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assault
by: Charles Bukowski


bad shape. sick. can hardly hold my soul together
here in Hollywood
here on DeLongpre Ave. where the nurses live
where the experimental film makers live
where the trees live hot and sad in the sun.

here where the wheelchairs drift past
down from the home for the aged.

how long Chinaski?
how many more loves shot out of the sky?
how many more women?
how many more days and years?

pain walks through the shadows of this room.
I can feel it in my arms,
I can hear it rattling in my cheap air cooler.

I remember things and get up and walk about.
I can't stop walking
from one edge of the room to the other.

I was once a man content to be alone.
now I have been broken open,
everything has edges.

they have me-crazed and trapped.

they brought me out of myself.
they are working on me.
the onslaught is furious and relentless
and without sound.

the rivers spill over the dikes.
the sun smells like burnt cheese.
ten thousand faces on the boulevards.
I live with creatures whose existence
has nothing to do with mine.

I keep walking about this room.
I can hardly breathe.

I have given my pain a name.
I call it " Assault."

Assault, I say, will you please go out for a walk
and leave me alone?
will you please go out for a walk and
get run over by a train?

my few friends think I'm a very funny fellow.
tell me about Chinaski, they ask my girlfriend.

oh, she says, he just sits in this big chair
and moans.

they laugh.
I make people laugh.

Assault, I say, do you want something to eat?
were you once a racehorse?
why don't you
sleep?
take a rest?
die?

Assault follows me across the room
he leaps on my shoulder and shakes me.

Lorca was shot down in the road but here
in America the poets never anger anybody.
the poets don't gamble.

their poetry has the smell of clinics.
their poetry has the smell of clinics.
where people die rather than live.

here they don't assassinate the poets.

they don't even notice the poets.

I walk out on the street to buy a
newspaper.
Assault follows me.

we pass a beautiful young girl on the sidewalk.
I look into her eyes. she stares
back.

you can't have her, says Assault, you are an old man,
you are a crazy old man.

I'm aware of my age, I say with some dignity.

yes, and aware of death too.
you're going to die and
you don't know where you're going
but I'm coming along with you.

you rotten bastard, I say, why are you
so fond of me?

I get a newspaper and come back.
we read it together.

ah, my companion!
we bathe together, sleep together, eat
together, we
open letters together.
we write poems together.
we read poems together.

I don't know if I am Chinaski or
Assault.

some say I love my pain.

yes, I love it so much I'd like to give it to you
wrapped in a red ribbon
wrapped in a bloody red ribbon
you can have it
you can have it all.
I'll never miss it.

I'm working on getting rid of it, believe me.

I might jam it into your mailbox
or throw it into the back seat of your car.

but now
here on DeLongpre Ave.
we have just
each other.

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