The Last Night of the Earth Poems (30 page)

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Authors: Charles Bukowski

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batting order:

Hemingway’s been in a slump,
can’t hit a curve ball
anymore,
I’m dropping him to the 6th
spot.
I’m putting Celine in
cleanup,
he’s inconsistent but when
he’s good there’s no
better.
Hamsun I’m going to use
in the number 3 spot,
he hits them hard and
often.
lead-off, well, lead-off
I’ll use e. e. cummings,
he’s fast, can beat out a
bunt.
I’ll use Pound in the
number two spot, Ezra
is one of the better
hit and run men
in the business.
the 5 spot I’ll give to
Dostoevsky,
he’s a heavy hitter, great with
men on base.
the 7 spot I’ll give to Robinson
Jeffers, can you think of anybody
better?
he can drill a rock
350 feet.
the 8 spot, I’ve got my
catcher, J. D. Salinger,
if we can find
him.
and pitching?
how about Nietzsche?
he’s strong!
been breaking all the tables
in the training
room.

coaches?

I’ll take Kierkegaard and
Sartre,
gloomy fellows,
but none know this
game better.

when we field this team,
it’s all over,
gentlemen.

we’re going to kick some
ass, most likely
yours.

the open canvas

listening to organ music on the radio
tonight,
the door to the small balcony is
open,
it is 11:07 p.m., cold, a night of
silence except for the
radio, the
organ music,
and I get this vision
of a thin, tall man at the keyboard,
he is more than pale, almost
a chalky
white.
the music boils in the
gloom.
the walls about him are
unpainted, cold,
austerely
indifferent.

a full glass of wine sits
untouched
on a rough hand-made table
to his
right.

the music seeps through his
bones,
centuries bend and
unwind as the invisible dog
of darkness
walks by
in a half circle
behind him,
then blends into
neurons.
the man continues to
play.
the world turns upsidedown
with a fixed gentleness
but the walls, the man,
the sounds continue
as before.

then the world returns to its
natural course.

one tonality breeds
another.
the sounds of black strings
of beads.
the sound is one
yet not one.

then the music
stops.

the man sits.

he is thoughtless.

the keys of the organ assume
an immensity.

the walls about him move away
faster than the eye
can note,
then they
return.

the man coughs, looks to
his left,
looks down,
touches the keys and
is taken
again.

in the shadow of the rose

branching out, grubbing down,
taking stairways down to hell,
reestablishing the vanishing
point, trying a different
bat, a different stance, altering
diet and manner of
walking, readjusting the
system, photographing your
dinosaur dream,
driving your machine with
more grace and care,
noticing the flowers talking
to you,
realizing the gigantic agony
of the terrapin,
you pray for rain like an
Indian,
slide a fresh clip into the
automatic,
turn out the lights and
wait.

About the Author

CHARLES BUKOWSKI is one of America’s best-known contemporary writers of poetry and prose, and, many would claim, its most influential and imitated poet. He was born in Andernach, Germany, to an American soldier father and a German mother in 1920, and brought to the United States at the age of three. He was raised in Los Angeles and lived there for fifty years. He published his first story in 1944 when he was twenty-four and began writing poetry at the age of thirty-five. He died in San Pedro, California, on March 9, 1994, at the age of seventy-three, shortly after completing his last novel,
Pulp
(1994).

During his lifetime he published more than forty-five books of poetry and prose, including the novels
Post Office
(1971),
Factotum
(1975),
Women
(1978),
Ham on Rye
(1982), and
Hollywood
(1989). Among his most recent books are the posthumous editions of
What Matters Most Is How Well You Walk Through the Fire
(1999),
Open All Night: New Poems
(2000),
Beerspit Night and Cursing: The Correspondence of Charles Bukowski and Sheri Martinelli,
1960-1967 (2001), and
The Night Torn Mad with Footsteps: New Poems
(2001).

All of his books have now been published in translation in over a dozen languages and his worldwide popularity remains undiminished. In the years to come, Ecco will publish additional volumes of previously uncollected poetry and letters.

Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.

BY CHARLES BUKOWSKI

The Days Run Away Like wild Horses Over the Hills
(1969)

Post Office
(1971)

Mockingbird Wish Me Luck
(1972)

South of No North
(1973)

Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame: Selected Poems 1955-1973
(1974)

Factotum
(1975)

Love Is a Dog from Hell: Poems 1974-1977
(1977)

Women
(1978)

Play the Piano Drunk /Like a Percussion Instrument/Until the Fingers Begin to Bleed a Bit
(1979)

Shakespeare Never Did This
(1979)

Dangling in the Tournefortia
(1981)

Ham on Rye
(1982)

Bring Me Your Love
(1983)

Hot Water Music
(1983)

There’s No Business
(1984)

War All the Time: Poems 1981-1984
(1984)

You Get So Alone at Times That It Just Makes Sense
(1986)

The Movie: “Barfly”
(1987)

The Roominghouse Madrigals: Early Selected Poems 1946-1966
(1988)

Hollywood
(1989)

Septuagenarian Stew: Stories & Poems
(1990)

The Last Night of the Earth Poems
(1992)

Screams from the Balcony: Selected Letters 1960-1970
(1993)

Pulp
(1994)

Living on Luck: Selected Letters 1960s-1970s (Volume 2)
(1995)

Betting on the Muse: Poems & Stories
(1996)

Bone Palace Ballet: New Poems
(1997)

The Captain Is Out to Lunch and the Sailors Have Taken Over the Ship
(1998)

Reach for the Sun: Selected Letters 1978-1994 (Volume 3)
(1999)

What Matters Most Is How Well You Walk Through the Fire: New Poems
(1999)

Open All Night: New Poems
(2000)

The Night Torn Mad with Footsteps: New Poems
(2001)

Beerspit Night and Cursing: The Correspondence of Charles Bukowski & Sheri Martinelli 1960-1967
(2001)

Copyright

THE LAST NIGHT OF THE EARTH POEMS
. Copyright © 1992 by Charles Bukowski. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

Mobipocket Reader July 2007 ISBN 978-0-06-146971-8

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