#Poetry "Let It Enfold You" [ #Bukowski ] #poem featured in the Movie “Beautiful Boy”
Either peace or happiness,
let it enfold you
when I was a young man
I felt these things
were dumb, unsophisticated.
I had bad blood, a twisted
mind, a precarious upbringing.
I was hard as granite,
I leered at the sun.
I trusted no man and
especially no woman.
I was living a hell in
small rooms, I broke
things, smashed things,
walked through glass, cursed.
I challenged everything,
was continually being
evicted, jailed, in and
out of fights, in and out of my mind.
women were something
to ***and rail at, I had no male friends,
I changed jobs and
cities, I hated holidays,
babies, history,
newspapers, museums,
grandmothers, marriage, movies,
spiders, garbagemen, english accents,
spain, france,italy,walnuts and the color orange.
algebra angred me,
opera sickened me,
charlie chaplin was a
fake and flowers were for pansies.
peace and happiness to me
were signs of inferiority,
tenants of the weak and addled mind.
but as I went on with my alley fights,
my suicidal years,
my passage through
any number of
women-it gradually
began to occur to
me that I wasn't different
from the others, I was the same,
they were all fulsome
with hatred, glossed over with petty
grievances, the men I fought in
alleys had hearts of stone.
everybody was nudging, inching,
cheating for some insignificant
advantage, the lie was the
weapon
and the
plot was empty,
darkness was the
dictator.
cautiously, I allowed
myself to feel good at times.
I found moments of
peace in cheap rooms
just staring at the
knobs of some
dresser or listening to the
rain in the dark.
the less I needed
the better I felt.
maybe the other life had worn me down.
I no longer found
glamour in topping somebody
in conversation.
or in mounting the body of some poor
drunken female
whose life had slipped away into sorrow.
I could never accept
life as it was, i could never gobble down all its poisons
but there were parts,
tenuous magic parts
open for the asking.
I re formulated
I don't know when,
date, time, all that
but the change occurred.
something in me
relaxed, smoothed out.
i no longer had to
prove that I was a
man, I didn't have to prove
anything.
I began to see things:
coffee cups lined up
behind a counter in a cafe.
or a dog walking along
a sidewalk.
or the way the mouse
on my dresser top
stopped there
with its body, its ears, its nose,
it was fixed,
a bit of life caught within itself
and its eyes looked
at me and they were beautiful.
then- it was gone.
I began to feel good,
I began to feel good
in the worst situations
and there were plenty of those.
like say, the boss
behind his desk,
he is going to have
to fire me.
I've missed too many days.
he is dressed in a suit, necktie, glasses,
he says, 'I am going to have to let you go'
'it's all right' I tell him.
He must do what he
must do, he has a
wife, a house, children,
expenses, most probably a girlfriend.
I am sorry for him
he is caught.
I walk onto the blazing sunshine.
the whole day is mine
temporarily, anyhow.
the whole world is at the
throat of the world,
everybody feels angry,
short-changed, cheated,
everybody is despondent,
disillusioned
I welcomed shots of
peace, tattered shards of happiness.
I embraced that stuff
like the hottest number,
like high heels, ***,
singing,the works.
don't get me wrong,
there is such a thing as cockeyed optimism
that overlooks all
basic problems just for
the sake of itself
this is a shield and a sickness.
The knife got near my throat again,
I almost turned on the gas again
but when the good moments arrived again
I didn't fight them off like an alley adversary.
I let them take me,
I luxuriated in them,
I made them welcome home.
I even looked into
the mirror once having
thought myself to be ugly,
I now liked what
I saw, almost handsome, yes,
a bit ripped and ragged,
scares, lumps, odd turns,
but all in all, not too bad,
almost handsome,
better at least than
some of those movie
star faces like the cheeks of a baby's ***.
and finally I discovered real feelings of others,
unheralded, like lately,
like this morning,
as I was leaving, for the track,
i saw my wife in bed, just the
shape of her head there
not forgetting centuries of the living
and the dead and the dying, the pyramids,
Mozart dead but his music still there in the room,
weeds growing, the earth turning,
the tote board waiting for me
I saw the shape of my wife's head,
she so still, I ached for her life,
just being there under the covers.
I kissed her in the forehead,
got down the stairway, got outside,
got into my marvelous car,
fixed the seatbelt, backed out the drive.
feeling warm to the fingertips, down to my foot on the gas pedal,
I entered the world once
more, drove down the hill
past the houses
full and empty of people,
I saw the mailman, honked,
he waved back at me.