the way it works

by Charles Bukowski

(who must be, in some important way,

Denny Zappin’s spiritual doppelgänger)

she came out at 9:30 a.m. in the morning

and knocked on the manager’s door:

“my husband is dead!”

they went to the back of the building together

and the process began:

first the fire dept. sent two men

in dark shirts and pants

in vehicle #27

and the manager and the lady and the

two men went inside as she

sobbed.

he had knifed her last April and

had done 6 months for that.

the two men in dark shirts came out

got in their vehicle

and drove away.

then two policeman came.

then a doctor (he probably was there to

sign the death certificate).

I became tired of looking out the

window and began to

read the latest issue of

The New Yorker.

when I looked again there was a nice

sensitive-looking gray-haired gentleman

walking slowly up and down the

sidewalk in a dark suit.

then he waved in a black

hearse which

drove right up on the lawn and stopped

next to my porch.

two men got out of the hearse

opened up the back

and pulled a gurney with 4

wheels. they rolled it to the back of the

building, when they came out again he was in a

black zipper bag and she was in

obvious distress.

they put him in the

hearse and walked back to

her apartment and went inside

again.

I had to take out my laundry and

run some other errands.

Linda was coming to visit and

I was worried about her seeing that

hearse parked next to my porch.

so I left a note pinned to my door

that said: Linda. Don’t worry.

I’m ok. and

then I took my dirty laundry to my car and

drove away.

when I got back the hearse was gone and

Linda hadn’t arrived yet.

I took the note from the door and

went inside.

well, I thought, that old guy in back

he was my age and

we saw each other every day but

we never spoke to one another.

now we wouldn’t have to.

Charles Bukowski died in 1994. If he were alive, and I had an opportunity to speak with him, I would point out an error (perhaps Bukowski’s, perhaps his editor) in the third stanza, which goes like this:

“the two men in dark shirts came out

got in their vehicle

and drove away.”

I think it’s clear from reading the rest of the poem is that most of the time, when Bukowski can put his articles (a, an, some, the) and conjunctions (and, but, etc.) at the end of a line, rather than at the beginning of the next one, he does so.

If one recites this poem out loud and deemphsizes the “thes,” “ands,” and “buts” at the end of each line, the poem tends to tumble forward conversationally, the importance of and separate impact of each action is diminished, and one gets that the speaker observes events around him through a haze that reflects his idiosyncratic understanding of his own mortality.

I’m betting that Bukowski meant to write the stanza this way:

“the two men in dark shirts came out

got in their vehicle and

drove away.”

Of course, the reader who is not prepared to accept my analysis might respond that in three instances in the very first paragraph Bukowski begins three lines with “ands” rather than putting them at the tail end of the line before. What, the skeptical reader might ask, do you make of that?

Nothing, nothing, I’d mutter and

stare off into the

middle distance until

I could see a

distraction of some sort rising up.