by Ramond Carver**

You don't know what love is Bukowski said
I'm 51 years old look at me
I'm in love with this young broad
I got it bad but she's hung up too
so it's all right man that's the way it should be
I get in their blood and they can't get me out
They try everything to get away from me
but they all come back in the end
They all came back to me except
the one I planted
I cried over that one
but I cried easy in those days
Don't let me get onto the hard stuff man
I get mean then
I could sit here and drink beer
with you hippies all night
I could drink ten quarts of this beer
and nothing it's like water
But let me get onto the hard stuff
and I'll start throwing people out windows
I'll throw anybody out the window
I've done it
But you don't know what love is
You don't know because you've never
been in love it's that simple
I got this young broad see she's beautiful
She calls me Bukowski
Bukowski she says in this little voice
and I say What
But you don't know what love is
I'm telling you what it is
but you aren't listening
There isn't one of you in this room
would recognize love if it stepped up
and buggered you in the ***
I used to think poetry readings were a copout
Look I'm 51 years old and I've been around
I know they're a copout
but I said to myself Bukowski
starving is even more of a copout
So there you are and nothing is like it should be
That fellow what's his name Galway Kinnell
I saw his picture in a magazine
He has a handsome mug on him
but he's a teacher
Christ can you imagine
But then you're teachers too
here I am insulting you already
No I haven't heard of him
or him either
They're all termites
Maybe it's ego I don't read much anymore
but these people w! ** build
reputations on five or six books
termites
Bukowski she says
Why do you listen to classical music all day
Can't you hear her saying that
Bukowski why do you listen to classical music all day
That surprises you doesn't it
You wouldn't think a crude ******* like me
could listen to classical music all day
Brahms Rachmaninoff Bartok Telemann
**** I couldn't write up here
Too quiet up here too many trees
I like the city that's the place for me
I put on my classical music each morning
and sit down in front of my typewriter
I light a cigar and I smoke it like this see
and I say Bukowski you're a lucky man
Bukowski you've gone through it all
and you're a lucky man
and the blue smoke drifts across the table
and I look out the window onto Delongpre Avenue
and I see people walking up and down the sidewalk
and I puff on the cigar like this
and then I lay the cigar in the ashtray like this and take a deep breath
and I begin to write
Bukowski this is the life I say
it's good to be poor it's good to have hemorrhoids
it's good to be in love
But you don't know what it's like
You don't know what it's like to be in love
If you could see her you'd know what I mean
She thought I'd come up here and get laid
She just knew it
She told me she knew it
**** I'm 51 years old and she's 25
and we're in love and she's jealous
Jesus it's beautiful
she said she'd claw my eyes out if I came up here
and got laid
Now that's love for you
What do any of you know about it
Let me tell you something
I've met men in jail who had more style
than the people who hang around colleges
and go to poetry readings
They're bloodsuckers who come to see
if the poet's socks are *****
or if he smells under the arms
Believe me I won't disappoint em
But I want you to remember this
there's only one poet in this room tonight
only one poet in this town tonight
maybe only one real poet in this country tonight
and that's me
What do any of you know about life
What do any of you know about anything
Which of you here has been fired from a job
or else has beaten up your broad
or else has been beaten up by your broad
I was fired from Sears and Roebuck five times
They'd fire me then hire me back again
I was a stockboy for them when I was 35
and then got canned for stealing cookies
I know what's it like I've been there
I'm 51 years old now and I'm in love
This little broad she says
Bukowski
and I say What and she says
I think you're full of ****
and I say baby you understand me
She's the only broad in the world
man or woman
I'd take that from
But you don't know what love is
They all came back to me in the end too
every one of em came back
except that one I told you about
the one I planted We were together seven years
We used to drink a lot
I see a couple of typers in this room but
I don't see any poets
I'm not surprised
You have to have been in love to write poetry
and you don't know what it is to be in love
that's your trouble
Give me some of that stuff
That's right no ice good
That's good that's just fine
So let's get this show on the road
I know what I said but I'll have just one
That tastes good
Okay then let's go let's get this over with
only afterwards don't anyone stand close
to an open window

