Dangling on the Tournefortia by Charles Bukowski

“WITHIN MY OWN MADNESS

I have always been fascinated by Chinese armies
of the past,
by Adolph Hitler, slim young ladies in long dresses,
a checkerboard without pieces, flags of any country,
policemen of other countries, marmalade in the jar,
people standing outside of movie houses, men with one arm,
horses about ready to shit, how badly great actors act,
canaries at night, frogs in the center of the road,
bedsprings, whirling turds in a toilet,
paperclips, dark green, beds full of dying, betrayal,
fear, dark green freeway sings, chickens, chicken dung,
black traffic policemen, the deaths of presidents’ wives,
how badly great actresses act, the failure of the poets,
the really really rich, the really really poor,
the murderers,
and the murdered, the rapists and the raped

what my mother dreamt

within my own madness I have not been so fascinated by
myself, Italians, Jews, Englishmen,
the Women’s Liberation Movement,
Spain, horse shows, the Pope, spinach, the sea,
the mountains,
the sunset

lemon trees fascinate me, palm trees do not
kindness fascinates me, love does not

preciseness fascinates me and the end of long-
windedness.”

-Charles Bukowski, 1981