Читать книгу The Pleasures of the Damned - Charles Bukowski - Страница 39

the angel who pushed his wheelchair

long ago he edited a little magazine

it was up in San Francisco

during the beat era

during the reading-poetry-with-jazz experiments

and I remember him because he never returned my manuscripts

even though I wrote him many letters,

humble letters, sane letters, and, at last, violent letters;

I’m told he jumped off a roof

because a woman wouldn’t love him.

no matter. when I saw him again

he was in a wheelchair and carried a wine bottle to piss in;

he wrote very delicate poetry

that I, naturally, couldn’t understand;

he autographed his book for me

(which he said I wouldn’t like)

and once at a party I threatened to punch him and

I was drunk and he wept and

I took pity and instead hit the next poet who walked by

on the head with his piss bottle; so,

we had an understanding after all.

he had this very thin and intense woman

pushing him about, she was his arms and legs and

maybe for a while

his heart.

it was almost commonplace

at poetry readings where he was scheduled to read

to see her swiftly rolling him in,

sometimes stopping by me, saying,

“I don’t see how we are going to get him up on the stage!” sometimes she did. often she did.

then she began writing poetry, I didn’t see much of it, but, somehow, I was glad for her. then she injured her neck while doing her yoga and she went on disability, and again I was glad for her, all the poets wanted to get disability insurance it was better than immortality.

I met her in the market one day

in the bread section, and she held my hands and

trembled all over

and I wondered if they ever had sex

those two. well, they had the muse anyhow

and she told me she was writing poetry and articles

but really more poetry, she was really writing a lot,

and that’s the last I saw of her

until one night somebody told me she’d o.d.’d

and I said, no, not her

and they said, yes, her.

it was a day or so later

sometime in the afternoon

I had to go to the Los Feliz post office

to mail some dirty stories to a sex mag.

coming back

outside a church

I saw these smiling creatures

so many of them smiling

the men with beards and long hair and wearing,

blue jeans

and most of the women blonde

with sunken cheeks and tiny grins,

and I thought, ah, a wedding,

a nice old-fashioned wedding,

and then I saw him on the sidewalk

in his wheelchair

tragic yet somehow calm

looking grayer, a profile like a tamed hawk,

and I knew it was her funeral,

she had really o.d.’d

and he did look tragic out there.

I do have feelings, you know.

maybe tonight I’ll try to read his book.