between the shadow and the soul

The flies are angry bits of
life;
why are they so angry?
it seems they want more,
it seems almost as if they
are angry
that they are flies;
it is not my fault;
I sit in the room
with them
and they taunt me
with their agony;
it is as if they were
loose chunks of soul
left out of somewhere;
I try to read a paper
but they will not let me
be;
one seems to go in half-circles
high along the wall,
throwing a miserable sound
upon my head;
the other one, the smaller one
stays near and teases my hand,
saying nothing,
rising, dropping
crawling near;
what god puts these
lost things upon me?
other men suffer dictates of
empire, tragic love …
I suffer
insects …
I wave at the little one
which only seems to revive
his impulse to challenge:
he circles swifter,
nearer, even making
a fly-sound,
and one above
catching a sense of the new
whirling, he too, in excitement,
speeds his flight,
drops down suddenly
in a cuff of noise
and they join
in circling my hand,
strumming the base
of the lampshade
until some man-thing
in me
will take no more
unholiness
and I strike
with the rolled-up paper—-
missing!—-
striking,
striking,
they break in discord,
some message lost between them,
and I get the big one
first, and he kicks on his back
flicking his legs
like an angry whore,
and I come down again
with my paper club
and he is a smear
of fly-ugliness;
the little one circles high
now, quiet and swift,
almost invisible;
he does not come near
my hand again;
he is tamed and
inaccessible; I leave
him be, he leaves me
be;
the paper, of course,
is ruined;
something has happened,
something has soiled my
day,
sometimes it does not
take a man
or a woman,
only something alive;
I sit and watch
the small one;
we are woven together
in the air
and the living;
it is late
for both of us.

by Charles Bukowski, from Play the Piano Drunk Like a Percussion Instrument Until The Fingers Begin To Bleed a Bit (1979)

I liked it coming out of that expensive
cafe in Germany
that rainy night
some of the ladies had learned that I
was in there
and as I walked out well-fed and
intoxicated
the ladies waved
placards
and screamed at me
but all I recognized was my
name.

I asked a German friend what they were
saying.

“they hate you,” he told me,
“they belong to the German Female
Liberation Movement …”

I stood and watched them, they were
beautiful and screaming, I
loved them all, I laughed, waved,
blew them kisses.

then my friend, my publisher and my
girlfriend got me into the car; the
engine started, the windshield wipers
began thrashing
and as we drove off in the rain
I looked back
watched them standing in that
terrible weather
waving their placards and their
fists.

it was nice to be recognized
in the country of my birth, that

was what mattered
most …

back at the hotel room
opening bottles of wine
with my friends

I missed them,
those angry wet
passionate ladies
of the night.

by Charles Bukowski from War All the Time: Poems, 1981-1984