THE DAYS RUN AWAY LIKE WILD HORSES OVER THE HILLS
CHARLES BUKOWSKI
for
Jane
Table of Contents
I.
what a man I was
mine
freedom
as the sparrow
his wife, the painter
down thru the marching
these things
poem for personnel managers:
ice for the eagles
plea to a passing maid
waste basket
::: the old movies
peace
I taste the ashes of your death
for Jane: with all the love I had, which was not enough:—
Uruguay or hell
notice
for Jane
conversation on a telephone
ants crawl my drunken arms
a literary discussion
watermelon
for one I knew
when Hugo Wolf went mad—
riot
meanwhile
a poem is a city
the cat
hermit in the city
II.
all-yellow flowers
what seems to be the trouble, gentlemen?
spring swan
remains
the moment of truth
on the fire suicides of the buddhists
a division
conversation with a lady sipping a straight shot
the way it will happen inside a can of peaches
scene in a tent outside the cotton fields of Bakersfield:
night animal
on the train to Del Mar
I thought of ships, of armies, hanging on…
war and piece
18 cars full of men thinking of what could have been
the screw-game
a night of Mozart
sleeping woman
when you wait for the dawn to crawl through the screen like a burglar to take your life away—
poem while looking at an encyclopedia:
3 lovers
did I ever tell you?
song of my typewriter:
and the moon and the stars and the world:
the sharks
fag, fag, fag
Ivan the Terrible
the bones of my uncle
a last shot on two good horses
III.
no grounding in the classics
drawing of a band concert on a matchbox
bad night
down by the wings
fire
one for the old man
a drawer of fish
L. Beethoven, half-back
self-destruction
these mad windows that taste life and cut me if I go through them
birth
on getting famous and being asked: can you recite? can you be there at nine?
the great one:
yellow
::: the days run away like wild horses over the hills
worms
to hell with Robert Schumann
the seminar
one for Ging, with klux top
communists
family, family
poem for the death of an American serviceman in Vietnam:
guilt obsession behind a cloud of rockets:
even the sun was afraid
on a grant
finish
the underground
from the Dept. of English
footnote upon the construction of the masses:
kaakaa & other immolations
a problem of temperament
poetess
the miracle
Mongolian coasts shining in light
about the author
other books by charles bukowski
cover
copyright
about the publisher
get your name in LIGHTS
get it up there in
8½ x 11 mimeo
what a man I was
I shot off his left ear
then his right,
and then tore off his belt buckle
with hot lead,
and then
I shot off everything that counts
and when he bent over
to pick up his drawers
and his marbles
(poor critter)
I fixed it so he wouldn’t have
to straighten up
no more.
Ho Hum.
I went in for a fast snort
and one guy seemed
to be looking at me sideways,
and that’s how he died—
sideways,
lookin’ at me
and clutchin’
for his marbles.
Sight o’ blood made me kinda
hungry.
Had a ham sandwich.
Played a couple of sentimental songs…
Shot out all the lights
and strolled outside.
Didn’t seem to be no one around
so I shot my horse
(poor critter).
Then I saw the Sheerf
a standin’ at the end a’ the road
and he was shakin’
like he had the Saint Vitus dance;
it was a real sorrowful sight
so I slowed him to a quiver
with the first slug
and mercifully stiffened him
with the second.
Then I laid on my back awhile
and I shot out the stars one by one
and then
I shot out the moon
and then I walked around
and shot out every light
in town,
and pretty soon it began to get dark
real dark
the way I like it;
just can’t stand to sleep
with no light shinin’
on my face.
I laid down and dreamt
I was a little boy again
a playin’ with my toy six-shooter
and winnin’ all the marble games,
and when I woke up
my guns was gone
and I was all bound hand and foot
just like somebody
was scared a me
and they was slippin’
a noose around my ugly neck
just as if they
meant to hang me,
and some guy was pinnin’
a real pretty sign
on my shirt:
there’s a law for you
and a law for me
and a law that hangs
from the foot of a tree.
Well, pretty poetry always did
make my eyes water
and can you believe it
all the women was cryin’
and though they was moanin’
other men’s names
I just know they was cryin’
for me (poor critters)
and though I’d slept with all a them,
I’d forgotten
in all the big excitement
to tell ’em my name
and all the men looked angry
but I guess it was because the kids
was all being impolite
and a throwin’ tin cans at me,
but I told ’em not to worry
because their aim was bad anyhow
not a boy there looked like he’d turn
into a man—
90% homosexuals, the lot of them,
and some guy shouted
“let’s sen
d him to hell!”
and with a jerk I was dancin’
my last dance,
but I swung out wide
and spit in the bartender’s eye
and stared down
into Nellie Adam’s breasts,
and my mouth watered again.
mine
She lays like a lump
I can feel the great empty mountain
of her head.
