Come On In!. Charles Bukowski

      my song

      cancer

      blue

      twilight musings

      mind and heart

COME ON IN! I live near the slaughterhouse and am ill with thriving.

       come on in!

      welcome to my wormy hell.

      the music grinds off-key.

      fish eyes watch from the wall.

      this is where the last happy shot was

      fired.

      the mind snaps closed

      like a mind snapping

      closed.

      we need to discover a new will and a new

      way.

      we’re stuck here now

      listening to the laughter of the

      gods.

      my temples ache with the fact of

      the facts.

      I get up, move about, scratch

      myself.

      I’m a pawn.

      I am a hungry prayer.

      my wormy hell welcomes you.

      hello. hello there. come in, come on in!

      plenty of room here for us all,

      sucker.

      we can only blame ourselves so

      come sit with me in the dark.

      it’s half-past

      nowhere

      everywhere.

       nothing but a scarf

      long ago, oh so long ago, when

      I was trying to write short stories

      and there was one little magazine which printed

      decent stuff

      and the lady editor there usually sent me

      encouraging rejection slips

      so I made a point to

      read her monthly magazine in the public

      library.

      I noticed that she began to feature

      the same writer

      for the lead story each

      month and

      it pissed me off because I thought that I could

      write better than that

      fellow.

      his work was facile and bright but it had no

       edge.

      you could tell that he had never had his nose rubbed into

      life, he had just

      glided over it.

      next thing I knew, this ice-skater-of-a-writer was

      famous.

      he had begun as a copy boy

      on one of the big New York

      magazines

      (how the hell do you get one of those

      jobs?)

      then he began appearing in some of the best

      ladies’ magazines

      and in some of the respected literary

      journals.

      then after a couple of early books

      out came a little volume, a sweet

      novelette, and he was truly

      famous.

      it was a tale about high society and

      a young girl and it was

      delightful and charming and just a bit

      naughty.

      Hollywood quickly made a movie out of

      it.

      then the writer bounced around Hollywood

      from party to party

      for a few years.

      I saw his photo again and again:

      a little elf-man with huge

      eyeglasses.

      and he always wore a long dramatic

      scarf.

      but soon he went back to New York and to all the

      parties there.

      he went to every important party thereafter for years

      and to

      some that weren’t very

      important.

      then he stopped writing altogether and just went

      to parties.

      he drank or doped himself into oblivion almost

      every night.

      his once slim frame more than doubled in

      size.

      his face grew heavy and he no longer looked

      like the young boy with the quick and dirty

      wit but more like an

      old frog.

      the scarf was still on display but his hats were

      too large and came down almost to his

      eyes;

      all you noticed was his

      twisted

      lurid

      grin.

      the society ladies still liked to drag him

      around New York

      one on each arm

      and

      drinking like he did, he didn’t live

      to enjoy his old age.

      so

      he died

      and was quickly

      forgotten

      until somebody found what they claimed was his secret

      diary / novel

      and then all the famous people in

      New York were very

      worried

      and they should have been worried because when it

      was published

      out came all the dirty

      laundry.

      but I still maintain that he never really did know how to

      write; just what and

      when and about

      whom.

      slim, thin

      stuff.

      ever so long