On Going Out To Get The Mail
By Charles Bukowski
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?
