A Plausible Finish, by Charles Bukowski

There ought to be a place to go
when you can’t sleep
or if you’re tired of getting drunk,
and the grass doesn’t work anymore.
And I don’t mean go on
to hash or cocaine,
I mean a place to go besides
a death that’s waiting,
and a love that doesn’t work anymore.

There ought to be a place to go
when you can’t sleep
besides a tv set or a movie
or a newspaper
or a novel about a woman
with her clit in her throat.

It’s not having that place to go
that creates the people in madhouses
and the suicides.

I suppose what most people do
when there isn’t any place to go
is to go to someplace or something
that hardly satisfies them,
and this ritual tends to sandpaper them
into a dullness where they can relax
without hope.

Those faces you see every day on the streets
were not created
entirely without thought;
be kind to them:
They have
escaped.