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Bukowski, Charles:the shoelace [from Mockingbird Wish Me Luck (1972), Black
Sparrow Press]


1 a woman, a
2 tire that's flat, a
3 disease, a
4 desire; fears in front of you,
5 fears that hold so still
6 you can study them
7 like pieces on a
8 chessboard ...
9 it's not the large things that
10 send a man to the
11 madhouse. death he's ready for, or
12 murder, incest, robbery, fire, flood ...
13 no, it's the continuing series of small tragedies
14 that send a man to the
15 madhouse ...
16 not the death of his love
17 but a shoelace that snaps
18 with no time left ...
19 the dread of life
20 is that swarm of trivialities
21 that can kill quicker than cancer
22 and which are always there---
23 license plates or taxes
24 or expired driver's license,
25 or hiring or firing,
26 doing it or having it done to you, or
27 constipation
28 speeding tickets
29 rickets or crickets or mice or termites or
30 roaches or flies or a
31 broken hook on a
32 screen, or out of gas
33 or too much gas,
34 the sink's stopped-up, the landlord's drunk,
35 the president doesn't care and the governor's
36 crazy.
37 lightswitch broken, mattress like a
38 porcupine;
39 $105 for a tune-up, carburetor and fuel pump at
40 Sears Roebuck;


41 and the phone bill's up and the market's
42 down
43 and the toilet chain is
44 broken,
45 and the light has burned out---
46 the hall light, the front light, the back light,
47 the inner light; it's
48 darker than hell
49 and twice as
50 expensive.
51 then there's always crabs and ingrown toenails
52 and people who insist they're
53 your friends;
54 there's always that and worse;
55 leaky faucet, Christ and Christmas;
56 blue salami, 9 day rains,
57 50 cent avocados
58 and purple
59 liverwurst.


60 or making it
61 as a waitress at Norm's on the split shift,
62 or as an emptier of
63 bedpans,
64 or as a carwash or a busboy
65 or a stealer of old lady's purses
66 leaving them screaming on the sidewalks
67 with broken arms at the age of
68 80.


69 suddenly
70 2 red lights in your rear view mirror
71 and blood in your
72 underwear;
73 toothache, and $979 for a bridge
74 $300 for a gold
75 tooth,
76 and China and Russia and America, and
77 long hair and short hair and no
78 hair, and beards and no

79 faces, and plenty of zigzag but no
80 pot, except maybe one to piss in and
81 the other one around your
82 gut.


83 with each broken shoelace
84 out of one hundred broken shoelaces,
85 one man, one woman, one
86 thing
87 enters a
88 madhouse.


89 so be careful
90 when you
91 bend over.