This poem really grabs me. It is amazing how truthful Mr Bukowski can be. Read on:
call it the greenhouse effect or whatever
but it just doesn’t rain like it used to.
I particularly remember the rains of the
depression era.
there wasn’t any money but there was plenty of rain.
it wouldn’t rain for just a night or a day,
it would RAIN for 7 days and 7 nights
and in Los Angeles the storm drains
weren’t built to carry off that much water
and the rain came down THICK and MEAN and STEADY
and you HEARD it banging against the roofs and into the ground
waterfalls of it came down
from roofs
and there was HAIL big ROCKS OF ICE
bombing exploding smashing into things
and the rain just wouldn’t STOP
and all the roofs leaked-dishpans,
cooking pots were placed all about;
they dripped loudly and had to be emptied
again and again.
the rain came up over the street curbings,
across the lawns, climbed up the steps and
entered the houses.
there were mops and bathroom towels,
and the rain often came up through the
toilets:bubbling, brown, crazy,whirling,
and all the old cars stood in the streets,
cars that had problems starting on a sunny day,
and the jobless men stood looking out the windows
at the old machines dying like living things out there.
the jobless men, failures in a failing time
were imprisoned in their houses with their
wives and children and their pets.
the pets refused to go out
and left their waste in strange places.
the jobless men went mad
confined with their once beautiful wives.
there were terrible arguments
as notices of foreclosure fell into the mailbox.
rain and hail, cans of beans,
bread without butter; fried
eggs, boiled eggs, poached eggs; peanut butter
sandwiches, and an invisible
chicken in every pot.
my father, never a good man
at best, beat my mother
when it rained as I threw myself
between them,
the legs, the knees, the
screams until they separated.
“I’ll kill you,” I screamed
at him. “You hit her again
and I’ll kill you!”
“Get that son-of-a-bitching
kid out of here!”
“no, Henry, you stay with
your mother!”
all the households were under
siege but I believe that ours
held more terror than the average.
and at night as we attempted to sleep
the rains still came down
and it was in bed in the dark
watching the moon against the scarred window
so bravely holding out most of the rain,
I thought of Noah and the Ark
and I thought, it has come again.
we all thought that.
and then, at once, it would stop.
and it always seemed to
stop around 5 or 6 a.m.,
peaceful then,
but not an exact silence
because things continued to
drip
drip
drip
and there was no smog then
and by 8 a.m. there was a
blazing yellow sunlight,
Van Gogh yellow-crazy, blinding!
and then the roof drains
relieved of the rush of water
began to expand in the warmth:
PANG!PANG!PANG!
and everybody got up and looked outside
and there were all the lawns still soaked
greener than green will ever
be
and there were birds on the lawn
CHIRPING like mad,
they hadn’t eaten decently
for 7 days and 7 nights
and they were weary of berries
and they waited as the worms
rose to the top,
half drowned worms.
the birds plucked them up
and gobbled them down;there were
blackbirds and sparrows.
the blackbirds tried to drive the sparrows off
but the sparrows, maddened with hunger,
smaller and quicker, got their
due.
the men stood on their porches
smoking cigarettes,
now knowing they’d have to go out
there to look for that job
that probably wasn’t there, to start that car
that probably wouldn’t start.
and the once beautiful wives
stood in their bathrooms combing their hair,
applying makeup, trying to put their world back
together again, trying to forget that
awful sadness that gripped them,
wondering what they could fix for
breakfast.
and on the radio we were told that
school was now open.
and soon
there I was on the way to school,
massive puddles in the street,
the sun like a new world,
my parents back in that house,
I arrived at my classroom on time.
Mrs. Sorenson greeted us
with, “we won’t have our usual recess, the grounds
are too wet.”
“AW!” most of the boys went.
“but we are going to do something special at
recess,” she went on, “and it will be
fun!”
well, we all wondered what that would
be
and the two hour wait seemed a long time
as Mrs. Sorenson went about teaching her
lessons.
I looked at the little girls, they looked so
pretty and clean and alert,
they sat still and straight
and their hair was beautiful
in the California sunshine.
the the recess bells rang
and we all waited for the fun.
then Mrs. Sorenson told us:
“now, what we are going to do is we are going to tell
each other what we did during the rainstorm!
we’ll begin in the front row and go right around!
now, Michael, you’re first!. . .”
well, we all began to tell our stories, Michael began
and it went on and on, and soon we realized that
we were all lying, not exactly lying but mostly
lying and some of the boys began to snicker and some
of the girls began to give them dirty looks and
Mrs.Sorenson said, “all right! I demand a
modicum of silence here!
I am interested in what you did
during the rainstorm even if you
aren’t!”
so we had to tell our stories and they were
stories.
one girl said that when the rainbow first
came she saw God’s face at the end of it.
only she didn’t say which end.
one boy said he stuck his fishing pole
out the window and caught a little fish
and fed it to his cat.
almost everybody told a lie.
the truth was just
too awful and embarrassing to tell.
then the bell rang and recess was
over.
“thank you,” said Mrs. Sorenson, “that was very
nice.
and tomorrow the grounds will be dry
and we will put them to use again.”
most of the boys cheered
and the little girls sat very straight and still,
looking so pretty and clean and alert,
their hair beautiful in a sunshine that
the world might never see
again.
and