she’s young, she said,
but look at me,
I have pretty ankles,
and look at my wrists, I have pret
wrists

washed—up, on shore, the old yello
out again
I write from the bed
as I did last
year.

the illusion is that you are simpl
reading this poem.
the reality is that this is
more than a
poem.

I pick up the skirt,
I pick up the sparkling beads
in black,
this thing that moved once
around flesh,

god I got the sad blue blues,
this woman sat there and she
said
are you really Charles
Bukowski?

we are always asked
to understand the other person’s
viewpoint
no matter how
out—dated

“Chinaski, you got a following in
Denver...”
“yeah?”
“yeah, I got a magazine and I wan
poems from you...”

I got in the shower
and burned my balls
last Wednesday.
met this painter called Spain,
no, he was a cartoonist,

I read that he lost a suitcase ful
train and that they never were rec
I can’t match the agony of this
but the other night I wrote a 3—pa
upon this computer

sway with me, everything sad—
madmen in stone houses
without doors,
lepers steaming love and song
frogs trying to figure