Bukowski no. 2

Before she slams the door, she yells out at me,

“Be a man!”

In anger, I briefly consider toppling my bookshelves over,

But do not force Gogol and Goncharov to fall into Borges and Cervantes.

I want to ask about the men who drink their families into bankruptcy,

The men who beat jealous bruises into their lovers,

The men enthralled in evil who assault children,

The men who remember nothing of war except the color of France’s soil.

I sit silently on my bed.

I wonder which she wishes me to be.

Carmen 43

“With the right wind,” he said, “you can catch the scent
of the flowers from up to seven miles away.”
The jasmine sprawled white on the eastern wall
of the last small house he owned before her eighth birthday,
before he began to move away from the sea.

Bukowski no. 1

Between savagery

and honesty

falls the shadow.

I won’t break his jaw just because

you left me for the smiles he gave you

and now you talk to him,

but I’ll have six more vodkas and feel young again.

When you finally die it will be from my carving, curling knives,

or maybe it is my flesh beneath the steel.

I can no longer tell.