Happy Birthday Charles Bukowski!

BEER
from: Love is A Mad Dog From Hell

I don't know how many bottles of beer
I have consumed while waiting for things
to get better
I dont know how much wine and whisky
and beer
mostly beer
I have consumed after
splits with women -
waiting for the phone to ring
waiting for the sound of footsteps,
and the phone to ring
waiting for the sounds of footsteps,
and the phone never rings
until much later
and the footsteps never arrive
until much later
when my stomach is coming up
out of my mouth
they arrive as fresh as spring flowers:
"what the hell have you done to yourself?
it will be 3 days before you can fuck me!"

the female is durable
she lives seven and one half years longer
than the male, and she drinks very little beer
because she knows its bad for the figure.

while we are going mad
they are out
dancing and laughing
with horny cowboys.

well, there's beer
sacks and sacks of empty beer bottles
and when you pick one up
the bottles fall through the wet bottom
of the paper sack
rolling
clanking
spilling gray wet ash
and stale beer,
or the sacks fall over at 4 a.m.
in the morning
making the only sound in your life.

beer
rivers and seas of beer
the radio singing love songs
as the phone remains silent
and the walls stand
straight up and down
and beer is all there is.

ANOTHER BED
from: Love is a Mad Dog from Hell

another bed
another woman

more curtains
another bathroom
another kitchen

other eyes
other hair
other
feet and toes.

everybodys looking.
the eternal search.

you stay in bed
she gets dressed for work
and you wonder what happened
to the last one
and the one after that...
it's all so comfortable-
this love making
this sleeping together
the gentle kindness...

after she leaves you get up and use her
bathroom,

it's all so intimate and strange.
you go back to bed and
sleep another hour.

when you leave its with sadness
but you'll se her again
whether it works or not.
you drive down to the shore and sit
in your car. it's almost noon.

- another bed, other ears, other
ear rings, other mouths, other slippers, other
dresses

colors, doors, phone numbers.

you were once strong enough to live alone.
for a man nearing sixty you should be more
sensible.

you start the car and shift,
thinking, I'll phone Jeanie when I get in,
I haven't seen her since Friday.

AS CRAZY AS I EVER WAS
from: Love is A Dog From Hell

drunk and writing poems
at 3 a.m.

what counts now
is one more
tight pussy

before the light
tilts out

drunk and writing poems
at 3:15 a.m.

some people tell me that I'm
famous.

what am I doing alone
drunk and writing poems at
3:18 a.m.?

I'm as crazy as I ever was
they don't understand
that I haven't stopped hanging out of 4th floor
windows by my heels -
I still do
right now
sitting here

writing this down
I am hanging by my heels
floors up:
68, 72, 101,
the feeling is the
same:
relentless
unheroic and
necessary

sitting here
drunk and writing poems
at 3:24 a.m.