Raegan Butcher's Blog - Posts Tagged "bukowski"

the anti-bukowski

i was a terrible drunk:
sloppy, sad, mean, stupid, violent
and downright weird/crazy/dangerous
in short
unpleasant in the extreme
the exact opposite of my sober self:
a swell and charming fellow
i can’t recommend the demon rum to anyone
sorry kids
as Leonard Cohen would say, “far be it from me to intrude upon the pleasures of the young”
but if you’re looking for glorification of bar fights and beer drunks
you won’t find it here

It is poems like this that made me fall under the spell of Charles Bukowski. Enjoy.

CONSUMATION OF GRIEF
I even hear the mountains
the way they laugh
up and down their blue sides
and down in the water
the fish cry
and all the water
is their tears.
I listen to the water
on nights I drink away
and the sadness becomes so great
I hear it in my clock
it becomes knobs upon my dresser
it becomes paper on the floor
it becomes a shoehorn
a laundry ticket
it becomes
cigarette smoke
climbing a chapel of dark vines. . .
it matters little
very little love is not so bad
or very little life
what counts
is waiting on walls
I was born for this
I was born to hustle roses down the avenues of the dead.