me why I am on fire like old dry garbage.
we might surely have some interesting correspondence. it will keep the mailman busy. and the butterflies and ants and bridges and cemeteries the rocket-makers and dogs and garage mechanics will still go on a while until we run out of stamps and/or ideas.
don't be ashamed of anything; I guess God meant it all like locks on doors.
"Young in New Orleans"
starving there, sitting around the bars, and at night walking the streets for hours, the moonlight always seemed fake to me, maybe it was, and in the French Quarter I watched the horses and buggies going by, everybody sitting high in the open carriages, the black driver, and in back the man and the woman, usually young and always white. and I was always white. and hardly charmed by the world. New Orleans was a place to hide. I could piss away my life, unmolested. except for the rats. the rats in my dark small room very much resented sharing it with me. they were large and fearless and stared at me with eyes that spoke an unblinking death.
women were beyond me. they saw something depraved. there was one waitress a little older than I, she rather smiled, lingered when she brought my coffee.
that was plenty for me, that was enough.
there was something about that city, though it didn't let me feel guilty that I had no feeling for the things so many others needed. it let me alone.
sitting up in my bed the lights out, hearing the outside sounds, lifting my cheap bottle of wine, letting the warmth of the grape enter me as I heard the rats moving about the room, I preferred them to humans.
being lost, being crazy maybe is not so bad if you can be that way undisturbed.
New Orleans gave me that. nobody ever called my name.
no telephone, no car, no job, no anything.
me and the rats and my youth, one time, that time I knew even through the nothingness, it was a celebration of something not to do but only know.
—Charles Bukowski
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