But she is alive. She yawns and
scratches her nose and
pulls up the cover.
Soon I will kiss her goodnight
and we will sleep.
and far away is Scotland
and under the ground the
gophers run.
I hear engines in the night
and through the sky a white
hand whirls:
good night, dear, goodnight.
freedom
he drank wine all night the night of the
28th. and he kept thinking of her:
the way she walked and talked and loved
the way she told him things that seemed true
but were not, and he knew the color of each
of her dresses
and her shoes—he knew the stock and curve of
each heel
as well as the leg shaped by it.
and she was out again when he came home, and
she’d come back with the special stink again,
and she did
she came in at 3 a.m. in the morning
filthy like a dung-eating swine
and
he took out the butcher knife
and she screamed
backing into the roominghouse wall
still pretty somehow
in spite of love’s reek
and he finished the glass of wine.
that yellow dress
his favorite
and she screamed again.
and he took up the knife
and unhooked his belt
and tore away the cloth before her
and cut off his balls.
and carried them in his hands
like apricots
and flushed them down the
toilet bowl
and she kept screaming
as the room became red
GOD O GOD!
WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?
and he sat there holding 3 towels
between his legs
not caring now whether she left or
stayed
wore yellow or green or
anything at all.
and one hand holding and one hand
lifting he poured
another wine.
as the sparrow
To give life you must take life,
and as our grief falls flat and hollow
upon the billion-blooded sea
I pass upon serious inward-breaking shoals rimmed
with white-legged, white-bellied rotting creatures
lengthily dead and rioting against surrounding scenes.
Dear child, I only did to you what the sparrow
did to you; I am old when it is fashionable to be
young; I cry when it is fashionable to laugh.
I hated you when it would have taken less courage
to love.
his wife, the painter
There are sketches on the walls of men and women and ducks,
and outside a large green bus swerves through traffic like
insanity sprung from a waving line; Turgenev, Turgenev,
says the radio, and Jane Austen, Jane Austen, too.
“I am going to do her portrait on the 28th, while you are
at work.”
He is just this edge of fat and he walks constantly, he
fritters; they have him; they are eating him hollow like
a webbed fly, and his eyes are red-suckled with anger-fear.
He feels the hatred and discard of the world, sharper than
his razor, and his gut-feel hangs like a wet polyp; and he
self-decisions himself defeated trying to shake his
hung beard from razor in water (like life), not warm enough.
Daumier. Rue Transnonain, le 15 Avril, 1843. (Lithograph.)
Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale.
“She has a face unlike that of any woman I have ever known.”
“What is it? A love affair?”
“Silly. I can’t love a woman. Besides, she’s pregnant.”
I can paint—a flower eaten by a snake; that sunlight is a
lie; and that markets smell of shoes and naked boys clothed,
and under everything some river, some beat, some twist that
clambers along the edge of my temple and bites nip-dizzy…
men drive cars and paint their houses,
but they are mad; men sit in barber chairs; buy hats.
Corot. Recollection of Mortefontaine.
Paris, Louvre.
“I must write Kaiser, though I think he’s a homosexual.”
“Are you still reading Freud?”
“Page 299.”
She made a little hat and he fastened two snaps under one
arm, reaching up from the bed like a long feeler from the
snail, and she went to church, and he thought now I h’ve
time and the dog.
About church: the trouble with a mask is it
never changes.
So rude the flowers that grow and do not grow beautiful.
So magic the chair on the patio that does not hold legs
and belly and arm and neck and mouth that bites into the
wind like the end of a tunnel.
He turned in bed and thought: I am searching for some
segment in the air. It floats about the people’s heads.
When it rains on the trees it sits between the branches
warmer and more blood-real than the dove.
Orozco. Christ Destroying the Cross.
Hanover, Dartmouth College, Baker Library.
He burned away in sleep.
down thru the marching
they came down thru the marching,
down thru St. Paul, St. Louis, Atlanta,
Memphis, New Orleans, they came
down thru the marching, thru
balloons and popcorn, past drugstores
and blondes and whirling cats,
they came down thru the marching
scaring the goats and the kids in
the fields, banging against the minds
of the sick in their hot beds, and
down in the cellar I got out the
colt. I ripped a hole in the screen
for better vision and when the legs
came walking by on top of my head,
I got a colonel, a major and 3 lieutenants