Night

-A woman with a reckless heart appears:

Time halts as she sprawls across fine cotton

Bed sheets. Place a cigarette in her hand

And fifteen-year Scotch on the end table.

Goosebumps make their way from ankle to hip.

The words of her language are soft as rain.

Two simple earrings hang near sharpened teeth.

She knows so well the value of beauty

That she does not hide her breasts from lamplight-

She grins and exhales smoke thicker than chains.

She licks her lips, glides forward to my waist,

And looks up at me with opaline eyes:

You know the rest. She will leave with the cold morning,

Then I will write a far better poem than this one.

The Last Man on Earth

Though starvation is the constant worry of life,

the scourge of solitude can easily be as dangerous to the living.

Would it have been different if I somehow had maintained

a miraculous radio for all these passed years and kept in contact

with some few other survivors, scattered o’er the globe?

“Giovanni,” I would say, “I woke today and was hungry

and alone. I feel like dying. I must go get water and check the sky.”

He would sympathize and tell me a story of his departed grandsons.

“Sakuntala,” I would say, “I woke today and was hungry

and alone. I feel like dying. I must go get water.”

She would sympathize and sing for me.

I do not know if a very good radio would have made things different.

My eyes have faded and I can no longer read the books on my shelves;

two or three words emerge then disappear in spirals.

It would be better if every part of my library was replaced

with a facsimile in a foreign language, for in that desolation

there would at least be some solace for the educated.

But the words are not scrambled, they are lost.

What is the season? Somewhere between spring and summer,

if my reckoning is accurate, but there are not meadows,

no birds or blue-corn skies to see. It has all been broken

somehow; I know not how. The world is grey

and it has been years since I glimpsed a cockroach.

Now, without humans, they are driven to the fens.

For this day I saved a can of pinto beans, a can of sliced carrots,

and a can of new potatoes. The idea reminded me of being young.

For dessert, a can of pears (lite, packed in water).

If you gave me a million words, I couldn’t tell you

what a fine dinner that meal was to me.

I was eating the pear halves and the pear halves

ran out. They were packed in water but I drank every drop

and there was not anyone to share it with.

Now everything is gone. I miss my sisters.

I hope that somewhere there are purple flowers and happy granddaughters.

A Romance

I was above her, looking in her eyes.

-My dear, I will want to harm you, I said.

-I do not want you to hurt me, she said.

-Though I will not hurt you, I will want to.

Now, come to my arms and embrace a savage man.

Qualis artifex pereo

How has it come to this? So short a time ago

I had all that could be wanted, but I thought too frequently

of art. I considered my enemies too rarely.

The immortals punish vanity, as I have often proved.

Of my mother I will not speak, here where the trees are tall and green

and forgiving of faults; they who have outlasted storms

are contemptuous of their wind-broken relations.

I have walked the path of many who have died on unfair blades,

and so am unsurprised to find that my fate is similar.

Shall I be damned for necessary violence

or for flames I never cast upon my fair city?

Are those hoof-beats? Epaphroditus, I have not the courage

that my task demands. I must ask a final service.

Quickly now, I can hear the horses!

The knife.

Thank you for your kindness, old friend.

Tell me that my songs will be remembered.

Alexander Magnus

I like the taste of cayenne pepper, cheap wine in one-gallon jars,

loud music and the way that hearts of strong men wrestle against the knife,

but what I really like is a beautiful woman that I don’t love.

If she is proportioned as in pornography or reality, it is no matter.

It is only important that my emotions are not muddled with my memory,

it is only that the body of this woman can never be confused with my mind.

Have I seen beauty?

Yes, in the unmarried child of India who shames the bride at her own wedding,

the daughter of Florida, living in islands of the sea, who is more lovely than the sun,

and also my eyes have found the foam-born as she plants a garden and sharpens a spear.

One day history named a man Raphael,

and admired the master that transferred

a divine form onto suffocated canvas-

some years later, the world has forgotten his biography.

I am not pious. I resurrect Raphael for a moment

and whisper promises into his ear

as the Christ was once tempted upon a barren mountain.

