Charles Bukowski - The Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over the Hills

I shot off his left ear then his right, and then tore off his belt buckle with hot lead, and then I shot off everything that counts and when he bent over to pick up his drawers and his marbles (poor critter) I fixed it so he wouldnt have to straighten up no more. Ho Hum. I went in for a fast snort and one guy seemed to be looking at me sideways, and thats how he died sideways, lookin at me and clutchin for his marbles. Sight o blood made me kinda hungry. Had a ham sandwich. Played a couple of sentimental songs Shot out all the lights and strolled outside.

Didnt seem to be no one around so I shot my horse (poor critter). Then I saw the Sheerf a standin at the end a the road and he was shakin like he had the Saint Vitus dance; it was a real sorrowful sight so I slowed him to a quiver with the first slug and mercifully stiffened him with the second. Then I laid on my back awhile and I shot out the stars one by one and then I shot out the moon and then I walked around and shot out every light in town, and pretty soon it began to get dark real dark the way I like it; just cant stand to sleep with no light shinin on my face. I laid down and dreamt I was a little boy again a playin with my toy six-shooter and winnin all the marble games, and when I woke up my guns was gone and I was all bound hand and foot just like somebody was scared a me and they was slippin a noose around my ugly neck just as if they meant to hang me, and some guy was pinnin a real pretty sign on my shirt: theres a law for you and a law for me and a law that hangs from the foot of a tree. Well, pretty poetry always did make my eyes water and can you believe it all the women was cryin and though they was moanin other mens names I just know they was cryin for me (poor critters) and though Id slept with all a them, Id forgotten in all the big excitement to tell em my name and all the men looked angry but I guess it was because the kids was all being impolite and a throwin tin cans at me, but I told em not to worry because their aim was bad anyhow not a boy there looked like hed turn into a man 90% homosexuals, the lot of them, and some guy shouted lets send him to hell! and with a jerk I was dancin my last dance, but I swung out wide and spit in the bartenders eye and stared down into Nellie Adams breasts, and my mouth watered again.

There are sketches on the walls of men and women and ducks, and outside a large green bus swerves through traffic like insanity sprung from a waving line; Turgenev, Turgenev, says the radio, and Jane Austen, Jane Austen, too. I am going to do her portrait on the 28th, while you are at work. He is just this edge of fat and he walks constantly, he fritters; they have him; they are eating him hollow like a webbed fly, and his eyes are red-suckled with anger-fear. Daumier. Daumier.

Rue Transnonain, le 15 Avril, 1843. (Lithograph.) Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale. She has a face unlike that of any woman I have ever known. What is it? A love affair? Silly. I cant love a woman. Besides, shes pregnant.

I can painta flower eaten by a snake; that sunlight is a lie; and that markets smell of shoes and naked boys clothed, and under everything some river, some beat, some twist that clambers along the edge of my temple and bites nip-dizzy men drive cars and paint their houses, but they are mad; men sit in barber chairs; buy hats. Corot. Recollection of Mortefontaine. Paris, Louvre. I must write Kaiser, though I think hes a homosexual. Are you still reading Freud? Page 299.

She made a little hat and he fastened two snaps under one arm, reaching up from the bed like a long feeler from the snail, and she went to church, and he thought now I hve time and the dog. About church: the trouble with a mask is it never changes. So rude the flowers that grow and do not grow beautiful. So magic the chair on the patio that does not hold legs and belly and arm and neck and mouth that bites into the wind like the end of a tunnel. He turned in bed and thought: I am searching for some segment in the air. It floats about the peoples heads.

When it rains on the trees it sits between the branches warmer and more blood-real than the dove. Orozco. Christ Destroying the Cross. Hanover, Dartmouth College, Baker Library. He burned away in sleep. Paul, St. Paul, St.

Louis, Atlanta, Memphis, New Orleans, they came down thru the marching, thru balloons and popcorn, past drugstores and blondes and whirling cats, they came down thru the marching scaring the goats and the kids in the fields, banging against the minds of the sick in their hot beds, and down in the cellar I got out the colt. I ripped a hole in the screen for better vision and when the legs came walking by on top of my head, I got a colonel, a major and 3 lieutenants before the band stopped playing; and now its like a war, uniforms everywhere, behind cars and brush, and plang plang plang my cellar is all fireworks, and I fire back, the colt as hot as a baked potato, I fire back and sing sing, Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord; He is tramping out the vintage

these things that we support most well have nothing to do with us, and we do with them out of of boredom or fear or money or cracked intelligence; our circle and our candle of light being small, so small we cannot bear it, we heave out with Idea and lose the Center: all wax without the wick, and we see names that once meant wisdom, like signs into ghost towns, and only the graves are real.