Bukowski no. 20

Eric has been my friend for a long time but I’m not sure if we ever have liked each other much.

“Listen,” he said over the noise from the bar. “I know someone and told her all about you, and she really wants to meet you.”

“First off, the answer is no. Also, what exactly is wrong with her, and why the hell are you always trying to set me up with women?”

He furrowed his eyebrows in concentration and looked at his nearly empty glass of rum. “There’s nothing wrong with her, you’d like her. Never been married, mentions art and all that shit in random conversation all the time, doesn’t believe in God or the Republican Party. Has a job. Reads books.”

He drank the rest of his rum and the ice hit his teeth.

He said “Oh, and I try to set you up with women because every time you drink you damn near cry about how goddamn lonely you are or at least you won’t shut up about it for an hour or two.”

I had just gotten a fresh glass of beer and I stared at it. I could tell you how it looked but it was like every other pint of beer in the world.

I said “Get fucked, man. Sometimes I think you hate them. Not exactly, uh, responsible human behavior. Kinda like telling someone to roll around in poison ivy for a while, you know?”

“Well sue me for trying to do a friend a favor. You should meet her though. You’d like her. Her name is Athena, I’ll give you her number. Hell you have that weekly rant where you say that, how do you phrase it? ‘The aspects of the divine are constantly among us, but we do not notice,’ is that it? You give speeches more than anyone I know, I’m just saying. You can’t pass up someone named for a goddess without giving her a shot.”

I laughed.

“I don’t want a goddess. They’re dangerous. I don’t want any of these good women that you periodically try to condemn to me, either. I had good women before and it didn’t turn out so well for them. I want broken women- drug addict waitresses who make three grand a month and never have money, drunks that fuck fifty men and sixty women a year, the ones with razorblade scars on their thighs and hearts, the ones-”

"Jesus!" he broke in, "Why are you so motherfucking lonely then? You know thirty of those women already."

He shook his head, stood, and walked away to get the attention of the nearest bartender.

I looked at my beer again and softly said

"Yeah, but they all throw their cigarette butts on the ground."

Bukowski no. 19

I knew about all sorts of recent happenings that now held no interest to me.
As a younger man I would have talked all about them to anyone who'd listen-
The flag of the United States had been raised in Havana after decades of tension,
a century-old gold mine in Colorado had spilled its poison and fish were dying,
archaeologists found the gate to the ancient city of Gath where once mighty Goliath grew,
legions of innocents died yearly across the globe to famine and violence-
these were the things I knew.

I didn't know how to make my mother proud of me,
or how to stop reading Hamlet all the goddamn time.

The world will drown you if you let it and sometimes even if you can swim
you will drown anyway because the ocean is a woman and the earth is a woman.
She kills us because she cannot tell the difference between her children
and the demons that destroy her but even if she could tell the difference
there is no guarantee that she would give a damn.

Bukowski no. 18

But I guess that was what life was

you collect blue jay feathers when you can

and the woman you love goes home at night to another man

and you end up knee deep in vodka nearly sleeping

next to a woman you do not love in a recliner and she says

I like to feel your arms around me

don’t let go darling

and you say

I won’t darling don’t worry

I won’t