On Poetry: Part II
So I've decided to post this poem that I like. If you don't like it, that's ok. But try not to rag on it too much until you've read it with some bourbon, at night, when you're a little down.
i want to overthrow the
government
but all i brought down was somebody's wife
by Charles Bukowski
30 dogs, 20 men on twenty horses and one fox
and look here, they write,
you are a dupe for the state, the church,
you are in the ego-dream,
read your history, study the monetary system,
note that the racial war is 23,000 years old.
well, I remember 20 years ago, sitting with an old Jewish tailor,
his nose in the lamplight like a cannon sighted on the enemy; and
there was an Italian pharmacist who lived in an expensive apartment
in the best part of town; we plotted to overthrow
a tottering dynasty, the tailor sewed buttons on a vest,
the Italian poking his cigar in my eye, lighting me up,
a tottering dynasty myself, always drunk as possible,
well-read, starving, depressed, but actually
a good young piece of ass would have solved my rancor,
but I didn't know this; I listened to my Italian and my Jew
and I went down dark alleys smoking borrowed cigarettes
and watching the backs of houses come down in flames,
but somewhere we missed: we were not men enough,
large or small,
or we only wanted to talk or we were bored, so the anarchy
fell through,
and the Jew died and the Italian grew angry because I stayed
with his
wife when he went down to the pharmacy; he did not care to have
his personal government overthrown, and she overthrew easy, and
I had some guilt: the children were asleep in the other bedroom;
but later I won $200 in a crap game and took a bus to New Orleans,
and I stood on the corner listening to the music coming from bars
and then I went inside to the bars,
and I sat there thinking about the dead Jew,
how all he did was sew on buttons and talk,
and how he gave way although he was stronger than any of us --
he gave way because his bladder would not go on,
and maybe that saved Wall Street and Manhattan
and the Church and Central Park West and Rome and the
Left Bank, but the pharmacist's wife, she was nice,
she was tired of bombs under the pillow and hissing the Pope,
and she had a nice figure, very good legs,
but I guess she felt as I: that the weakness was not Government
but Man, one at a time, that men were never as strong as
their ideas
and that ideas were governments turned into men;
and so it began on a couch with a spilled martini
and it ended in the bathroom: desire, revolution,
nonsense ended, and the shades rattled in the wind,
rattled like sabres, cracked like cannon,
and 30 dogs, 20 men on twenty horses chased one fox
across the fields under the sun,
and I got out of bed and yawned and scratched my belly
and knew that soon very soon I would have to get
very drunk again.
i want to overthrow the
government
but all i brought down was somebody's wife
by Charles Bukowski
30 dogs, 20 men on twenty horses and one fox
and look here, they write,
you are a dupe for the state, the church,
you are in the ego-dream,
read your history, study the monetary system,
note that the racial war is 23,000 years old.
well, I remember 20 years ago, sitting with an old Jewish tailor,
his nose in the lamplight like a cannon sighted on the enemy; and
there was an Italian pharmacist who lived in an expensive apartment
in the best part of town; we plotted to overthrow
a tottering dynasty, the tailor sewed buttons on a vest,
the Italian poking his cigar in my eye, lighting me up,
a tottering dynasty myself, always drunk as possible,
well-read, starving, depressed, but actually
a good young piece of ass would have solved my rancor,
but I didn't know this; I listened to my Italian and my Jew
and I went down dark alleys smoking borrowed cigarettes
and watching the backs of houses come down in flames,
but somewhere we missed: we were not men enough,
large or small,
or we only wanted to talk or we were bored, so the anarchy
fell through,
and the Jew died and the Italian grew angry because I stayed
with his
wife when he went down to the pharmacy; he did not care to have
his personal government overthrown, and she overthrew easy, and
I had some guilt: the children were asleep in the other bedroom;
but later I won $200 in a crap game and took a bus to New Orleans,
and I stood on the corner listening to the music coming from bars
and then I went inside to the bars,
and I sat there thinking about the dead Jew,
how all he did was sew on buttons and talk,
and how he gave way although he was stronger than any of us --
he gave way because his bladder would not go on,
and maybe that saved Wall Street and Manhattan
and the Church and Central Park West and Rome and the
Left Bank, but the pharmacist's wife, she was nice,
she was tired of bombs under the pillow and hissing the Pope,
and she had a nice figure, very good legs,
but I guess she felt as I: that the weakness was not Government
but Man, one at a time, that men were never as strong as
their ideas
and that ideas were governments turned into men;
and so it began on a couch with a spilled martini
and it ended in the bathroom: desire, revolution,
nonsense ended, and the shades rattled in the wind,
rattled like sabres, cracked like cannon,
and 30 dogs, 20 men on twenty horses chased one fox
across the fields under the sun,
and I got out of bed and yawned and scratched my belly
and knew that soon very soon I would have to get
very drunk again.
posted by Fishfrog at 12:26 PM
2 Comments:
So do you want to overthrow me too? I work for the government.
I don't want to overthrow the government. Chaz wrote the poem, not me. What I like about it is the way he shows the frailty of man; how easily distracted we are and how even when we support something in theory, the actual application of it is suboptimal. I mean, a wealthy pharmacist wanting to overthrow the government??? Beautiful. The poem, to me, is more about inaction than anything else. And that's something I can relate to.
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