Bukowski, Charles: self-invited

well, strap my ass on backwards, phone China,

run the birds off the wire,

buy a painting of a red dove and remember

Herbert Hoover.

what I am trying to say is that 6 nights out of the

last 8 there have been visitors, all self-invited, and

like my wife says, "we don't want to hurt their feelings."

so we have sat and listened to them, some

famous and some not so, some fairly bright

and entertaining, some not so

but it all ends up as chatter, chatter, chatter, voices,

voices, voices, a polite heady whirl of sound and

there's a loneliness there: they all want to be accepted

one way or another,

want to be listened to, and that's understandable but

I am one of those human beings who would rather

sit quietly with my wife and 6 cats

(or I like to sit upstairs alone doing nothing).

the idea is that I am selfish and that people

diminish me; the longer I sit and listen to them

the more empty I feel but I don't get

the idea that they feel empty, I feel

that they enjoy the sound from their mouths.

and when they leave almost all make a little gesture

toward a future visit.

my wife is nice, makes them feel warm as they exit,

she's a good soul, so good a soul that when,

say, we eat out and

choose a table she takes a seat where she can

"see the people" and I take a seat where I can't.

all right, so I was forged by the devil: all

humankind disinterests me and no,

it's not fear although

certain things about them are fearful, and it's not

competition because I don't want

anything that they want, it's just that

in all those hours of

voices voices voices

I hear nothing either essentially kind or daring or noble,

and not the least bit worth all the time shot through the head.

you can remember when you used to run them out into the

night instead of letting them wind themselves down,

those with their lonely wish for company, and you are

ashamed of yourself for putting up with their mostly

pure

crap

but otherwise your wife would say

"do you think that you are the only person living on

earth?"

you see, that's where the devil's got

me.

so I listen and they are

fulfilled.