The Rat

[*Charles Bukowski sample*]
With one punch, at the age of 16 and a half, I knocked out my father
A cruel shiny bastard with bad breath
And I didn't go home for some time, only now and then to try to get a dollar from dear momma
It was 1937 in Los Angeles and it was a hell of a
Vienna
I ran with these older guys, but for them it was the same
Mostly breathing hard air, and robbing gas stations that didn't have any money
And a few lucky among us worked part-time, as Western Union messenger boys
We slept in rented rooms that weren't rented
And we drank ale and wine, with the shades down being quiet quiet
And then awakening the whole building with a fistfight, breaking mirrors and chairs and lamps
Then running down the stairway just before the police arrived
Some of us soldiers of the future, running through those empty starving streets and alleys of Los Angeles
And all of us, getting together later in Pete's room
A small cube of space under a stairway
There we were, packed in there, without women, without cigarettes, without anything to drink
While the rich pawed away at their many choices, and the young girls let them
The same girls who spit at our shadows as we
Walked past
It was a hell of a Vienna
Three of us under that stairway were killed in World War II
Another one is now manager of a mattress
Company
Me? I'm 30 years older, the town is four or five times as big
But just as rotten
And the girls still spit on my shadow, another war is building for another reason, I can hardly get a job now for the same reason I couldn't then
I don't know anything, I can't do anything
Sex? Well just the old ones knock on my door after midnight
I can't sleep and they see the lights and are
Curious
The old ones, their husbands no longer want them, their children are gone
If they show me, enough good leg, the legs go last, I go to bed with
Them
So the old women bring me love and I smoke their cigarettes
As they talk talk talk
And then we go to bed again and I bring them love
And they feel good and talk, until the sun comes up, then we
Sleep
It's a hell of a Paris

Once upon a time, a guy called Dylan Thomas was destroyed by poetry audiences. Sit your asses down, I'm gonna destroy you, instead of you destroying me