Toca el piano borracho como un instrumento de percusión hasta que los dedos te empiecen a sangrar un poco by Charles Bukowski Read Free Book Online Page A

their little spoons,
    this big… happy oaf who’s never had a toothache
    has been sitting waiting the entrance of his elders
    (Granny who must put in her teeth, and Papa who is worried
    about the office, and Mama who isn’t exactly straightened out
    yet; and the young girl who loves with faith, anger and…
    purity) in they come
    and he throws out an arm
    and tilting his healthy… carcass madly back in the chair
    before the sun-pure kitchen curtains
    and the little lovable, struggling bungling group
    he says his great say,
    and in the balloon above his head are the words
    and by the twisted agony of the faces
    I am led to believe something has been said,
    but I read again
    looking carefully at the great happy spewing oaf’s face
    the brown great deepness of the eyes
    and the young girl’s teeth pushed out sour as if she had
    bitten into some lemon of truth,
    but there is something wrong
    there is some mistake
    because the sheet of paper I hold
    slants and angles in the electric light
    into the open dizziness of my dome
    and it huddles and curls itself into a puffy knot
    and pushes at the back of my eyes
    and pulls my nerves taut-thin from toe to hair-line
    I know then that
    the great spewing oaf has said
    nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing
    nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing
    nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing and now,
    on the rug
    under the chair
    I can see the comic section
    folded in half,
    I can see the black and white lines
    and some faces I don’t care to discern;
    but a thin illness overcomes me
    at the sight of this portion of paper
    and I look away
    and try not to think
    that much of our living life
    is true to the little paper faces
    that stare up from our feet
    and grin and jump and gesture,
    to be wrapped in tomorrow’s garbage
    and thrown away.

2 flies
    The flies are angry bits of
    life;
    why are they so angry?
    it seems they want more,
    it seems almost as if they
    are angry
    that they are flies;
    it is not my fault;
    I sit in the room
    with them
    and they taunt me
    with their agony;
    it is as if they were
    loose chunks of soul
    left out of somewhere;
    I try to read a paper
    but they will not let me
    be;
    one seems to go in half-circles
    high along the wall,
    throwing a miserable sound
    upon my head;
    the other one, the smaller one
    stays near and teases my hand,
    saying nothing,
    rising, dropping
    crawling near;
    what god puts these
    lost things upon me?
    other men suffer dictates of
    empire, tragic love…
    I suffer
    insects…
    I wave at the little one
    which only seems to revive
    his impulse to challenge:
    he circles swifter,
    nearer, even making
    a fly-sound,
    and one above
    catching a sense of the new
    whirling, he too, in excitement,
    speeds his flight,
    drops down suddenly
    in a cuff of noise
    and they join
    in circling my hand,
    strumming the base
    of the lampshade
    until some man-thing
    in me
    will take no more
    unholiness
    and I strike
    with the rolled-up paper—
    missing!—
    striking,
    striking,
    they break in discord,
    some message lost between them,
    and I get the big one
    first, and he kicks on his back
    flicking his legs
    like an angry whore,
    and I come down again
    with my paper club
    and he is a smear
    of fly-ugliness;
    the little one circles high
    now, quiet and swift,
    almost invisible;
    he does not come near
    my hand again;
    he is tamed and
    inaccessible; I leave
    him be, he leaves me
    be;
    the paper, of course,
    is ruined;
    something has happened,
    something has soiled my
    day,
    sometimes it does not
    take a man
    or a woman,
    only something alive;
    I sit and watch
    the small one;
    we are woven together
    in the air
    and the living;
    it is late
    for both of us.

through the streets of anywhere
    of course it is nonsense to try to patch up an
    old poem while drinking a warm beer
    on a Sunday afternoon; it is better to simply
    exist through the end of a cigarette;
    the people are listless and although this is a
    poor term of