Primed colors are on canvas, the sky is blue,

her flesh is obscured by the sun.

Unread Pages

You wore something, else I should remember rather more of the story.

As it was, I remember your hair pinned up so that your neck

was exposed softly while it gestured at the sun,

the calm way you walked in beauty

through parts of an afternoon, and I am happy

that you are in the heart of another-

not because this means that I can never have you,

but because this means that I can never hurt you.

For Israel

My friend, if I could take upon myself

Your burden, I would do you that favor;

I too have heard despair knock on my door

While forgotten dreams held me as captive

To their caprices, and then awoken

To find that dark fantasy just as real

As the lamented dead in newspapers.

Is your body imprisoned by your pain

And memories? Oh, if there were solace

In a blade or crashing automobile,

I have no doubt that you may choose that course;

I beg you not to perish before I find death.

You saved my life, how could I bear your funeral?

Concerning Evidence

The box is about nine inches square and four inches tall;

the material is a cheap synthetic brown leather.

It is hinged and within it are many torn and ruined pieces of paper,

as well as empty plastic wrappers that once held now-forgotten chemicals.

These torn and rootless scraps are on ruled notebook paper

or the back of envelopes, or upon napkins- drafts written in pen

when my black notebooks were out of reach.

I shredded them during a fit of madness, some months ago.

My demon love was in the other room

but eventually came to investigate the sounds of tearing and my sobs.

Among these fragments, an unused line from an early draft of my Furies poem:

“the prefect Orestes descended,” then from number 15 of my Carmina,

“my fingers in your hair” and “wondered how,”

then I find the only needle I ever put into my arm,

then a picture of my face and shoulders

taken when I was fifteen and still brimful of lust and rage.

Immediately after I throw the box in the dumpster, none of this will have occurred.

Bukowski no. 8

After the cigarettes, there is nothing left but sunrise.

The dark becomes filtered and blue

and the Asian lady next door will soon be going to work.

Once a friend asked me, “Why do women like clichés?”

I had no answer for him on that day, but now,

as the leaves are black and the dew is light on the grass,

I understand. After a woman is charmed,

she believes that the world contains no other women.

Walden 2.01

At present, I have acquired few of the supplies that I shall be taking into the forest. I have secured permission to live on several acres of land. I have no assets to speak of, but enjoy (for a while longer) a very modest income.

I was offered use of a tent, but refused because of the shelter’s weight (this was when my plan involved moving through a National Forest). I am hopeful that this charity will be extended again, for if it is, I shall have satisfied the need for shelter. I will have to purchase a tarp, and much cordage. This should not cost more than twenty-five dollars.

I have acquired a very good knife called a Mora, after the Swedish town in which the style originated. The blade is good thick steel, the tang is three-quarters of the grip. I do not own a hone or multi-tool, and will have to purchase these things. I hope to get them for less than thirty dollars, and that should get me a multi-tool good for five or more years.

I have purchased a marvelous water filter, called a Lifestraw. It has no moving parts and weighs only two ounces, and filters out particulates and contaminates that are larger than 0.2 microns: good for 1k liters (a year for an active average-sized adult male). The land on which I will stay has running water within its rights, and so I shall have no worry of thirst. For my fires, I will use a flint and steel- cheap, yet to be bought.

For sleeping arrangements, I will have a sleeping bag with a mat beneath it ( I hope to claim ownership of the sleeping bag I used in my youth, red, with the name PARKER written at one end to contrast it with PATRICK’s sleeping bag). Because my camp is semi-permanent, I may bring a pillow in place of bundled clothes.

For the disposal of waste, a trench tool and a certain amount of lye will suffice to ward off noxious vermin and disease. The spade I will purchase, the lye I can acquire without cash via an acquaintance.

These scarce debits considered, I come to sustenance, which is the primary concern of every life. Though in later years I may become a hermit in earnest, that life is not my current goal. There is a lake not far from where I will sleep, where I may get fish: if I choose this course, the rod and reel and tackle and necessary governmental licenses will cost perhaps seventy-five dollars. I do not think that I will plant much food (it is too late for potatoes) but still I may hoe a dozen rows to harvest cabbage and spinach and the other fruits of the cold months.

