Vaya por el viejo borracho

Hoy ví un video de Bukowski. Medio ebrio, recita algún poema. Jamás pensé encontrarlo en YouTube.
Verlo me hace pensar. Nunca imaginé su voz. Soy tan patético que siempre mitifico a la gente que admiro; y verlo así, tan natural, algo pedón, echando su desmadre muy personal...entiende, cabrón, que cala. Te recuerda que todos somos espejismos. Que los héroes no existen, y si existieron hace mucho que fueron pasto de gusanos. De nosotros sólo queda el recuerdo, y a veces ni eso.
Bukowski. Cuando conocí su obra el ya tenía tiempo bajo tierra. Siempre llego tarde. Uno de mis últimos héroes. Los buenos se mueren antes. Hemingway con su escopeta en la boca, Poe entre basura y delirium trémens. Los viejos perros que pelearon tan bien. Para mí el viejo borracho siempre será el mejor. El más grande que haya parido la puta Norteamérica. Un saludo respetuoso al maestro, donde quiera que esté.

Les dejo un poema.

"The rat", by Charles Bukowski
From "Mockingbird Wish Me Luck" (1972)

---

The rat.

with one punch, at the age of 16 and 1/2,
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 gasps of 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
and then running down the stairway
just before the police arrived
some of us soldiers of the future
running through the 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. 3 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 4 or 5 times as big
but just as rotten
and the girls still spit on my
shadow, another war is building for another
reason, and 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, and 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.