Appears in Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame

Charles Bukowski
on going out to get the mail

the droll noon
where squadrons of worms creep up like
stripteasers
to be raped by blackbirds

I go outside
and all up and down the street
the green armies shoot color
like an everlasting 4th. of July,
and I too seem to swell inside,
a kind of unknown bursting, a
feeling, perhaps, that there isn't any
enemy
anywhere

and I reach down into the box
and there is
nothing not even a
letter from the gas co. saying they will
shut it off
again.

not even a short note from my x-wife
bragging upon her present
happiness.

my hand searches the mailbox in a kind of
disbelief long after the mind has
given up.

there's not even a dead fly
down in there.

I am a fool, I think, I should have known it
works like this.

I go inside as all the flowers leap to
please me.

anything? the woman
asks.

nothing, I answer, what's for
breakfast?

©Linda Lee Bukowski - used with permission