Poetry, Thoughts, Photos, Songs

the girl outside the supermarket by Charles Bukowski

a very tall girl lifts her nose at me

outside a supermarket

as if I were a walking garbage

can; and I had no desire for her,

no more desire

than for a

phone pole.

what was her message?

that I would never see the top of her

pantyhose?

-

I am a man in his 50s

sex is no longer an aching mystery

to me, so I can’t understand

being snubbed by a

phone pole.

I’ll leave young girls to young

men.

-

it’s a lonely world

of frightened people,

just as it has always

been.

Alone with Everybody

by Charles Bukowski

the flesh covers the bone 
and they put a mind 
in there and 
sometimes a soul, 
and the women break 
vases against the walls 
and the men drink too 
much 
and nobody finds the 
one 
but keep 
looking 
crawling in and out 
of beds. 
flesh covers 
the bone and the 
flesh searches 
for more than 
flesh. 

there's no chance 
at all: 
we are all trapped 
by a singular 
fate. 

nobody ever finds 
the one. 

the city dumps fill 
the junkyards fill 
the madhouses fill 
the hospitals fill 
the graveyards fill 

nothing else 
fills. 

People as Flowers by Charles Bukowski

such singing’s going on in the

streets-

the people look like flowers

at last

-

the police have turned in their

badges

the army has shredded its uniforms and

weapons. there isn’t any need for

jails or newspapers or madhouses or

locks on the doors.

-

a woman rushes through my door.

TAKE ME! LOVE ME!

she screams.

-

she’s as beautiful as a cigar

after a steak dinner. I

take her.

-

but after she leaves

I feel odd

I lock the door

go to the desk and take the pistol

from the drawer. it has it’s own sense of

love.

LOVE! LOVE! LOVE! the crowd sings in the

streets.

-

I fire through the window

glass cutting my face and

arms. I get a 12-year-old boy

and old man with a beard

and a lovely young girl something like a

lilac.

-

the crowd stops singing to

look at me.

I stand in the broken window

the blood on my

face.

-

“this,” I yell at them, “is in defense of the

poverty of self and in defense of the freedom

not to love!”

-

“leave him alone,” somebody says,

“he is insane, he has lived the bad life for

too long.”

-

I walk into the kitchen

it down and pour a

glass of whiskey.

-

I decide that the only definition of

Truth (which changes)

is that it is that thing or act or

belief which the crowd

rejects.

-

there is a pounding at my

door. it is the same woman again.

she is as beautiful as finding a

fat green frog in the

garden.

-

I have 2 bullets left and

use them

both.

-

nothing in the air but

clouds. nothing in the air but

rain. each man’s life too short to

find meaning and

all the books almost a

waste.

-

I sit and listen to them

singing

I sit and listen to

them.