Bukowski and Me

I sat there reading his words
and I felt him speak to me
of his life.
He wouldn't call it much of a life
I would think,
or just life.

He spoke of hell in women
and heaven in them as well,
drinks and rinks,
bars and bartenders
that gave him free booze.
He thought of the homeless as equal,
I bet he'd think they were neither home
nor less,
yet he treated them the same as himself.
I guess some would call that abuse.

If his liver could speak,
the tongues it would use would be heavy
and full of hope.
He loved and lost and kept on loving
in a way that neither you or I could see,
but when he wrote, you knew
he loved it more than you or me.

He was the opposite of Jesus
but who's to say?
When I read his words,
I feel they speak to me,
the way they move along the page
makes me think that I can make them move the same.
His stories become my stories
but all they will ever remain are stories
for I am too conscious, too safe.
And he, he was old man
with a drink and a pen,
and the only thing that binds us
me and him,
is that we keep writing and writing again.

He said he preferred a church
that was bruised, hurting, and dirty.
How did he know he was talking
to me?
Would he still say that knowing
it was me that caused the pollution,
the evolution of the human condition
in the midst of perfect holiness?

What would he say when he saw me,
smudged eyeliner and heart beating
wide open and wonderful
for the devil to tempt and turn and twist
into an instrument of disappointment
and muscle?
Would he recognize me,
the true me from years ago
when the biggest sin was saying
words that I shouldn't have,
and Hail Mary's were definitely said more
shouldn't haves?

I'm sorry, Papa,
that I am the Church that is bruised,
hurting,
dirty.
I'm sorry that is what you have to witness.
I tried to be good
and it didn't work
and now I don't feel less filled with love,
just more filled with guilt.
Do you know when the fat lady is going to sing her song for me?

Regret

There's no use in regret. You can't change anything.
Your mother died unhappy with the way you turned
out. You and your father were not on speaking terms
when he died, and you left your wife for no good
reason. Well, it's past. You may as well regret missing
out on the conquest of Mexico. That would have been
just your kind of thing back when you were eighteen:
a bunch of murderous Spaniards, out to destroy a
culture and get rich. On the other hand, the Aztecs
were no great shakes either. It's hard to know whom
to root for in this situation. The Aztecs thought they
had to sacrifice lots of people to keep the sun coming
up every day. And it worked. The sun rose every day.
But it was backbreaking labor, all that sacrificing.
The priests had to call in the royal family to help,
and their neighbors, the gardener, the cooks.... You
can see how this is going to end. You are going to
have your bloody, beating heart ripped out, but you
are going to have to stand in line, in the hot sun, for
hours, waiting your turn.

Louis Jenkins

Done Deal

You're my done deal,
my Cleopatra,
my Adam,
my Eve.
Yes you're all of them
for you are complete to me.
You're my done deal,
don't you know?
Your smile,
your dimples,
the way your skin
is sensitive right below your waist,
the way your hand caresses my back,
you became a done deal when you kissed me.
So I will drink you in,
your eyes,
your curve
and I will get drunk off of you
and I want you to get drunk with me,
and together let us drink and drink
off each other,
let us play a game of poker,
wish at a crossroads,
go to heaven together.
You see, sweetheart,
you're my done deal,
we were a done deal
as soon as you played the first card,
my ace of hearts.

Permission Granted

You do not have to choose the bruised peach
or misshapen pepper others pass over.
You don't have to bury
your grandmother's keys underneath
her camellia bush as the will states.

You don't need to write a poem about
your grandfather coughing up his lung
into that plastic tube—the machine's wheezing
almost masking the kvetching sisters
in their Brooklyn kitchen.

You can let the crows amaze your son
without your translation of their cries.
You can lie so long under this
summer shower your imprint
will be left when you rise.

You can be stupid and simple as a heifer.
Cook plum and apple turnovers in the nude.
Revel in the flight of birds without
dreaming of flight. Remember the taste of
raw dough in your mouth as you edged a pie.

Feel the skin on things vibrate. Attune
yourself. Close your eyes. Hum.
Each beat of the world's pulse demands
only that you feel it. No thoughts.
Just the single syllable: Yes ...

See the homeless woman following
the tunings of a dead composer?
She closes her eyes and sways
with the subways. Follow her down,
inside, where the singing resides.

David Allen Sullivan

A Lovely Thing

The first time
you ever kissed me,
I knew it was going to happen
but it was still a little surprise.
You know how much I like chocolatey surprises,
lovely things,
little love bites under the warmth of your blanket
that smelled like the way you do
after a long hot shower
in the sun.
I remember the way you looked at me
right before you went for it,
and I remember really liking it
and wanting more.
I couldn't stop smiling after,
not for a few days at least.
How long has it been since that first time
I tasted you?
(Well technically the second but who's counting.)
Yet still every time I lean you up against your door
as you go to face another day in the snow,
a little surprise comes crashing down
in my heart,
another lovely thing,
and the way you look at me in the darkness
is the way you looked at me before,
(the very first time and the second)
and I hope it is
the way you will look at me
forevermore.

