-The fullback in the poem-

What wouldn't normally cross my mind

on any given morning are thoughts of Red Grange.

But reading Bukowski hawking

"Rossini, Mozart and Shostakovich"

after eating Japanese is always a good idea.

Red Grange was a fullback out of Chicago, where

the slaughterhouses worked overtime on whacking

the clueless cattle, electro-prodded
through the narrowing chutes to the end of the line.

Red's oldman worked the lumberyards somewhere near

Forksville, Pennsylvania— but Charles Bukowski

wrote his poem mentioning Red Grange upon

reading in the papers that he had died, incorporating

his name into the body of the poem which

didn’t elaborate on the career of the "Galloping Ghost"

nor even listening to Rossini, Mozart or Shostakovich, —

rather, eating Japanese, a red-bean ice cream dessert,

(his wife declines)

a war going on in the Gulf, smoking
cigarettes imported from India, counting

4 cats sleeping out of 6 cats total in the house

and news of the death of Red Grange

is simply caught-up in the long night's mix
which in turn becomes the poem.

after reading a selection from

Bukowski's "Last Night Of The Earth Poems"