Read Online What Matters Most is How Well You Walk Through the Fire by Charles Bukowski - Free Book Online Page B

still
    chatting and talking and chatting
    and my lady looked up and said,
    â€œwell, how did you do?”
    and I said, “I had a lucky day.”
    and she said, “it’s about time.”
    and she was right.

hard times on Carlton Way
    somebody else was killed last night
    as I sit looking at 12 red dying roses.
    I do believe that this neighborhood must
    be tougher than Spanish Harlem in N.Y.
    I must get out.
    I’ve lived here 4 years without a scratch
    and in a sense my neighbors accept me.
    I’m just the old guy in a white t-shirt.
    but that won’t help me one day.
    I’m no longer broke.
    I could get out of here.
    I could better my living conditions.
    but I have an idea
    I’ll never get out of here.
    I like the nearby taco stand too much.
    I like the cheap bars and pawn shops and
    the roving insane
    who sleep on our bus stop benches
    or in the bushes
    and raid the Goodwill container
    for clothing.
    I feel a bond with these
    people.
    I was once like them even though I
    now am a published writer with some
    minor success.
    somebody else was killed last night
    in this neighborhood
    almost under my window.
    I’m sentimental:
    even though the roses are
    almost dead
    somebody brought them to me
    and must I finally throw them
    away?
    another death last night
    another death
    the poor kill the poor.
    I’ve got to get out of this
    neighborhood
    not for the good of my poetry
    but for a reasonable chance at
    old age.
    as I write this
    the giant who lives in the back
    who wears a striped black-and-yellow
    t-shirt as big as a tent
    (he looks like a huge bumblebee at
    six-foot-four and 290 pounds)
    walks past my window and claws
    the screen.
    â€œmercy, my friend,” I ask.
    â€œthere’ll be no mercy,” he says, turning back
    to his tiny flat.
    the 12 dead roses look at me.

we needed him
    so big, with a cigar sticking out of his mouth
    he listened patiently to the people
    to the old women in the neighborhood who told him
    about their arthritis and their constipation
    or about the peeping toms who looked in at their
    wrinkled bodies at night
    breathing heavily outside the blinds.
    he had patience with people
    he knew something as he sat at the taco stand and
    listened to the cokeheads and the meth-heads
    and the ugly whores
    who then listened carefully to him
    he was the neighborhood
    he was Hollywood and Western
    even the pimps with their switchblades stood aside
    when he walked by.
    then it happened without warning: he began to get
    thin. he came to my door and asked if I had some
    oranges. he sat in my chair looking weak and sad,
    he seemed about to cry. “I don’t know what’s wrong.
    I can’t eat. I puke it all up.” I told him to go
    to the doctors. he went to the Vet’s Hospital, he went
    to Queen of Angels, he went to Hollywood
    Presbyterian. he went to other stranger places.
    I went to see him the other day. he had moved out of
    the neighborhood. he sat in a chair. discarded
    milk cartons were on the floor, empty beef stew
    cans, empty Kentucky Colonel boxes, bags of
    uneaten french fries and the stale stink.
    â€œyou need a good diagnostician,” I said.”
    â€œit’s no use,” he said.
    â€œkeep trying…”
    â€œI’ve found,” he said, “that I can drink buttermilk
    and it stays down.”
    we talked some more and then I left.
    now the old women ask me, “where is he? where is your
    friend?”
    I don’t think he wants to see them.
    I’ll always remember him when there was trouble
    around this place
    running out of his apartment in back
    himself large and confident
    in the moonlight, long cigar in mouth
    ready to right what needed to be set
    right.
    now it’s simple and clear
    that he waits as alone as a man can get.
    even the devil has company, you know.
    the old ladies stay inside
    the taco stand has lost its lure
    and when the police helicopter circles
    over us in the night
    and the