Taller No.8  25-Mayo-2015

Tallerista: Kris Vallejo

Asignación: Ensayo sobre un poema favorito del autor

DINOSAURIA, WE por Charles Bukowski

Born like this

Into this

As the chalk faces smile

As Mrs. Death laughs

As the elevators break

As political landscapes dissolve

As the supermarket bag boy holds a college degree

As the oily fish spit out their oily prey

As the sun is masked

We are

Born like this

Into this

Into these carefully mad wars

Into the sight of broken factory windows of emptiness

Into bars where people no longer speak to each other

Into fist fights that end as shootings and knifings

Born into this

Into hospitals which are so expensive that it's cheaper to die

Into lawyers who charge so much it's cheaper to plead guilty

Into a country where the jails are full and the madhouses closed

Into a place where the masses elevate fools into rich heroes

Born into this

Walking and living through this

Dying because of this

Muted because of this

Castrated

Debauched

Disinherited

Because of this

Fooled by this

Used by this

Pissed on by this

Made crazy and sick by this

Made violent

Made inhuman

By this

The heart is blackened

The fingers reach for the throat

The gun

The knife

The bomb

The fingers reach toward an unresponsive god

The fingers reach for the bottle

The pill

The powder

We are born into this sorrowful deadliness

We are born into a government 60 years in debt

That soon will be unable to even pay the interest on that debt

And the banks will burn

Money will be useless

There will be open and unpunished murder in the streets

It will be guns and roving mobs

Land will be useless

Food will become a diminishing return

Nuclear power will be taken over by the many

Explosions will continually shake the earth

Radiated robot men will stalk each other

The rich and the chosen will watch from space platforms

Dante's Inferno will be made to look like a children's playground

The sun will not be seen and it will always be night

Trees will die

All vegetation will die

Radiated men will eat the flesh of radiated men

The sea will be poisoned

The lakes and rivers will vanish

Rain will be the new gold

The rotting bodies of men and animals will stink in the dark wind

The last few survivors will be overtaken by new and hideous diseases

And the space platforms will be destroyed by attrition

The petering out of supplies

The natural effect of general decay

And there will be the most beautiful silence never heard

Born out of that.

The sun still hidden there

Awaiting the next chapter.

El Apocalípsis ha llegado, anuncia Bukowski con ronca fanfarria. No hay escape del claro panorama pintado por el poeta, quien a través de su óptica avinagrada (vida atormentada y oscurecida por el sufrimiento) nos relata el fin de la humanidad, desde su máquina del tiempo, que es este poema.

Escrito en 1993 por un Bukowski enfermo y viejo, no es difícil descifrar el porque de su actitud despectiva a todo lo relacionado con el contacto humano, su orden, sus instituciones y hasta la mera existencia del ser.

Todos somos animales fuera de control, todos nos arrastramos como culebras sólo por interés mezquino: ya nadie conversa en los bares! se horroriza el autor. El mundo cae a pedazos a medida que el relato va cobrando fuerza en este verso libre, pero hay un deje de amargura acumulada, que le confiere un viso mas oscuro de lo usual, dentro del estilo propio de Charles.

Lo veo como una despedida del mundo a su manera, un último escupitajo en la tinaja metálica donde tiene sumergida a la humanidad: El hospital que no le brindó servicio, el abogado que lo estafó, la chica bella que nunca aceptó sus avances. Toda aquella felicidad reservada, según el, para los guapos y los fuertes, y que le fué negada.

Con preocupación también podemos observar las inequívocas señales de nuestro tiempo en esta pieza, basta leer un periódico o sintonizar las noticias para considerar este poema como profético. Charles Bukowski, como pocos, vislumbra con facilidad el colapso de una sociedad que sigue dirigiéndose, desde aquel entonces, a la destrucción de si misma, con pasos de dinosaurio gigante.

Le creemos?