Play the Piano Drunk Like a Percussion Instrument Until the Fingers Begin to Bleed a Bit by Charles Bukowski

the paper on the floor
     
    …the drawing is poor and I know little of the plot:
a man with a stable, world-earned face and the necktie of
respectability, and a satisfied pipe; and his wife—
signified by the quick ink of black hair (just ever so
tousled with having babies and guiding them safely through
the falls): there is a grandmother who sits somewhat like
a flowerpot: allotted an earned space but not really
useful ; and a couple of smiling, knee-climbing gamins
two little Jung and Adlers
full of moot, black-type questions,
and, of course,
a young girl troubled with young loves
(they take these things so much more seriously than the
young men who
go behind the barn);
and there is a young man—her, I presume barn-wise, brother
with this great tundra, this shield of black hair;
he is horribly healthy
and dressed in the latest in sport shirts
in the best barn-wise manner;
this big…brother (16? 17? 18? God wot?)
is usually (when I read this, which is not very often)
leaning forward over the car seat
(he sits in the back, like the author)
and makes some…comment on LIFE, capital all-the-way LIFE
that is so VERY true
that it just…upsets every body
except the poor kiddies who don’t know what the hell it’s
all about in spite of their Jung and Adler
and they just ride along round-eyed and sucking at their
lollypops all up in the pretty pure white clouds;
but, lo, the headman grinds his pipe grey-faced against this
sporty truth that old men let lie like overgrown
gas-meter covers; and the mother (wife wot?) draws down
a long black eyebrow and one more strand of hair becomes
unattached in the cool long struggle; and
Grandma, oh, I don’t know—
by then I have looked away; but I remember the girl,
the young girl with young loves
is always especially angry
because the back of the barn has been blamed on her…
locked with René the Frenchman, the struggling…painter or
wot?
nobody wants to face it but this…fat…sports-wear shirt
character (who is really a nice strong boy who will really
be O.K. some day) keeps bringing the cow out from behind the
barn
with the bull; but he is young
and laughs
and all somehow bear up;
but best is his… explanation of it all,
of the cow and the bull,
with the inherent and instinctive…wiseness of his
youth;
the explanation usually comes in the morning
over the breakfast table—
before all this sickly struggling ordinary mess of common…
humanity has had a chance
to seat itself
the healthy white…face laughs and tells it all;
he’s been sitting there waiting to tell it all,
he’s been sitting there with the little…twins (or wot?)
as they spill porridge so cutely with their little spoons,
this big…happy oaf who’s never had a toothache
has been sitting waiting the entrance of his elders
(Granny who must put in her teeth, and Papa who is worried
about the office, and Mama who isn’t exactly straightened out
yet; and the young girl who loves with faith, anger and…
purity) in they come
and he throws out an arm
and tilting his healthy…carcass madly back in the chair
before the sun-pure kitchen curtains
and the little lovable, struggling bungling group
he says his great say,
and in the balloon above his head are the words
and by the twisted agony of the faces
I am led to believe something has been said,
but I read again
looking carefully at the great happy spewing oaf’s face
the brown great deepness of the eyes
and the young girl’s teeth pushed out sour as if she had
bitten into some lemon of truth,
but there is something wrong
there is some mistake
because the sheet of paper I hold
slants and angles in the electric light
into the open dizziness of my dome
and it huddles and curls itself into a puffy knot
and pushes at the back of my eyes
and pulls my nerves taut-thin from toe to hair-line
and I know then that
the great spewing oaf has said
nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing
nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing
nothing nothing