She is drinking free coffee
I am sitting across from her
Giggling I can get used to this
I feel so free. The sky is half dark
Walking across the street
I imagine the brush of a hand
But no, she’s taken. Life does these things.
At least she swings my way
From time to time, a lot of people don’t.
I am whispering to myself
I can get used to this. Her arm
Resting by her side is tempting mine
And I am whispering I can get used to this
Crossing the road leaving her behind
The faint smell of coffee
Imagined on her breath even though
She’s taken floating away
I am crossing the road
I can get used to this.

*******
*******
******* IDIOT
****
I must be silent
I must be silent
****
I am not silent
****
I must
****
I must be
Be silent
For to be
To be silent
****
To be silent
Is to be
To be wise
Wise
****
Must be
Wise ****
Wise I must be wise
And therefore be silent
I have eaten fast food
I am guilty
I must repent
I must I must I must be
Silent

The last time we spoke you told me
That you were reading a book called
THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING
and you also told me that you missed
Digging your fingers into my bedsheets
Or the naked skin of my back

And I remembered this today in the bookshop
When staring at me from the shelf was
THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING
in my right hand was selected poetry
By a filthy man called THE PLEASURES OF
THE ****** and I thought **** me
I haven’t thought of you in a while

Perhaps as a fleeting mention
Or the **** of a joke but Christ
Here I am thinking of you sitting on your bed
In the evenings, having come home
From studying books all day like
A smart ****** sitting on your bed and reading
THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING

So I picked up a copy to go with
My Bukowski and walked to the counter
In a sombre mood, because I’d thought of you
The last thing you ever bought me
Was Bukowski, you bought me
LOVE IS A DOG FROM HELL and I read it
During my last stay in your arms
Cradling caressing and ******* like lovers

I walked out the bookshop
With two new books and a feeling
You get when you recall a fleeting memory
Coupled with **** me this is what happens
To my poetry when I read Charles Bukowski.
I wonder how you are, if you finished it
What did you think? And staring at
Text thrown up onto a screen I think
This is the ugliest thing I’ve ever written.

Half asleep murmuring your name
Imagined in the corners of my mind
Something terribly romantic and
Suddenly a thought comes to my head
Dreamer called an artist buying a drink
Somewhere ambiguous their head
Softly hurting mind harshly hurtling
Towards something unrecognisable
They put words on a page like a virtuoso
Never stopping word after word on
Love and lust and random ****
Hanging around in cafes with girls
And talking to them about art and themselves
And nothing much else because
That’s their subject and them saying
You should have more self love
To the guy and him not listening
He don’t care he don’t care.
I was half asleep murmuring your name
In the corners of my mind yesterday
And I stared at the mirror thinking of you
And repulsively I turned away because
There wasn’t an artist and you
Also were never there. Softly murmuring
I turn away, I am lurking in a coffeeshop
Alone, nothing terribly romantic
No, I murmur french in a Spanish way
Turn to you, and you look away.

out of the arm of one love
and into the arms of another
I have been saved from dying on the cross
by a lady who smokes ***
writes songs and stories
and is much kinder than the last,
much much kinder,
and the *** is just as good or better.
it isn't pleasant to be put on the cross and left there,
it is much more pleasant to forget a love which didn't
work
as all love
finally
doesn't work ...
it is much more pleasant to make love
along the shore in Del Mar
in room 42, and afterwards
sitting up in bed
drinking good wine, talking and touching
smoking
listening to the waves ...

I have died too many times
believing and waiting, waiting
in a room
staring at a cracked ceiling
wating for the phone, a letter, a knock, a sound ...
going wild inside
while she danced with strangers in nightclubs ...
out of the arms of one love
and into the arms of another
it's not pleasant to die on the cross,
it is much more pleasant to hear your name whispered in
the dark.