"me against the world" by Charles Bukowski

I recently came across this poem, "me against the world", by Charles Bukowski (1920-1994) in the Best American Poetry 1994 compilation (Touchstone, 1994):


when I was a kid
one of the questions asked was,
would you rather eat a bucket of shit
or drink a bucket of piss?
I thought that was easy.
"that's easy," I said, "I'll take the
piss."
"maybe we'll make you do both,"
they told me.
I was the new kid in the
neighborhood.
"oh yeah," I said.
"yeah!" they said.
there were 4 of them.
"yeah," I said, "you and whose
army?"
"we won't need no army," the
biggest one said.
I slammed my fist into his
stomach.
then all 5 of us were down on
the ground fighting.
they got in each other's way
but there were still too many
of them.
I broke free and started
running.
"sissy! sissy!" they yelled.
"going home to mama?"
I kept running.
they were right.
I ran all the way to my house,
up the driveway and onto the
porch and into the
house
where my father was beating
my mother.
she was screaming.
things were broken on the floor.
I charged my father and started swinging.
I reached up but he was too tall,
all I could hit were his
legs.
then there was a flash of red and
purple and green
and I was on the floor.
"you little prick!" my father said,
"you stay out of this!"
"don't you hit my boy!" my mother
screamed.
but I felt good because my father
was no longer hitting my
mother.
to make sure, I got up and charged
him again, swinging.
there was another flash of colors
and I was on the floor
again.
when I got up again
my father was sitting in one chair
and my mother was sitting in
another chair
and they both just sat there
looking at me.
I walked down the hall and into
my bedroom and sat on the
bed.
I listened to make sure there
weren't any more sounds of
beating or screaming
out there.
there weren't.
then I didn't know what to
do.
it wasn't any good outside
and it wasn't any good
inside.
so I just sat there.
then I saw a spider making a web
in the window.
I found a match, walked over,
lit it and burned the spider.
then I felt better.
much better.


I was moved and took a liking to it immediately (and there are other gems in this compilation). It would appear as if this poem was inspired by Bukowski's real-life experience. As a child, he was often physically and verbally abused by his father, who was largely unemployed in the 1930s. His mother did not do anything to stop those beatings.

As a result, Bukowski became a socially-withdrawn child, and at the age of 13, picked up drinking at the urging of a friend whose father was an alcoholic surgeon. He remained an alcoholic pretty much for the rest of his life. As a teenager, he was socially awkward and was often made fun of by his peers. When he was old enough, Bukowski moved to New York City and worked a variety of jobs before establishing himself as a major American poet.

The angst and despair of the child in the poem is a reflection of the troubles besetting children in troubled families, especially those trapped in poverty. And in this poem, the child draws comfort from killing a spider in a cruel way. (Bukowski was not known to be abusive to people or animals. If anything, he had numerous love affairs and trysts with women and have used these experiences to write poetry).

This poem is beautiful and melancholy.