So how shall I eat? In short, my diet will be very simple. For my meals: rice and beans, or peanut butter, or bulk sugar, or vitamin-enriched protein powder. To supplement this, tablets containing ascorbic acid. If I can live on two dollars of food a day, with a ration of salt, then by mathematics I can live for a year on less than Eight Hundred Dollars- and what do the poor pay for their walls?

I will place my food stores in airtight plastic containers, and bury them in the ground.

As for books, will be sad to exile myself from the Library. With me I will take, at least, the Metamorphoses of Ovid (trans. Melville), The Aeneid of Virgil (t. Mandelbaum), the Iliad and Odyssey of Homer (t. Lattimore), The Divine Comedy (t. Longfellow), The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, Notes From Underground, The Moon is Down, and Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail 1972. Small a library as it is, I will have to water-proof it.

Essential things are small and attainable. This more than any other thing I seek to demonstrate to myself. I know a number of nurses, doctors, lawyers, engineers, professors, pharmacists, teachers- their compensation staggers me. Can a man really be fed for three months upon one day of their salary?

I want to live, and I can afford to live. I reach this economic moment by luck, favoritism, and kindness. It may be that I already have the answers to my questions, but I will need to hear the echo in order to believe.

Bukowski no. 7

When I woke this morning, the sky was pouring down rain.

I was not wearing a shirt, and I walked out my door

and down the stairs and the air growled one long time like a dreaming wolf.

All over my body, my hair stood up like I had a first shot of vodka

or saw a water moccasin, and for the duration of the thunder I was the storm;

electricity jolted across the surface of my skin and I felt everything.

Suddenly I begin shivering from the cold.

My apotheosis is incomplete-

the overflowing gutters are boring,

the clouds are not nearly dark enough,

even the touch of the rain is now like a woman who has stayed too long.

I walk up the stairs and into my door and dry off with a black towel.

Is it really three fucking hours until they open the bar?

A Profession

What do I do? I encage a spirit

In a space too small to lay down or stand,

And I give the prisoner cold poisons

Or else toxins to quicken its slow blood,

And from time to time I pierce through its skin

With pins or swords or flame-heated needles:

In tortured screams I find the art that was foretold.

A Painting

I told her once that I had a poetic ambition,

that one day I would write a still-life.

Each rind-tough pore of the orange,

the texture of the skull where eyelids would be,

the entrancing bulb of an opening flower…

coarse woodgrain on the table tells the story of rain

that did not fall one summer, the flower

is given to a woman taken before July by typhoid,

the skull is my own. There are no defects in the orange,

but I starved. I never learned to like the taste of citrus.

Rinne

After I die and am reborn anew-

Let me be a serpent with deadly lips,

A hatchling hawk that breathes through three slow days,

Or a clam tossed by waves upon dry land.

Make an inchworm, but never this again.

A Feather

Though you can be displeased with conclusions,
I urge you to accept wind that scours,
Crumbling stones, sand that digs until it blinds:

If, by chance, desolation is hated-
Noble friends, do not believe that my hands

Built this desert, nor that it will disappear;

If what has been shown is not beautiful,

I will give you trees on cold spring mornings

Blowing dry flame as kisses on the boughs-

Wrens die underneath the claws of housecats.

I become tall in dark, ruined landscapes.

An Echo

I have come to this peak to speak in anger.

Far above the land, a man may earn the attention of gods.

If I wished to simplify my grievance,

I suppose the universe was the beginning-

I cannibalize a few stars and make my blood,

I paraphrase a little.

I am disgusted by variance because it imitates the impossible:

it is a lie, wearing a face bold like the invaders that come over the sea

and leave shepherds to tend hilly stretches of rock for ten thousand dawns.

I despise this world for reasons that are mostly petty.

My rage consumes those around me but still

is almost nothing; oaks fall on windy days and on their leaves

the truth is inscribed, but the interpretation is lost

or else has been intentionally demolished.

