The Girls Down By The Striptease Shows by Charles
Bukowski
We are all worth less than what we owe
To all the worthless eyes around here
The saddest guy on the block
Tripping over his own dismal shoelaces
In the lightest dark you’ve ever seen
We are all tipsy in the afterglow
The sheen of buses going by
It’s less than windows breaking in the feints of dawn
But we keep tipping so it’s okay
In the musty clump of ourselves
To find ATM receipts and combs with broken teeth
We are drawn and floated over
We are packed up in a suitcase and smuggled overseas
We pay for our dalliances and then some
Nobody’s running green lights
Nobody’s stopping my mail
So get your goddamn hands off her
Sir
And let me pass
Waltzing by without a cent to my name
Just a bad haircut and a torn suit jacket
A battered brain and a patched-together life
We are well aware of the extenuating circumstances
surrounding your demise
It’s just that the expiration date for your coupon for
survival
Has passed
And we’ve got more indecencies per square foot than any
place around
Baby
So
Get the paper
Sure
If that puts the pants on you mornings
And keeps them on all day
We expect less than most
And in the distance where the horses race the sad dogs of
winter
For tomato juice disasters
And ground beef dealers
Who keep talking and talking no matter what and through all
kinds of no matter what
So just for asking
For hire
For that long-shot hope that keeps ruin in your veins
Just for the courage to stalk the moon along streets long
dead with lamplight
Because it’s just that the wise time has gone
Kid
And the blinding lights of taxis is enough to keep us from
seeing
What it is
We’d rather not ever be
Loosed by Diane di Prima
the one-armed diabetic taxi driver
who swears twice in every sentence at least
karaokes The Only Living Boy In New York
just about every night
after his shift
at Club Tango Tango on California
he wears a studded bracelet
and a black ZZ Top tank top
and his voice trembles into a falsetto every time
and the audience roars
and the KJ claps and screams his name
Lewis! Lewis!
his name is Louie
the only living boy
or taxi driver
in New York
or San Francisco
or wherever the hell else
as if it matters
The Doorman Of Ewer Place by Robert Hass
I see this guy walk by all the time,
sometimes with a girl,
mostly alone;
and one time
cradling a bottle scotch.
He seemed happy that time--
more than the others.
I like his shoes;
they seem comfortable.
And he always,
always
wears a tie.
I respect that.
Sometimes I think that
maybe this guy,
he’s just a short-order cook,
or a busboy,
or a file clerk at a hospital,
but then,
hell,
who knows?
It could be he’s the manager of Larry Flynt’s Hustler Club,
or the VP of some up and coming startup,
or perhaps just a barista at Peet’s.
I don’t know.
All I do know
is that this guy,
he walks by this building all the time,
every night pretty much,
and sometimes a few times a day too.
I guess there are still some things
you can depend on in this world.
Well, at least he’s not embarrassed about himself,
like
I am,
quivering alone here by the door,
listening to the sound of all these cars swishing by and
making their futile noise in the street,
opening the door for these refined duds
who reek of sour sumac and high-end perfume,
and who walk dogs that eat better than most people.
I have thoughts of other lives
I could be leading
quite often.
But not this guy
whom I always see walking by,
face sort of smashed in and pocked like a war-scarred
anteater,
fluffed hair like a chopped-up clown wig,
wizened chap-lipped mouth,
and eyes--
well, I’ve never seen eyes quite like that:
sort of dim, but playful and deadly,
moody and sublime.
No,
this guy?
This guy,
he’s probably got it all figured out,
and I bet there’s nowhere else he’d rather be
than right where he is,
wherever it is that he’s going
walking by this building all the time.
Oliver’s Stoning by Li-Young Lee
brash professionalism
out of keeping with who’s diving up
turns in
to not be heart worthy
hardly a heel
though
would take a knack to it
sweethearts of another era
and now it’s the sunshine barking of the damn dogs
go without it
try and forget
one moist towelette
no longer wet
another life story never told
weep in the cottonwood shade
because like ai wieie says
there are no outdoor sports as graceful as throwing stones
at a dictatorship
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