lonely crowded mind, captain!

 

The rat

with one punch, at the age of 16 and 1/2,
I knocked out my father,
a cruel shiny bastard with bad breath,
and I didn't go home for some time, only now and then
to try to get a dollar from
dear momma.

it was 1937 in Los Angeles and it was a hell of a
Vienna.

I ran with these older guys
but for them it was the same:
mostly breathing gasps of hard air
and robbing gas stations that didn't have any
money, and a few lucky among us
worked part-time as Western Union messenger
boys.

we slept in rented rooms that weren't rented
and we drank ale and wine
with the shades down
being quiet quiet
and then awakening the whole building
with a fistfight
breaking mirrors and chairs and lamps
and then running down the stairway
just before the police arrived
some of us soldiers of the future
running through the empty starving streets and alleys of
Los Angeles
and all of us
getting together later
in Pete's room
a small cube of space under a stairway, there we were,
packed in there
without women
without cigarettes
without anything to drink,
while the rich pawed away at their many
choices and the young girls let
them,
the same girls who spit at our shadows as we
walked past.

it was a hell of a
Vienna.

3 of us under that stairway
were killed in World War II.

another one is now manager of a mattress
company.

me? I'm 30 years older,
the town is 4 or 5 times as big
but just as rotten
and the girls still spit on my
shadow, another war is building for another
reason, and I can hardly get a job now
for the same reason I couldn't then:
I don't know anything, I can't do
anything.

sex? well, just the old ones knock on my door after
midnight. I can't sleep and they see the lights and are
curious.

the old ones. their husbands no longer want them,
their children are gone, and if they show me enough good
leg (the legs go last)
I go to bed with
them.

so the old women bring me love and I smoke their cigarettes
as they
talk talk talk
and then we go to bed again and
I bring them love
and they feel good and
talk
until the sun comes
up, then we
sleep.

it's a hell of a Paris.

                                          
                                                        Charles Bukowski (1972)

--------------------------

A leucemia levou o velho Bukowski em 1994, aos 73 anos. Seu epitáfio dizia: Nem tente (Don't Try).

Além de sua poesia, Bukowski é também cultuado pelos diversos contos e romances que escreveu, sempre seguindo a mesma linha. Ora temos um velho trabalhador braçal (Kid Foguete no matadouro), ora um apostador frustado no jóquei (Vulva, Kant, e uma casa feliz). O ambiente retratado nunca é o nosso mundo fútil, composto por pessoas criadas à base de leite e pêra. Ao contrário, quartos de motéis sujos, bares imundos, os "losers" da sociedade, são todos constantes no universo bukowskiano.

Não tome o velho Buk como um mero bêbado. Sim, Henry Charles Bukowski tinha especial interesse (e necessidade) pela bebida, mas esse solitário escritor não pode de forma alguma ser reduzido a esse estereótipo. Apreciador de Mozart e Schoppenhauer, "the dirty old man" fascinou gerações pela sua sinceridade e estilo antiacadêmico, atraindo aqueles leitores cansados do mundo imaginário retratado por vários escritores (alguns muito bons, inclusive).

Fica aqui a recomendação a todos.