Where then in this rubble dwells mighty works, or the fabled King of kings?

Where in these poisoned rivers are the Naiads splashing?

Nothing is fit for carrion here in the shadow of the mountain,

but do not worry your brave and circling heads, you vultures,

soon enough a meal can be made of Narcissus.

The Black Sea

The god seen when steel finishes a life,

The weaving threads that form a tapestry,

The woman starving on a desert isle;

The poet dies amid barbarians.

Threshing

Move your hands. Dry your eyes. You have earned pain.

You think that reapers spare a pretty face

Or care that grain did not fulfill its dreams?

Perfume from a Dress

The irretrievable always compels.

Paintbrushes transform life to memory;

Memories hang on cold museum walls.

The walls persist for archaeologists-

The gods of sand long ago claimed the rest.

Dust and time will soon dominate the earth.

Kiss me on these bones of ancient cities,

Kiss me now near this new moon, immortal,

Kiss me for hatred, or to frustrate doom.

Your beauty cannot be borne, even in darkness.

Dispel this madness, blindfold me with lust. Kiss me.

Carmen 46

When I finally marshaled sufficient courage to grasp the tail of the lioness,
I reached out to touch emptiness. Behind me: the rustling grass.

A Feast

They sit on metal benches. The waves striking the craft sway bodies and rifles. The spray of saltwater occasionally stings an unguarded eye or skinned knuckle. One man gazes intently at what can only be a palm-sized portrait of a lover: the red filter fastened over his flashlight’s lens makes his anguish safe and private. Other men write letters to persons unknown; when finished the papers are folded and placed into packets secreted within an interior jacket pocket. A few play cards-the game seems to be understood by the gamblers, but is utterly incomprehensible to an observer- aided again by reddened light; they pass a flask around the circle of their merry band, their cheeks warm although spring is new in the world.

A man longs for the woodlots of his boyhood- soft whistling emerges, imitating the sparrow, the robin, the thrush: in fact, nearly all the humble birds of his native land. Somewhere a fish of interminable size jumps; the splash is scarcely heard. A seabird flies above and makes its call and suddenly on this night of a crescent moon a sound pierces through the air. A man begins whetting his bayonet. The hone and steel are louder than can be believed. SCREECH, SCREECH, SCREECH: he continues to sharpen the pyramidal edges, honoring the last living wonder of the ancient world.

Quickly the other men cease their activities: the woman evaporates into a waterproof case, letters are signed, the cards are packed away, the only bird nearby is a gull. Even the man muttering repetitive prayers to his God tracked with rosary beads is shaken by this sudden silence. What remains? The sharpness of a bayonet. The anticipation of the surf. The dawn. 

Solipsism

This is not literature, it is abandonment.

A man can live long enough to have nothing left,

to exhaust generosity, to find himself alone in the world.

In a few months the lease on my apartment will expire

and I will have nowhere to go.

I have no right to ask favors of anyone, and so I will not.

I have only survived this long by taking advantage of the kindness of women,

but they can’t care about someone who doesn’t care about himself.

I suppose it will be sometime in the month of June, then.

Twenty six years old.

It seems like such a waste.

Sour

I never knock on doors.

I started walking around my town, a few weeks past;

I had become very lonely.

Suddenly the automobile of the woman that I love

became repetitively parked in front of a house

that I knew to be populated with assholes.

Over time, the other cars left and did not return, save hers.

So I started walking in the early hours of the morning

in order to be more healthy,

and time after time, random patterns took me to that street.

She swore to me that nothing was going on.

She drives a car and I walk on my feet,

and still every time I make my feet walk to the house, her car is there.

So this is what you want out of life?

Some smarmy piece of shit who doesn’t see his own children?

Someone who will buy you chemicals enough to bury your conscience?

You are fucking welcome.

Immune

I notice that I rarely despise her

For her personality or actions:

It is her contrived image that I hate.

Why should she mingle with those simpletons?

She laughs when a joke is not humorous,

Takes free drugs ‘til conversation interests,

Then is confused when I am furious.

