I got the small room.
I am winning the day.
Finally, I can breathe.
except, the walls are stained,
the mattress, too.
thick brown streaks;
a hundred men have sweated
The Fear
in these walls, I think.
the mirror
in the shared bathroom
sees the blood in my eyes.
a fly, a small black, buzzing
fly,
crawls over my fingers
as I am writing this letter.
and the fly crawls
over me,
Over the table,
Over my dreams.
crawls over cheap, thin-soled shoes.
my words on the page.
my whisky, too.
the fly crawls across the dents in my soul.
the handkerchief
I use to wipe my mouth.
and so, what do you do?
I swing my pencil at its soft dark body,
failing,
I flail my arms,
as crazy men do.
would anyone rescue me
from my hell and understand.
the fly and I.
isolated I am.
through the window
pane,
under the full haunted moon,
I undress myself.
to the bed
I lay myself soon.
the single-sized sluggish bed before me.
bed of a hundred men.
one hundred dead men.
one hundred dead-drunk men.
me, now as I am.
If Charles Bukowski wrote a gothic poem