Baloney

There's a young couple in the parking lot, kissing.
Not just kissing, they look as though they might eat
each other up, kissing, nibbling, biting, mouths wide
open, play fighting like young dogs, wrapped around
each other like snakes. I remember that, sort of, that
hunger, that passionate intensity. And I get a kind of
nostalgic craving for it, in the way that I get a craving,
occasionally, for the food of my childhood. Baloney
on white bread, for instance: one slice of white bread
with mustard or Miracle Whip or ketchup-not
ketchup, one has to draw the line somewhere-and
one slice of baloney. It had a nice symmetry to it, the
circle of baloney on the rectangle of bread. Then you
folded the bread and baloney in the middle and took
a bite out of the very center of the folded side. When
you unfolded the sandwich you had a hole, a circle in
the center of the bread and baloney frame, a window,
a porthole from which you could get a new view of
the world.

Louis Jenkins

Do you crave me like you crave a cigarette?
Do you yearn to put your lips on me
like you yearn to wrap your lips around the beautiful
white stick that allows itself to enter your mouth
and run deep sea down your throat?

Do you crave me like you crave a cigarette?
In the middle of the snow
falling lightly on your shoulders,
do you feel the urgent need to breathe me in
and fill the holes found in your chest?
And after one or two puffs,
do you feel the same amount of hate and regret
that you felt the day you came to church with me
and sat in the wooden brown seat
while a priest said words you would never care to understand.

Even if the song of the eagle

was strong and bright,

loud and cold,

piercing like a trumpet,

what use would it have 

if it never appealed to the sparrow?

Do you ever let yourself mourn
or do you hide the funeral away
like I do?
Do you let the holy Mass go on
and on and on,
the angels' chorus ringing in the air,
a cloud of "holy holy holy"
among the smell of incense and from
the dark lair in your soul,
do you watch and watch and watch
hoping it will never end?
Nobody ever liked dirt under their fingernails.

Slowly,
one by one,
they disappear from my life
as if I had never met them at all.
They laugh and they drink,
red lips and pink hips,
stories I had read growing up
and now can't seem to remember
or forget.

The Big Bang

When the morning comes that you don't wake up,
what remains of your life goes on as some kind of
electromagnetic energy. There's a slight chance you
might appear on someone's screen as a dot. Face it.
You are a blip or a ping, part of the background noise,
the residue of the Big Bang. You remember the Big
Bang, don't you? You were about 26 years old, driving
a brand new red and white Chevy convertible, with
that beautiful blond girl at your side. Charlene, was
her name. You had a case of beer on ice in the back,
cruising down Highway number 7 on a summer
afternoon and then you parked near Loon Lake just
as the moon began to rise. Way back then you said to
yourself, "Boy, it doesn't get any better than this," and
you were right.

Louis Jenkins

Conversation with My Father

I talked to Death,
He was actually quite funny.
I was surprised that it was a he and not a she,
and I told him so – he simply shrugged and looked up at the sky,
and when I followed his gaze I noted that I could only see
one star shining.
I guess it was a cloudy night.
I asked Death if he liked to sit down or stand up,
and he told me it didn’t matter to him,
no one offered him a chair when he was on the job.
I told him he wasn’t on the job now so he could sit down if he wanted to.
He smiled and thanked me, but remained where he was.
His eyes weren’t cold, nor were they kind – although I tried
not to look into them for the fear that I might fall in.
He asked me if I’d been in love yet, and I told him that I think
I had, but I don’t think anyone had been in love with me.
He stopped for a moment and thought, and looked at me again,
and smiled as if he knew a secret.
I asked him what it was, but he shook his head and simply said
that it wasn’t Time.
I shrugged and continued gazing at the one star sky,
the light dimmed by passing clouds and
inexplicably I felt sad, and it was the sadness that
made tears roll down my cheek as my heart exploded with love.
I looked at Death and asked him if it was supposed to hurt this much inside,
and he told me he didn’t know what it was supposed to be like,
it just was.
And I told him about the one star in the sky
and how its dull edges reminded me of the table
where I had read his letter,
the one saying goodbye and nothing else,
although I’m sure I felt all the words he didn’t think to tell me.
I looked at Death once more and asked him
if everyone was inherently afraid, if that was the human condition –
to be so afraid to love because of the way it tore us in two.
Death replied that the only reason love tore us in two was so
that we could be put back together with someone else.
And then I asked him what would happen if you remained torn in two
and he told me that’s what suffering was.
I told him I didn’t want to suffer anymore, and I asked him to take it away.
He leaned over and touched the grass beside my knee,
got up and started walking away and I watched as he walked up
to the one star sky, his robe gleaming against the clouds that
worshipped his broken soled shoes.
I didn’t know what to do at that moment, so I got up and went home,
my dog licked my toes.
I went to sleep.

The person who can kiss another man's boils knows that it was only chance and this choice that saved him from becoming the monster the other is perceived to be.


You see,
I wish my father had kissed my scars,
held me and told me that they were nothing
and that I was everything.
I wish my father had looked upon me
in all of my miserable glory
and saw the most beautiful girl in the world
standing before him.