She desires the peasants’ adoration

And wonders why my love is not the same.

Why should I pretend inferiority?

They are beneath her, so they grovel. Shall I?

When I murder her lovers one by one

The police will never find a pattern.

She cannot betray me – she thinks that they are dead.

Atropa

The cat was white with a beige blaze between the eyes.

I wanted to name her “Lesbia” but the name was refused

for vague reasons. Instead I called her Atropis - thread cutter.

My lover left me and I forgot the face of my pet;

two years later her claws still scar my palms.

She is lost to the wild but songbirds know her name.

Carmen 45

This one, she eats when she is not hungry.

She finds her dinner partners in public,

Entrances with charms and musical skill,

Then sits coyly at their kitchen tables.

Though the fare is meager, she devours it.

Observe, Lesbia. Count differences.

Remember your predecessors.

You Fell Ill Twenty Seven Years Ago

The transmigration of souls brings solace

On these bleak days. The sky began weeping

Before the moment of his death. Rumbling

Discontent spreads, the walls begin to shake.

Now I see my labyrinthine brother,

He smiles at my footsteps; still he is blind.

Once he saw all things that had ever been

In a phase of the moon, and afterward

He could no longer find a woman there.

Jorge, was it a mercy that you died

Before my birth? Were you waiting for me?

Is it peculiar that we share so much,

Or am I to find answers in layers,

Like the hexagons of a library

Where I have spent my life reading one book?

Luis, your work is composed of brilliance:

Clever indirection of common thought,

Solemn touching of myth upon a page;

The manner in which words can tessellate

And change meanings in earlier stories-

Did you predict or prefigure my life?

Borges, my favorite film critic died today-

But always your ghost haunts, and no others.

Is it black magic or an absolute truth

That your face will greet mine in silver mirrors?

A Ruin

Butterfly, with this stone I grind you down

Like the Balisong I lost in a storm

While I wandered making peace with thunder.

I am sorry to fold you so tightly,

To visit my agony on your wings,

But the land is poisoned- it will choke you.

Should I allow eggs to be laid, knowing

That your progeny will be hideous?

At time’s end, monsters rear their many heads

But you are pure, lovely: I will free you from pain. 

Are You Fair?

I whisper to you that I leave your side

Because nature has called me in the night,

Untangle my toes from yours, kiss your hand,

Wince as the carpet turns to cheap-laid tile,

Become more comfortable, wash my hands, and return

But you are gone. I become quite frantic

Until the fog is shaken from my mind.

Now I recall the place you have chosen:

The mountains you hope will be your mother,

A town of strangers, not indiscretions-

But no, this has not happened. You were here

When the sun was setting, went for a drink,

And then… Well I do not know what happened.

You sleep alone, or you are comforted-

Let me know which, when the sun rises on your eyes.

Cowards

I.

Before a couple hours back, I never got kicked out of a place

without doing something first. Oh sweet lord but it happened

today though and you should have seen it.

Man I tell you I was as drunk as most people have ever been.

I was positively blind, stumbling around town

without a drink of water or a dollar from 6 p.m. to 2 a.m.

II.

So I’m walking down the sidewalk on the main road

and the way spring gets frigid in the early morning is sobering me up.

Out of nowhere I hear my girl’s song playin’ real loud out of this white house

with a bunch of cars all in the yard (I say she’s my girl but she isn’t any more)

so I walk on up and knock on the door,

and no one answers: but they’re awake and it’s the South,

and I’ve often been inside, years ago in happier seasons

(and talked at great length about music on the patio too)

so I walk on in, grab the one clean glass out of the cupboard to the left of the sink,

pour myself a cool drink of water and wet my tongue.

She’s here, wearing a new dress (if she wants compliments,

she wears a dress for strangers and enjoys their bankrupt praise)

but I don’t talk to anyone, I just look down at the tiles on the kitchen floor.

I notice people are staring at me a little but it ain’t like I’m stealing

something. I finish the glass I poured, then get myself

some more water from the tap and drink it down,

then more, then another glassful,  and then this girl I don’t know walks up

like she knows who I am- she tells me I’m not welcome.

