A Smile To Remember
we had goldfish and they circled around and around
in the bowl on the table near the heavy drapes
covering the picture window and
my mother, always smiling, wanting us all
to be happy, told me, “be happy Henry!”
and she was right: it’s better to be happy if you
can
but my father continued to beat her and me several times a week while
raging inside his 6-foot-two frame because he couldn’t
understand what was attacking him from within.
my mother, poor fish,
wanting to be happy, beaten two or three times a
week, telling me to be happy: “Henry, smile!
why don’t you ever smile?”
and then she would smile, to show me how, and it was the
saddest smile I ever saw
one day the goldfish died, all five of them,
they floated on the water, on their sides, their
eyes still open,
and when my father got home he threw them to the cat
there on the kitchen floor and we watched as my mother
smiled
Charles Bukowski
Reminds me a bit of this poem:
My Papa’s Waltz
by Theodore Roethke
The whiskey on your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death:
Such waltzing was not easy.
We romped until the pans
Slid from the kitchen shelf;
My mother’s countenance
Could not unfrown itself.
The hand that held my wrist
Was battered on one knuckle;
At every step you missed
My right ear scraped a buckle.
You beat time on my head
With a palm caked hard by dirt,
Then waltzed me off to bed
Still clinging to your shirt.
Comment by pesky godson — April 7, 2006 @ 8:39 am
Well this is all very pleasant.
Comment by La Rad — April 7, 2006 @ 1:07 pm
The killer ending.
From a poet who said:
“When I go mad,
I call my friends by phone:
I am afraid they might think
they’re alone. ”
and also wrote:
Epidermal Macabre
Indelicate is he who loathes
The aspect of his fleshy clothes, —
The flying fabric stitched on bone,
The vesture of the skeleton,
The garment neither fur nor hair,
The cloak of evil and despair,
The veil long violated by
Caresses of the hand and eye.
Yet such is my unseemliness:
I hate my epidermal dress,
The savage blood’s obscenity,
The rags of my anatomy,
And willingly would I dispense
With false accouterments of sense,
To sleep immodestly, a most
Incarnadine and carnal ghost.
Thanks PG.
I might also add that I knew nothing about Charles Bukowski (not to mention Theodore) until I decided to visit my favorite poetry website http://www.poemhunter.org and read more Raymond Carver. They said, if you like Raymond, you’ll really love Charles!
Comment by michael — April 7, 2006 @ 3:14 pm
I find little self-loathing in Bukowski’s ode to innocence, or in Roethke’s waltz. Both seem intent on understanding, and in forgiving at least the victims. But if that’s true, then to shift to the diametrically different Macabre … Please tell me that doesn’t touch you somewhere you live, Mikey …
Thanks to both you & PG for the ongoing Turning Over of Rocks to See What Squirms Beneath. Though as La Rad says …
Comment by el Kib — April 8, 2006 @ 8:00 am
And to say it in such a perfectly high-pitched Church Lady tone of voice … .
“The savage blood’s obscenity,
The rags of my anatomy,”
Comment by michael — April 8, 2006 @ 8:56 am