Charles Bukowski - Mockingbird Wish Me Luck

dying for a beer dying for and of life on a windy afternoon in Hollywood listening to symphony music from my little red radio on the floor. a friend said, all ya gotta do is go out on the sidewalk and lay down somebody will pick you up somebody will take care of you. I look out the window at the sidewalk I see something walking on the sidewalk she wouldnt lay down there, only in special places for special people with special $$$$ and special ways while I am dying for a beer on a windy afternoon in Hollywood, nothing like a beautiful broad dragging it past you on the sidewalk moving it past your famished window shes dressed in the finest cloth she doesnt care what you say how you look what you do as long as you do not get in her way, and it must be that she doesnt shit or have blood she must be a cloud, friend, the way she floats past us. I am too sick to lay down the sidewalks frighten me the whole damned city frightens me, what I will become what I have become frightens me. ah, the bravado is gone the big run through center is gone on a windy afternoon in Hollywood my radio cracks and spits its dirty music through a floor full of empty beerbottles. the siren fades into the cardboard mountains and I look out the window again as the clasped fist of boiling cloud comes down the wind shakes the plants outside I wait for evening I wait for night I wait sitting in a chair by the window the cook drops in the live red-pink salty rough-tit crab and the game works on come get me.

they stop out front here it looks as if the car is on fire the smoke blazes blue from the hood and exhaust the motor sounds like cannon shots the car humps wildly one guy gets out, Jesus, he says, he takes a long drink from a canvas water bag and gives the car an eerie look. the other guy gets out and looks at the car, Jesus, he says, and he takes a drink from a pint of whiskey, then passes the bottle to his friend. they both stand and look at the car, one holding the whiskey, the other the water bag. they are not dressed in conventional hippie garb but in natural old clothes faded, dirty and torn. a butterfly goes past my window and they get back in the car and it bucks off in low like a rodeo bronc they are both laughing and one has the bottle tilted the butterfly is gone and outside there is a globe of smoke 40 feet in circumference. first human beings Ive seen in Los Angeles in 15 years.

he used to sell papers in front: Get your winners! Get rich on a dime! and about the 3rd or 4th race youd see him rolling in on his rotten board with roller skates underneath. hed propel himself along on his hands; he just had small stumps for legs and the rims of the skate wheels were worn off. you could see inside the wheels and they would wobble something awful shooting and flashing imperialistic sparks! he moved faster than anybody, rolled cigarette dangling, you could hear him coming god o mighty, what was that? the new ones asked. he was the worlds greatest loser but he never gave up wheeling toward the 2 dollar window screaming: ITS THE 4 HORSE, YOU FOOLS! HOW THE HELL YA GONNA BEAT THE 4? up on the board the 4 would be reading 60 to one. he was the worlds greatest loser but he never gave up wheeling toward the 2 dollar window screaming: ITS THE 4 HORSE, YOU FOOLS! HOW THE HELL YA GONNA BEAT THE 4? up on the board the 4 would be reading 60 to one.

I never heard him pick a winner. they say he slept in the bushes. I guess thats where he died. hes not around any more. there was the big fat blonde whore who kept touching him for luck, and laughing. the whore is gone too. the whore is gone too.

I guess nothing ever works for us. were fools, of course bucking the inside plus a 15 percent take, but how are you going to tell a dreamer theres a 15 percent take on the dream? hell just laugh and say, is that all? I miss those sparks.

Sunday.

I am eating a grapefruit. church is over at the Russian Orthodox to the west. she is dark of Eastern descent, large brown eyes look up from the Bible then down. a small red and black Bible, and as she reads her legs keep moving, moving, she is doing a slow rhythmic dance reading the Bible long gold earrings; 2 gold bracelets on each arm, and its a mini- suit , I suppose, the cloth hugs her body, the lightest of tans is that cloth, she twists this way and that, long young legs warm in the sun there is no escaping her being there is no desire to my radio is playing symphonic music that she cannot hear but her movements coincide exactly to the rhythms of the symphony she is dark, she is dark she is reading about God. I am God. and in the morning and in the days that followed the screws, the sparrows, the shivs, the dips, the strongarms, the looneys, the hustlers, the freaks, the discarded dream-presidents of America, the cook, in fact, all my critics, they all called me Mr. and in the morning and in the days that followed the screws, the sparrows, the shivs, the dips, the strongarms, the looneys, the hustlers, the freaks, the discarded dream-presidents of America, the cook, in fact, all my critics, they all called me Mr.

Bukowski, a kind of fleeting immortality I guess, but real as hogs heads or dead flowers, and the force of it got to me there: Mr. Bukowski, ace-crapshooter, money-man in a world of almost no money. immortality. I didnt recite them Shelley, no, and everything came to me after lights out: slim-hipped boys I didnt want steaks and ice cream and cigars which I did want, and shaving cream, new razorblades, the latest copy of the New Yorker . what greater immortality than Heaven in Hell, and I continued to enjoy it until they threw me out on the streets back to my typewriter, innocent, lazy, frightened and mortal again.