Читать книгу The Pleasures of the Damned - Charles Bukowski - Страница 32

it is not much

it is not much

I suppose like others

I have come through fire and sword,

love gone wrong,

head-on crashes, drunk at sea,

and I have listened to the simple sound of water running

in tubs

and wished to drown

but simply couldn’t bear the others

carrying my body down three flights of stairs

to the round mouths of curious biddies;

the psyche has been burned

and left us senseless,

the world has been darker than lights out

in a closet full of hungry bats,

and the whiskey and wine entered our veins

when blood was too weak to carry on;

and it will happen to others,

and our few good times will be rare

because we have a critical sense

and are not easy to fool with laughter;

small gnats crawl our screen

but we see through

to a wasted landscape

and let them have their moment;

we only asked for leopards to guard

our thinning dreams.

I once lay in a

white hospital

for the dying and the dying

self, where some god pissed a rain of

reason to make things grow

only to die, where on my knees

I prayed for LIGHT,

I prayed for 1*i*g*h*t,

and praying

crawled like a blind slug into the

web

where threads of wind stuck against my mind

and I died of pity

for Man, for myself,

on a cross without nails,

watching in fear as

the pig belches in his sty, farts,

blinks and eats.