Mockingbird Wish Me Luck (2 page)

 

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 I’ve 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

you’d see him rolling in on his rotten board

with roller skates underneath.

he’d 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 world’s greatest loser

but he never gave up

wheeling toward the 2 dollar window screaming:

“IT’S 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 that’s where he

died. he’s not around any

more.

 

 

there was the big fat blonde whore

who kept touching him for luck, and

laughing.

 

 

nobody had any luck. the whore is gone

too.

 

 

I guess nothing ever works for us. we’re fools, of course—

bucking the inside plus a 15 percent take,

but how are you going to tell a dreamer

there’s a 15 percent take on the

dream? he’ll just laugh and say,

is that all?

 

 

I miss those

sparks.

 

 

we do not accept unsolicited manuscripts

the garbageman said

dropping to one knee

and blowing the head away from the priest’s

neck

and as the green bus stopped at the corner

a cripple got out and a witch and a little girl

with a flower.

we do not accept unsolicited manuscripts

the garbageman said

and he shot the cripple and the witch

but did not fire at the little girl,

then he ran down an alley

and climbed up on the roof of a garage,

reloaded

as the Goodyear Blimp sailed overhead

he pumped 6 shots, saying,

here are some unsolicited manuscripts,

and the blimp wavered, paused,

then began to nose down as 2 men parachuted

out

saying Hail Marys.

8 squad cars entered the area

and began to surround the garage

and the garbageman said,

we do not accept unsolicited manuscripts

and he got one cop,

and then they really began firing.

the garbageman stood up in the center of the sky,

threw his loaded rifle at them

and all the shells

and he said,

we do not accept unsolicited manuscripts,

and the first bullet got him in the chest,

spun him,

another in the back, one in the neck, and

he fell on top of the garage roof,

the blood rolling out on the tarpaper,

blood like syrup blood like honey blood like blood,

he said,

Holy Mary, we do not accept…

 

 

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 it’s 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.

 

 

we shot craps in the exercise yard while the

dummies played ball with a torn-up shirt

wound into a ball

once or twice a day we had to break it up

under a tommy gun from the tower—

some blank-faced screw pointing it at

us, but,

by god, through it we somehow played

and through some skill and

luck

I soon had all the money in the yard.

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 didn’t recite them Shelley, no,

and everything came to me after lights out:

slim-hipped boys I didn’t 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.

 

 

a John F. Kennedy flower knocks upon my door and is

shot through the neck;

the gladiolas gather by the dozens around the tip of

India

dripping into Ceylon;

dozens of oysters read Germaine Greer.

 

 

meanwhile, I itch from the slush of the Philippines

to the eye of the minnow

the minnow being eaten by the cumulative dreams of

Simon Bolivar. O,

freedom from the limitation of angular distance would be

delicious.

war is perfect,

the solid way drips and leaks,

Schopenhauer laughed for 72 years,

and I was told by a very small man in a New York City

pawnshop

one afternoon:

“Christ got more attention than I did

but I went further on less…”

 

 

well, the distance between 5 points is the same as the

distance between 3 points is the same as the distance

between one point:

 

 

it is all as cordial as a bonbon:

all this that we are wrapped

in:

 

 

eunuchs are more exact than sleep

 

 

the postage stamp is mad, Indiana is ridiculous

 

 

the chameleon is the last walking flower.

 

 

I drive to the beach at night

in the winter

and sit and look at the burned-down amusement pier

wonder why they just let it sit there

in the water.

I want it out of there,

blown-up,

vanished,

erased;

that pier should no longer sit there

with madmen sleeping inside

the burned-out guts of the funhouse…

it’s awful, I say, blow the damn thing up,

get it out of my eyes,

that tombstone in the sea.

 

 

the madmen can find other holes

to crawl into.

I used to walk that pier when I was 8

years old.

 

 

how can they go on, you see them

sitting in old doorways

with dirty stained caps and thick clothes and

no place to go;

heads bent down, arms on

knees they wait.

or they stand in front of the Mission

700 of them

quiet as oxen

waiting to be let into the chapel

where they will sleep upright on the hard benches

leaning against each other

snoring and

dreaming;

men

without.

 

 

in New York City

where it gets colder

and they are hunted by their own

kind, these men often crawl under car radiators,

drink the anti-freeze,

get warm and grateful for some minutes, then

die.

 

 

but that is an older

culture and a wiser

one;

here they scratch and

wait,

while on Sunset Boulevard the

hippies and yippies

hitchhike in

$50

boots.

 

 

out in front of the Mission I heard one guy say to

another:

“John Wayne won it.”

“Won what?” said the other guy

tossing the last of his rolled cigarette into the

street.

 

 

I thought that was

rather good.

 

 

Filet’s Rule, the 12 horse around 12 to one,

that was the first race, they had a different

janitor in the men’s room, and I didn’t have the

2nd race either, Bold Courage, around 19 to one,

my Kentucky Lark got a dead ride from the boy

who stood up in the saddle all the way, which is

hardly a way to ride a 2 to one shot, and I

got a roast beef sandwich for $1.10, if you’re going

to go broke you might as well eat well, and in the

3rd Grandby had to pull up to avoid Factional who

came over on him, the stewards argued for 15

minutes before allowing it to stand, and there I was

52 dollars down and the mountains were dry,

life was hardly worthwhile, and in the 4th, Aberion

Bob I think was the play but I went to Misty Repose

who got locked in the one hole at 6 furlongs and had

nothing left when he swung out. A. Bob won handily and

I was 67 dollars down, the coffee was a quarter and

the coffee girl looked like an x-prostitute, which

she probably wasn’t, and then in the 5th, Christie’s

Star took it at thirteen to one and I was 3rd, I think

with Bold Street, I can’t beat those maiden races, and

I was 77 dollars down and bought a hot dog which cost

50 cents and was gone in 2 bites, and then I had to

go 20 win on Nearbrook, which won by 6 or 7 lengths

but at 4 to 5, so I am still 65 dollars down and the

mountains are still dry, but nobody is talking to me

or bothering me, there’s a chance. I put 15 win on

Moving Express and 5 win on Choctaw Charlie and C.C.

comes in at eight to one, and then I am only 37 dollars

down, and we have the 8th race, Manta at 3 to 5

was a rather obvious bet, I looked for something to beat

her and came up with Hollywood Gossip. Manta went

on by, but I had been afraid of that and had only gone

5 win, I was 42 dollars down with one race to go, and

I put 20 win on Vesperal and ten win on Cedar Cross,

and Cedar Cross ran dead and Vesperal went wire to

wire, so that was 72 down before the race, and

you take the 84 dollar pay off and you’ve got 12 dollars

profit. There you go: behind for 8 races, winner in

the 9th. Nothing big, but bankroll intact. This comes,

my friends, out of years of training. There are thorough-

bred horses and thoroughbred bettors. What you do is

stay with your plays and let them come to you. Loving

a woman is the same way, or loving life. You’ve

got to work a bit for it. In a day or 2 I’ll go again

and get off better. You’ll see me that night having a

quiet drink at the track bar as the losers run for the

parking lot. Don’t talk to me or bother me and I won’t

bother you. All right?