each man must realize
that it can all disappear
very quickly:
the cat, the woman, the job,
the front tire,
the bed, the walls, the room;
all our necessities
including love,
rest on foundations of sand --
and any given cause,
no matter how unrelated:
the death of a boy in Hong Kong
or a blizzard in Omaha ...
can serve as your undoing.
all your chinaware
crashing to the kitchen floor,
your girl will enter
and you'll be standing, drunk,
in the center of it and she'll ask:
my god, what's the matter?
and you'll answer: I don't know,
I don't know ...
--Charles Bukowski
(pull a string, a puppet moves ...)
