i read bukowski
I have an original copy of Mocking Bird Wish Me Luck by Charles Bukowski, purchased at City Lights before I was born or maybe when I was too young to care. It as given to me on loan but never returned, because like the writer says “loaning books encourages theft.” (I have to look up that quote because I don’t remember who said it, only that I skimmed the article in the New York Times unable to concentrate on the words because of a whiskey hangover and too much time spent reading on the internet.) When it was given to me I never read it and I can’t remember why but I watched a documentary on Bukowski and heard him read with that stoic stern voice of his, that sad old man voice he seemed to possess all his life. But I’m reading it now and sharing is caring:
if we take–
if we take what we can see–
the engines driving us mad,
lovers finally hating;
this fish in the market
staring upward into our minds;
flowers rotting, flies web-caught;
riots, roars of caged lions,
clowns in love with dollar bills,
nations moving people like pawns;
daylight thieves with beautiful
nighttime wives and wines;
the crowded jails,
the commonplace unemployed,
dying grass, 2-bit fires;
men old enough to love the grave.These things, and others, in content
show life swinging on its rotten axis.But they’ve left us a bit of music
and a spiked show in the corner,
a jigger of scotch, a blue necktie,
a small volume of poems by Rimbaud,
a horse running as if the devil were
twisting his tail
over bluegrass and screaming, and then,
love again
like a streetcar turning the corner
on time,
the city waiting,
the wine and the flowers,
the water walking across the lake
and summer and winter and summer and summer
and winter again.
No Comments Yet