Autobiography no. 1

I was constantly playing games with language and history.
I knew that the people I spoke with did not understand,
so I would make dozens of references to Ovid in a night
and watch them blink away confusion so many times.

It is not exactly that I was contemptuous of them,
although I held them in slight regard.
In truth I do not know why my life was as it was.
Certainly I resented anyone who was friendly to me
and suspected them to be either idiotic or untrustworthy.

While I slept I was the only one alive
but each morning robbed me of that purity
and forced me to conjure up the world anew.

I was conscious that I was constantly creating reality,
that although it was convenient that I should encounter a woman
who looked liked Titian was painting her as she moved through her day
I must acknowledge the obvious artificiality of her existence.

There was a time when I thought she was what I had been searching for,
but she never displayed cruelty or fits of anger or wanton disregard
and because she had no flaws I knew that she could not be the Muse.

Bukowski no. 32

The moon was the size of my narcissism
and that would have impressed me a little,
but I knew the moon would go away if I waited.

I ate fish yesterday and I drank some black coffee.
I fell in love with a woman again and I did not mean to do this,
but that is the deal you make when you stare at Artemis.

The Woman Dies in This One

At this point in life, I was young and had not yet murdered anyone
and I was working security at this shitty dive bar
that served burgers until three in the morning.

She was the kind of woman you wanted just because she was an actress.
She did something else for a living and she lied more than anyone I ever met,
but in a good way.

It’s a terrible thing about being a man
but when you find a woman
who goes out of her way to make you smile
even when she is torn apart by danger
and sadness and poverty and neglect,
it makes you want her even if you wouldn’t have wanted her before.

She came in and sighed heavily and slid onto a barstool.
I didn’t know much about her except her name and face
and the way she blushed when I looked too long
and the way she twisted her chapstick
and the way that her life was drawn
to a tragedy like gravity,

She drank for a couple hours and no one bothered her and she left
and when she passed by me she gave me a hug goodbye
and pushed herself against me for longer than she had to
and her hands were burning me like the touch of people always did.
At this moment I would have smelled her hair if I could smell
but instead I was stuck there feeling those familiar needles on my skin.
I stopped breathing til she left, but she did not notice or mind.
She was beautiful and kind
and a few years later her husband pulled a trigger three times.
In a different universe she has four children
and they plant apple and plum trees and love everything,
but that is not the world that will have birds and flowers this spring.

Bukowski no. 31

The only lonely nights are the ones where
my friends are asleep. Or maybe they died.
Normal desires are somewhat circumscribed
But you don’t have to be a honeybee
To eat the hive.

Bukowski no. 30

I liked the way that she looked because she was wearing glasses.
I enjoyed her face and the metaphor but I knew I was taking it too far.
I looked at lenses and saw facets of understanding,
I looked at frames and saw the construction of a view of the world.
I knew she saw me through them and so when she smiled at me
I knew that her vision had been corrected, that without the glasses
I was a blurred monstrosity to her
and just because it was true I thought she believed it
so it made me uncomfortable when she wore contacts.

I thought I had run out of olives but I found another jar deep on a shelf
and I ate a few dozen
and the ones I didn’t eat stared at me from behind the glass,
but there’s got to be more to their lives than that.

Carmen 53

I told her that I had scurvy twice.
She laughed at me and told me not to lie.
She was just a waitress, not even mine,
But she smiled at me and sure that mattered
Some of the time.

I slowly fell into the frost and rime
But the air wasn’t cold so that thought died.
She moved across the floor smooth as her jeans.
Each time her legs moved I did not feel a thing.

Maybe that’s all lies, but how could I tell
While I leered at her thighs as they moved twice?
I thought she was a lie but what is a lie
When the one that feels it is barely alive?

Her legs stretched half the way up to heaven
But I knew I had to show up to work at eleven.

Bukowski no. 29

I don’t want to boil water. I am afraid I will forget it
although you are not likely to appear at my door.
If I burn up the pan I’ll have to use the other one
and I do not like the handle on it so I just won’t boil water
and then I’ll be hungry tomorrow too.

I could have made coffee or rice but the moon was almost full
and I felt it like I was shaving with a dull knife
and anyway I never turned the burner on
so the water sat there on the stove.

I thought about nights of us doing cocaine
and the way you’d crawl right in through my bedroom window
as if you weren’t twenty two years old
and I remember all the nights you never came
and the moonlight beats upon my windowpane.