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He asked me for my forgiveness, and I told him he has it. When I was 12 he asked me for my friendship, and I told him it was his. I didn't understand at that time that I was a maverick, nor did I understand that a parent should be more than just friends with their kids. It was another copout. Another way for him to escape the mistakes that his ***** compelled him to make. Thoughts from his smaller head became a disease, murdering the instincts of his larger. One that destroyed his mind and made fair to dawn unto him the status of brain dead. In my childish state I accepted this, not knowing I would have to mature on my own, neglecting the advice of my mother because it came in an aggressive tone, neither understanding that it was my new friends fault that the women I loved and my sole protector was tarnished, dented, and mocked. Used as a semi-sentimental locket, only to be pulled out and loved when he didn't feel love himself. Now I'm 20 years old and he's still in my life. You would think I would have made him take the immediate stage right when he told me he was having another child. No, it was not with my mother. He had lost his locket years prior allowing me to stumble upon it and realize it was never his in the first place. Rather it was mine to protect and polish. This new child was still family though, the blood that races through me and the features of my father that I wish weren't to be were also to be in him. I needed to act. In the years to come I realized it may not have all been my fathers fault. He knew not his father and was forced to live life stumbling around as a lost soul in the misty haze of confusion. Sort of like me but neglected to a further degree. So I took the responsibility to help father this fatherless father in hopes that one day he may become the father I knew he could be. So my brother could have a father instead of a friend and my friend could have a family instead photographs of faces he'd once seen, that only reminded him of the resentment and angst that he'd caused in the souls of those wandering with him in the misty haze of confusion.

I don't know who I am anymore.
who I ever was for that matter. I
hate
that saying
"I just have to find myself"
it feels like a lame
copout.
an excuse to leave behind your responsibilities,
an excuse that makes everyone feel like crap. everyone
but you.
nevertheless, here I sit
at the bottom of a dark closet asking myself:
who am I?
that question is just a breath away from:
I need to find myself.
where does one go
exactly,
to find one's self?
I might need to buy a ticket

I have been so caught up in
pleasing people,
I don't know
how to
please myself.
I want to cry.
I want to feel that deep aching rip in my chest that comes with the choking toddler sobs.
I want to taste the salty tears as they trickle down my face, tickling my checks’.
I want to release this swirling scream from within my lips.
I want,
I want,
I want,
I don't know what I
want.
how could I? I don't know who I
am.

I wonder if there is really even
anyone to discover?

will I
always feel this way?
I can't remember before I felt this way. even though I
am sure that there was a
before.
could this possibly be a feeling that people live with?
I need air to live. I need
light
to see. I don't know who that person in the mirror is
but, life goes on.
Do I need simply to repress this feeling, like
so many others:
alienation,
loneliness,
longing,
and now this, this
ambiguity
within myself. that is myself.
I am...
a
question

I’ve always felt it’s a copout
To say there just aren’t words-
The words are never too far away,
But don’t they take their sweet time
Coming home.
If words could talk they’d often say-
Don’t wait up.

I’d like to think I have many friends in words,
But then I remember every time **** went down,
And ****! they skipped town.
I wonder where they are now,
Since my friend,
(insert here your beautiful name)...

I knew him well enough to know
There just aren’t words right now.

He just-
Killed himself.
He did- just **** himself- didn’t he.
Quietly excused himself from this life,
Committed to his side of paradise.

Keep repeating any set of words-
Eventually they’ll mean nothing.

I can’t say, of all the brilliant minds I’ve met,
Any words to do justice to his.
Because my words, whenever they decide to come around,
Will only layer so much saccharine frosting
On the fun fact that he just knew
Everything there was to know about everything.

I can say, I had, a friend
Who was on Jeopardy,
Who always managed to make me realize
How little I knew about everything,
And make me smile the whole time.
What more could you ask for?

Goddamit, you ******* brilliant coward *******.
I’m writing a poem about the fallacy of words
Instead of talking with you.
Because I knew you drank,
I knew you raged and resigned so many nights.
But didn’t I have my head further up my ***
The more I knew you were suffering.

I could never remember a friend
Getting me thrown out of a club in Prague,
Wandering with me through snow-covered Krakow
Searching for Schindler’s factory-
None of it- with more endearment now.

But, right now, I don’t care to remember
Any such endearing moments.
Because you took off and all the good words followed.
So to you, my dear friend, with all my love and regrets-
Here’s a drink, rage, and resignation,
Should you want it that way.