On Love. Charles Bukowski

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      a liar or a

      lover?

      you’re neither! out, bum,

      out!

      . . . but baby!

       go back to O’Neill!

      I went to the door,

      softly closed it and walked away,

      thinking: all they want

      is a wooden Indian

      to say yes and no

      and stand over the fire and

      not raise too much hell;

      but you’re getting to be

      an old man, kiddo:

      next time play it closer

      to the

      vest.

I taste the ashes of your death

      the blossoms shake

      sudden water

      down my sleeve,

      sudden water

      cool and clean

      as snow—

      as the stem-sharp

      swords

      go in

      against your breast

      and the sweet wild

      rocks

      leap over

      and

      lock us in.

love is a piece of paper torn to bits

      all the beer was poisoned and the capt. went down

      and the mate and the cook

      and we had nobody to grab sail

      and the N.wester ripped the sheets like toenails

      and we pitched like crazy

      the bull tearing its sides

      and all the time in the corner

      some punk had a drunken slut (my wife)

      and was pumping away

      like nothing was happening

      and the cat kept looking at me

      and crawling in the pantry

      amongst the clanking dishes

      with flowers and vines painted on them

      until I couldn’t stand it anymore

      and took the thing

      and heaved it

      over

      the side.

to the whore who took my poems

      some say we should keep personal remorse from the

      poem,

      stay abstract, and there is some reason in this,

      but jezus:

      12 poems gone and I don’t keep carbons and you have

      my

      paintings too, my best ones; it’s stifling:

      are you trying to crush me out like the rest of them?

      why didn’t you take my money? they usually do

      from the sleeping drunken pants sick in the corner.

      next time take my left arm or a fifty

      but not my poems:

      I’m not Shakespeare

      but sometimes simply

      there won’t be any more, abstract or otherwise;

      there’ll always be money and whores and drunkards

      down to the last bomb,

      but as God said,

      crossing his legs,

      I see where I have made plenty of poets

      but not so very much

      poetry.

shoes

      shoes in the closet like Easter lilies,

      my shoes alone right now,

      and other shoes with other shoes

      like dogs walking avenues,

      and smoke alone is not enough

      and I got a letter from a woman in a hospital,

      love, she says, love,

      more poems,

      but I do not write,

      I do not understand myself,

      she sends me photographs of the hospital

      taken from the air,

      but I remember her on other nights,

      not dying,

      shoes with spikes like daggers

      sitting next to mine,

      how these strong nights

      can lie to the hills,

      how these nights become quite finally

      my shoes in the closet

      flown by overcoats and awkward shirts,

      and I look into the hole the door leaves

      and the walls, and I do not

      write.

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