After Reading Bukowski

Ah Bukowski
You old dog
How do you do it?
How do you always make me feel better?

You confessed your trick –
‘No grand statement’
Which is fine
Because there can’t be
When you’re on this level of honesty
and when you’re celebrating
Like you do

He takes you there, Buk
Old Buk
To the string vest
Sweat
Beardiness
German slob
So German
Watching the Americans
Liking his pussy
Loving his drink
Tapping at the type-writer
Pre-empting critics
And playing

But he takes you there
To the memories
The stock images – whore, fighting sailor, roominghouse with cockroaches & crazy neighbour, naked co-ed, Hollywood party, drink, fire

But there’s something universal too
He saw because he did.

As he taps,
Shrugging
Experimenting
Grinning
Slugging
His cat lolling
His wife huffing
He smiles
and
We see

Your heart does not belong to you but to itself

Your heart eternises all that which makes it beat and beat without control or reason.
Your heart is the origin of the love that ties and reunites all
But your heart does not belong to you
but to itself.
From it the new creatures arise too,
Who will adorn and ravage the surface of the earth.
The earth is not mother but battlefield and graveyard
And for that man seeks refuge in vain
From birth to death.
But it is there where his heart leads him that he is born and dies at the same time,
He is and he is not
And finds, shelterless, the shelter he was anxious for.
Love reunites all things but each of us must disperse and divide
And be free
And, when he faces and suffers this stain that obscures perfection,
Man looks upwards to the unknown
And awaits with joy and confidence the unveiling of the unattainable.

Night Patterns

Night.
Solitude.
Mild tinnitus.
Radio 4 at a low volume.
The list of women unfucked a thought away.
Thrill of reading Perec
Contrasted with the frustrated tasks undone,
The old cassette tapes unlabelled,
The newspapers unread,
The teaching material unsorted,
Things from another time put down to collect dust,
Things unthrown away.

The list of women unfucked.

Estrangement

Music echoes within.
Large mirrors hanging on the walls,
three candles lighting the room
and without the wind howls.

The day was pale when we awoke.
Now it wears a purple cloak
and is menacing and it whispers.

Smoke forms a dense veil above us
and this veil we puff and we plunge into,
as though it were an idea.

Volumes in Scandinavian languages
scattered in the bookshelves
and the yearn for Spanish primitivism.

You speak and I don't respond.

There wasn't any music in the room.
We both are surprised but act as if all was well.
All we can say is subjective.
We don't even command this foreign language.
All we can speak of is ourselves.

It is needless to be polite if there is no love behind our words.
We engage in sex when we want to kill and be killed,
and afterwards it resolves into this:
tobacco, tea, a stained newspaper.
Maybe one day we will get married,
but be sure I won't say anything about this.
Nevermind.

It wasn't music: it was your voice;
you were singing instead of speaking
and I was thinking instead of feeling.
Now you're gone and I'm gone too,
but the melody remains.

My advice to you

Everything is available to ignore
I promised myself.
I'm feeling rough I'm feeling raw
In the prime of my life.
Acid-washed Guess with the leather patches
I'm wearing the white Diadora with the hoody that matches.
If I eat through anymore influences,
I'll get IBS or influenza.
If I leave the conversation before it ends
I'll never know what Lindsay said.
Lindsay bowled. I could not get the image out.

Right Now

Right now
I'm sitting in an Internet cafe
I'm too warm in my sweater and
My back's a little itchy.
I fucked last night
But another girl, a colleague, didn't accept my Facebook invite
Which will mean an uncomfortable situation at work.
I have bad posture.
The walls are light purple,
A big magnifying glass and the word search have been put on -
It looks as if it was by transfer.
I'm drinking a lot of Mars milkshakes recently -
I left four in a bag in Pret A Manger
And someone stole them.