"don't come round but if you do..."

yeah sure, I'll be in unless I'm out don't knock if the lights are out or you hear voices or then I might be reading Proust if someone slips Proust under my door or one of his bones for my stew, and I can't loan money or the phone or what's left of my car though you can have yesterday's newspaper an old shirt or a bologna sandwich or sleep on the couch if you don't scream at night and you can talk about yourself that's only normal; hard times are upon us all only I am not trying to raise a family to send through Harvard or buy hunting land, I am not aiming high I am only trying to keep myself alive just a little longer, so if you sometimes knock and I don't answer and there isn't a woman in here maybe I have broken my jaw and am looking for wire or I am chasing the butterflies in my wallpaper, I mean if I don't answer I don't answer, and the reason is that I am not yet ready to kill you or love you, or even accept you, it means I don't want to talk I am busy, I am mad, I am glad or maybe I'm stringing up a rope; so even if the lights are on and you hear sound like breathing or praying or singing a radio or the roll of dice or typing – go away, it is not the day the night, the hour; it is not the ignorance of impoliteness, I wish to hurt nothing, not even a bug but sometimes I gather evidence of a kind that takes some sorting, and your blue eyes, be they blue and your hair, if you have some or your mind – they cannot enter until the rope is cut or knotted or until I have shaven into new mirrors, until the world is stopped or opened forever.

© Charles Bukowski