I awakened to dryness and the ferns were dead, the potted plants yellow as corn; my woman was gone and the empty bottles like bled corpses surrounded me with their uselessness; the sun was still good, though, and my landlady’s note cracked in fine and undemanding yellowness; what was needed now was a good comedian, ancient style, a jester with jokes upon absurd pain; pain is absurd because it exists, nothing more; I shaved carefully with an old razor the man who had once been young and said to have genius; but that’s the tragedy of the leaves, the dead ferns, the dead plants; and I walked into a dark hall where the landlady stood execrating and final, sending me to hell, waving her fat, sweaty arms and screaming screaming for rent because the world had failed us both.
- Charles Bukowski
