The Fourth Bruce

I read it,

the fourth volume.

Eleven poems,

three short stories.

It started out with some lazy shit I would have written four years ago-

a ham-handed fusion of the Norse gods with the Greek,

tied together with fabricated meter.

Some of it was overly clever. Hell, maybe I did write it-

So much artifice, an irrelevant theme of stinging insects...

Who can remember every line?

Some of what followed was better.

Mobbs, I always want to throw you something

but I am afraid that you won't publish it

and I am afraid you will.

Good, I Detest Flamands

Somehow I ended up on a battlefield, Ypres I suppose,

though the year is now two thousand fourteen.

Like firecrackers or gunpowder,

at rare occasions in the night

a long forgotten bomb smiles at the air

and gives up the ghost.

Which explosions are the good ones?

Surely the ones that kill the other men, that fire

is the fire of god.

Asking one question asks another, it is said,

the opposite,

but that is a question that I cannot answer

without other questions.

God will not come in fury from the earth for me,

God wants me to eat olives and grow old.

Carmen 47

She lays on her side, her breath a smokestack,

A raincloud or a powerplant, and what am I?

I could sing a nursery rhyme, one hand

On my heart and the other on her hip,

But my voice changed and I forgot the words.

I walk through a forest with reddened eyes-

Death is a woman, so kiss me, my dear,

Tell me the things that a man likes to hear.

Bukowski no. 12

I was supposed to give a friend input on what he wrote.

Perhaps I even intended to write him notes in the margins,

to write a compliment to his vision and effort,

but there were other things on my mind.

I read what he wrote and I liked it,

but for the last seven months

I’ve been really fucked up about Cicero getting killed

so I didn’t know how much I could help.

Bukowski no. 11

So what if Shulgin died? It matters not.

Cancer took him, swift and sure as meter.

The handle of this coffee cup is steel.

It is true that men must die but not I,

not I.

I have stared into derelict mirrors,

My hate like an old strand of wheat pasta.

“No man can kill me!”I claim this loudly.

No man would wish to. This torch will burn out.

Still Shulgin is dead, my poor friend Sasha,

Who dreamed of a world that had never been.

Now the angels break bread with him and sing his songs.

Bukowski no. 10

spent the last thirty minutes explaining why Malcolm X is important to me

while my girlfriend picked at my flesh

why is the beer so limited

oh god.

Bukowski no. 9

Things changed a little I suppose.

I moved to New York. The time zone is different.

The cigarettes are more expensive but I still don’t smoke them.

I’ve got the collected fiction of Franz Kafka bound in black paper

sitting overtop the bathroom cupboard-and-mirror

and let me tell you

every time someone takes a shower, the book dies a little more-

the moisture slides up the spine.

I didn’t write much lately and I guess I’m supposed to care about it.

Really there was nothing going on. The earth went around the sun.

This woman I worked with, she had a boyfriend die

in a car accident with her, it sounded romantic.

Marquez fucking died.

When he went into the hospital I said it was impossible,

but he is dead. What do I care about her dead boyfriend?
I would trade a million dead men for another Marquez.

Hell I don’t know what to say about anything.

Mobbs I read your poem the other day and I liked it

but like I said

lately I’ve been reading a lot of Kafka.