Here's !, The real resentment

CHARLES BUKOWSKI :
"The house of horrors. The house of agony.
The house where I was almost done in
but not quite done.
I’m still here
you see.
this is the lawn that I manicured.
I had to mow it both ways.
This way first then this way.
And I had to get all the hairs with the sheers.
If I missed one hair
I got a beating,
one hair.
It’s very hard not to miss one hair.
Try it some time.
So I always got a beating.
-
The old man had a razor strap he used to hang here
and he’d just take it off,
drop your pants and your shorts.
I would stand about here
and he would begin.
And I don’t know how many lashes he’d give me
but they’d be hard,
eight, ten, twelve,
fourteen.
Of course you can’t help screaming
especially when you’re six years old, seven years old.
As I got around to be about ten or eleven or twelve
I screamed less in fact.
last beating I got I didn’t scream at all.
I just didn’t make a sound.
And I guess that terrorized him
because
that was the last one
when I didn’t make a sound."


Too much, too little, too fat, too thin or nobody. Strangers with faces like the backs of thumb tacks. Armies running through streets of blood waving wine bottles. Bayoneting and fucking virgins. Or an old guy in a cheap room with a photograph of Marilyn Monroe. There is a loneliness in this world so great but you can see it in the slow movement in the hands of a clock. People so tired, mutilated either by love or by no love. People are just not good to each other one on one. The rich are not good to the rich. The poor are not good to the poor. We’re afraid. Our educational system tells us that we can all be big ass winners. It hasn’t told us about the gutters or the suicides or the terror of one person aching in one place alone. The beads will swing. The clouds will cloud and the killer will behead a child like taking a bite out of an ice cream cone. Too much. Too little. Too fat. Too thin. Or nobody. More haters than lovers. People are not good to each other. Perhaps if they were, our deaths would not be so sad. Meanwhile I look at young girls skin, flowers of chance. There must be a way. Surely there must be a way we’ve not yet thought of. Who put this brain inside of me? It cries. It demands. It says there’s a chance. It will not say no.

CHARLES BUKOWSKI