the night was beginning
and I was standing before the
plate glass window of a
restaurant
and in that window
was a roasted pig,
eyeless,
with an apple in its mouth.
poort damned pig.
poor damned me.
beyond the pig
inside there
were people
sitting at tables
talking, eating, drinking
I was not one of those people
I felt a kinship with the pig
we had been caught in the wrong place
at the wrong time
I imagined myself in the window
eyeless, roasted, the apple in my mouth
…
I walked away from the window
I walked to my room
I still had a room
as I walked to my room
I began to conjecture:
could I eat some paper?
some newspaper?
roaches?
maybe I could catch a rat?
a raw rat?
peel off the fur,
remove the intestines
remove the eyes
forego the head, the tail
…
I walked along.
I was so hungry that everything
looked eatable:
people, fireplugs, asphalt,
wristwatches … my belt, my shirt
…
I sat in a chair
I din’t turn on the light
I sat there and wondered if I was crazy
because I wasn’t doing anything
to help myself

the hunger stopped then
and I just sat there
then I heard it:
two people in the next room
copulating.
I could hear the bed spring
and the moans
I got up, walked out of the
room and back into the street.
but I walked in a different
direction this time
I walked away from the pig
in the window
but I thought about the pig
and I decided that I’d die first
rather than eat that
pig.
it began to rain
I looked up.
I opened my mouth and let in the rain
drops… soup from the sky...

― Charles Bukowski Tweet