Back to the machine gun

I awaken about noon and go out to get the mail in my old torn bathrobe. I’m hung over hair down in my eyes barefoot gingerly walking on the small sharp rocks in my path still afraid of pain behind my four-day beard. the young housewife next door shakes a rug out of her window […]

As The Sparrow

To give life you must take life, and as our grief falls flat and hollow upon the billion-blooded sea I pass upon serious inward-breaking shoals rimmed with white-legged, white-bellied rotting creatures lengthily dead and rioting against surrounding scenes. Dear child, I only did to you what the sparrow did to you; I am old when […]

As The Poems Go

as the poems go into the thousands you realize that you’ve created very little. Charles Bukowski —

Are You Drinking?

washed-up, on shore, the old yellow notebook out again I write from the bed as I did last year. will see the doctor, Monday. “yes, doctor, weak legs, vertigo, head- aches and my back hurts.” “are you drinking?” he will ask. “are you getting your exercise, your vitamins?” I think that I am just ill with […]

Another Day

having the low down blues and going into a restraunt to eat. you sit at a table. the waitress smiles at you. she’s dumpy. her ass is too big. she radiates kindess and symphaty. live with her 3 months and a man would no real agony. o.k., you’ll tip her 15 percent. you order a […]

And The Moon And The Stars And The World

Long walks at night– that’s what good for the soul: peeking into windows watching tired housewives trying to fight off their beer-maddened husbands. Charles Bukowski

An Almost Made Up Poem

I see you drinking at a fountain with tiny blue hands, no, your hands are not tiny they are small, and the fountain is in France where you wrote me that last letter and I answered and never heard from you again. you used to write insane poems about ANGELS AND GOD, all in upper […]

Alone With Everybody

the flesh covers the bone and they put a mind in there and sometimes a soul, and the women break vases against the walls and the men drink too much and nobody finds the one but keep looking crawling in and out of beds. flesh covers the bone and the flesh searches for more than […]

About My Very Tortured Friend, Peter

he lives in a house with a swimming pool and says the job is killing him. he is 27. I am 44. I can’t seem to get rid of him. his novels keep coming back. “what do you expect me to do?” he screams “go to New York and pump the hands of the publishers?” […]

A smile to remember

we had goldfish and they circled around and around in the bowl on the table near the heavy drapes covering the picture window and my mother, always smiling, wanting us all to be happy, told me, “be happy Henry!” and she was right: it’s better to be happy if you can but my father continued […]

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