The Last Night of the Earth Poems (22 page)
Read The Last Night of the Earth Poems Online
Authors: Charles Bukowski
I was a bum in San Francisco but once managed
to go to a symphony concert along with the well-dressed
people
and the music was good but something about the
audience was not
and something about the orchestra
and the conductor was
not,
although the building was fine and the
acoustics perfect
I preferred to listen to the music alone
on my radio
and afterwards I did go back to my room and I
turned on the radio but
then there was a pounding on the wall:
“SHUT THAT GOD-DAMNED THING OFF!”
there was a soldier in the next room
living with his wife
and he would soon be going over there to protect
me from Hitler so
I snapped the radio off and then heard his
wife say, “you shouldn’t have done that.”
and the soldier said, “FUCK THAT GUY!”
which I thought was a very nice thing for him
to tell his wife to do.
of course,
she never did.
anyhow, I never went to another live concert
and that night I listened to the radio very
quietly, my ear pressed to the
speaker.
war has its price and peace never lasts and
millions of young men everywhere would die
and as I listened to the classical music I
heard them making love, desperately and
mournfully, through Shostakovich, Brahms,
Mozart, through crescendo and climax,
and through the shared
wall of our darkness.
Fred, they called him.
he always sat at the end of the
bar
near the doorway
and he was always there
from opening to
closing.
he was there more than
I was,
which is saying
something.
he never talked to
anybody.
he just sat there
drinking his glasses of
draft beer.
he looked straight ahead
right across the bar
but he never looked at
anybody.
and there’s one other
thing.
he got up
now and then
and went to the
jukebox
and he always played the
same record:
Bonaparte’s Retreat
.
he played that song
all day and all night
long.
it was his song,
all right.
he never got tired
of it.
and when his draft beers
really got to him
he’d get up and play
Bonaparte’s Retreat
6 or 7 times
running.
nobody knew who he was or
how he made
it,
only that he lived in a
hotel room
across the street
and was the first customer
in the bar
each day
as it
opened.
I protested to Clyde
the bartender:
“listen, he’s driving us
crazy with that
thing.
eventually, all the other
records are
rotated
but
Bonaparte’s Retreat
remains.
what does it
mean?”
“it’s his song,”
said Clyde.
“don’t you have a
song?”
well, I came in about one
p.m. this day
and all the regulars
were there
but Fred wasn’t
there.
I ordered my drink,
then said out loud,
“hey, where’s
Fred?”
“Fred’s dead,”
said Clyde.
I looked down at the end
of the bar.
the sun came through the
blinds
but there was nobody
at the end
stool.
“you’re kidding me,”
I said, “Fred’s back in the
crapper or
something.”
“Fred didn’t come in this
morning,” said Clyde, “so
I went over to his
hotel room
and there he
was
stiff as a
cigar
box.”
everybody was very
quiet.
those guys never said
much
anyhow.
“well,” I said, “at least
we won’t have to hear
Bonaparte’s Retreat
anymore.”
nobody said
anything.
“is that record
still in the
juke?” I
asked.
“yes,” said
Clyde.
“well,” I said,
“I’m going to play it
one more time.”
I got up.
“hold it,”
said Clyde.
he came around the bar,
walked to the
juke
box.
he had a little key
in his
hand.
he put the key
in the juke
and opened
it.
he reached in
and pulled
out a
record.
then he took the
record and
broke it over
his
knee.
“it was his
song,” said
Clyde.
then he locked
the juke,
took the broken
record
behind the bar
and
trashed
it.
the name of the
bar
was
fewel’s
.it was at
Crenshaw and
Adams
and it’s not
there
anymore.
got a flat on the freeway
11 a.m.
going north
I got over to the
side
a small strip
on the freeway
edge
got out the jack
and the
spare
went to
work
the big rigs
going by
blasts of air and
noise
shaking everything
and to top it
all
it was
cold
an icy
wind
and I thought,
Jesus Christ, mercy,
can I do this
thing?
this would be a
good place to
go crazy and
chuck it all
in
but I got the
new wheel
on,
the old one
in the trunk
and then I was
back in the
car
I gunned it into
the swirl of
traffic
and there I was
like nothing
had ever
happened
moving along
with everybody
else
all of us
caught up in our
petty larcenies
and our
rotting
virtues
I gunned it
hard
made the fast
lane
pushed the
button
as my radio
antenna
sliced into the
sky.
you
wonder about
the time
when
you ran through women
like an open-field
maniac
with this total
disregard for
panties, dish towels,
photos
and all the other
accoutrements—
like
the tangling of
souls.
what
were you
trying to
do
trying to
catch up
with?
it was like a
hunt.
how many
could you
bag?
move
onto?
names
shoes
dresses
sheets, bathrooms
bedrooms, kitchens
back
rooms,
cafes,
pets,
names of pets,
names of children;
middle names, last
names, made-up
names.
you proved it was
easy.
you proved it
could be done
again and
again,
those legs held
high
behind most of
you.
or
they were on top
or
you were
behind
or
both
sideways
plus
other
inventions.
songs on radios.
parked cars.
telephone voices.
the pouring of
drinks.
the senseless
conversations.
now you know
you were nothing but a
fucking
dog,
a snail wrapped around
a snail—
sticky shells in the
sunlight, or in
the misty evenings,
or in the dark
dark.
you were
nature’s
idiot,
not proving but
being
proved.
not a man but a
plan
unfolding,
not thrusting but
being
pierced.
now
you know.
then
you thought you were
such a
clever devil
such a
cad
such a
man-bull
such a
bad boy
smiling over your
wine
planning your next
move
what a
waste of time
you were
you great
rider
you Attila of
the springs and
elsewhere
you could have
slept through it
all
and you would never
have been
missed
never would have
been
missed
at
all.
