Read Online The Last Night of the Earth Poems by Charles Bukowski - Free Book Online Page B

I’m
    dying
    as they spoon succotash and
    noodles
    into a skull
    past
    caring.
 
    that I have known the dead and now I’m
    dying
    in a world long ago
    gone
 
    leaving this is
    nothing.
    loving it was
    too.
 
    that I have known the dead and now I’m
    dying
    fingers thin to the
    bone,
    I offer no
    prayers.
 
    that I have known the dead and now I’m
    dying
 
    dying
    I have known the dead
 
    here on earth
    and elsewhere;
    alone now,
    alone then,
    alone.

are you drinking?
     
     
    washed-up, on shore, the old yellow notebook
    out again
    I write from the bed
    as I did last
    year.
 
    will see the doctor,
    Monday.
 
    “yes, doctor, weak legs, vertigo, head-aches
    and my back
    hurts.”
 
    “are you drinking?” he will ask.
    “are you getting your
    exercise, your
    vitamins?”
 
    I think that I am just ill
    with life, the same stale yet
    fluctuating
    factors.
 
    even at the track
    I watch the horses run by
    and it seems
    meaningless.
 
    I leave early after buying tickets on the
    remaining races.
 
    “taking off?” asks the mutuel
    clerk.
 
    “yes, it’s boring,”
    I tell him.
    “if you think it’s boring
    out there,” he tells me, “you oughta be
    back here.”
 
    so here I am
    propped against my pillows
    again
 
    just an old guy
    just an old writer
    with a yellow
    notebook.
 
    something is
    walking across the
    floor
    toward
    me.
 
    oh, it’s just
    my cat
 
    this
    time.

“D”
     
     
    the doctor is into collecting art
    and the magazines in his waiting room
    are Artsy
    have thick covers, glistening pages,
    and large color
    photos.
 
    the receptionist calls my name and
    I’m led into a waiting room with
    walls adorned with paintings
    and a chart of the human
    body.
 
    the doctor enters: “how are you
    doing?”
 
    not well, I think, or I wouldn’t
    be here.
 
    “now,” he goes on, “I am surprised
    by the biopsy, I didn’t expect
    this…”
 
    the doctor is a bald, well-scrubbed
    pink fellow.
 
    “I can almost always tell just by
    looking; this time, I
    missed…”
 
    he paused.
 
    “go on,” I say.
 
    “all right, let’s say there are
    4 types of cancer—A, B, C, D.
    well, you’ve got
    D.
    and if I had cancer I’d rather
    have your kind:
    D.”
 
    the doctor is in a tough business
    but the pay is
    good.
 
    “well,” he says, “we’ll just burn it off,
    o.k.?”
 
    I stretch out on the table and he has an
    instrument, I can feel the heat of it
    searing through the air
    but also
    I hear a whirring sound
    like a drill.
 
    “it’ll be over in a
    blink…”
 
    the small growth is just inside of
    the right nostril.
    the instrument touches it
    and
    the room is filled with the smell
    of burning flesh.
 
    then he stops.
 
    then he starts
    again.
 
    there is pain but it’s sharp and
    centered.
 
    he stops
    again.
    “now we are going to do it
    once more to
    clean it
    up.”
 
    he applies the instrument
    again.
    this time I feel the most
    pain.
 
    “there now…”
 
    it’s finished, no bandage needed,
    it’s
    cauterized.
 
    then I’m at the receptionist’s
    desk, she makes out a bill, I
    pay with my
    Mastercard, am out the door,
    down the stairway and there
    in the parking lot
    awaits
    my faithful automobile.
 
    It’s a day with a great deal of
    afternoon left
 
    I light a cigarette, start the
    car and
    get the hell
    out of there
    moving toward something
    else.

in the bottom
     
     
    in the bottom of the hour
    lurks
    the smoking claw
    the red train
    the letter home
    the deep-fried blues.
 
    in the bottom of the hour
    lurks
    the song you sang together
    the mouse in the attic
    the train window in the rain
    the whiskey breath on grandfather
    the coolness of the jail trustee.
 
    in the bottom of the hour
    lurks
    the famous gone quite stupid
    churches with peeling white paint
    lovers who chose hyenas
    schoolgirls giggling at atrophy
    the suicide oceans of night.
 
    in the bottom of the hour
    lurks
    button eyes in a cardboard face
    dead library books