“Finish” by Charles Bukowski
the hearse comes through the room filled with the beheaded, the disappeared, the living mad. the flies are a glue of sticky paste their wings will not lift. I watch an old woman beat her cat with a broom. the weather is unendurable a dirty trick by God. the water has evaporated from the toilet bowl the telephone rings without sound the small limp arm petering against the bell. I see a boy on his bicycle the spokes collapse the tires turn into snakes and melt away. the newspaper is oven-hot men murder each other in the streets without reason. the worst men have the best jobs the best men have the worst jobs or are unemployed or locked in madhouses. I have 4 cans of food left. air-conditioned troops go from house to house from room to room jailing, shooting, bayoneting the people. we have done this to ourselves, we deserve this we are like roses that have never bothered to bloom when we should have bloomed and it is as if the sun has become disgusted with waiting it is as if the sun were a mind that has given up on us. I go out on the back porch and look across the sea of dead plants now thorns and sticks shivering in a windless sky. somehow I'm glad we're through finished-- the works of Art the wars the decayed loves the way we lived each day. when the troops come up here I don't care what they do for we already killed ourselves each day we got out of bed. I go back into the kitchen spill some hash from a soft can, almost cooked already and I sit eating, looking at my fingernails. the sweat comes from behind my ears and I hear the shooting in the streets and I chew and wait without wonder.