I say, “Hold up a minute ma’am, now maybe you don’t know my name

and I understand that, but I swear I’m just getting a drink of water

and when my thirst is gone I’ll be hitting the road.”

She says that won't fly and I have to get gone,

then this bastard walks up and says hello.

Well it is his house, I know, but he stole my love a year ago

and spirited her off to several mediocre concerts,

so I can seize some city-provided water today.

I always smile when I see him, so I smile and tilt my chin at him.

“Hey boyo, how nice to see you on this fine evening.”

He looks quite uncomfortable and shifts in his jeans,

“You know you can’t be here, man,” he says, “you weren’t invited.”

I chuckle in an exaggerated way, holding my stomach with my left hand.

“Well do you know my address? Might have gotten lost in the mail.

And did you use the right stamps? They won’t send it

if you don’t use the right stamps. My dad works for the post office, you see,

so I guess I’d say I know all about that kind of thing.

How many days ago did you invite folks over?

Like I was telling your gal over there (she’s kissing on another girl now, right on)

I was just getting some water from the tap, I’ve been walkin’ miles and miles

and they don’t have fountains set up around much of this city.”

To his credit, he ignores what I say though it is both plausible and true.

He says to me, “Why are you here? This is my house, you can’t be here.”

Three dozen people dance in the living room and no one else is in the kitchen.

I reply-

"Man I tell you I walked ten miles today without a drop to drink,

and this time of night I can’t just knock on a person’s door who I don’t know

‘cause they’re liable to shoot me two times with a pump twelve gauge,

but if you don’t want me inside I know that’s cool man.

Let me get a drink of water though, I’m dying here.

You don’t have to like me as a person but come on, give a man a drink?

Can’t refuse me that, that’s inhumane, that is!"

He leans in close to me, puts his hand on my arm, and says

“I’ll get you a cup to go, but you need to go outside soon, okay?”

I shrug my shoulders and push his hand off me, say to him- "Keep your hands off."

I slightly incline my head, pull my leather jacket on, and walk out the door.

There are two brick columns in front of the house connected by a fence.

The column I lean against is cracked but not broken.

There’s a tire iron as long as my forearm on top of the pillar.

I take my jacket off and cover it.

I guess the gal that lives there got bored with the girl she was kissing,

because she comes out of the door and starts trying to eject me from the open air.

I still don’t know her name so I don’t pay much attention. 

He comes outside and hands me a fast food cup full to the damn top with water,

tells the girl to go on in. I take a sip and smirk at him. He leans on the other column.

He asks when I’ll be going, now that I’ve got water.  I throw the act on again. I say-

"Hell man I don’t really know, had nothing to drink for hours and hours

and you’re a country boy like me, you know I can’t just drink six glasses of water

then hike my happy ass for five miles without puking my guts out ‘til the cops come."

I think about the sound of teeth hitting rain-soaked moss.

He talks for a certain amount of time. I ignore him. My love comes outside

and looks angry upon discovering me there. I never go where I don’t want to be seen

but I’m learning that others don’t always follow this rule, especially faithless women.

She gets a cigarette lighter from her automobile and goes back inside.

He asks when I’ll be going and I let all my breath out then say-

“Have I offended you? Have I done anything wrong?

Have I said a coarse or cruel phrase to your friends tonight,

or pushed someone’s head against a wall?

Have I threatened anyone, or cheated at cards?”

I know he hates me, but he looks embarrassed somehow.

I keep staring at his nasal septum and thinking of the way

that cartilage can shatter like a daydream.

I pull my jacket on slowly, without breaking the spell.

I grab the lapels and shake the leather forward, tight against my back.

I say to him, “You know they hate me and not you, only because they know

what I have done and not what you have done.

You’re no different from me but you’re a lot fucking dumber

and that’s the reason why she’s here today.”

He looks like he will be brave when his balls drop down

and he finally can take a woman or grow a beard properly.

I pick up the tire iron and throw it to the ground, right at his feet

and man you should have seen that slimy motherfucker’s face.