Bukowski

your
seductive
stinking
honesty
makes my sanitized life
a lie

(poem dedicated to the late Charles Bukowski)

This world's a story
filled with stones: those five
smooth ones; some temple
tumbling to; a mountain's
stubborn bones. Take this one,

pocked, rounded, smoothed,
rocked by currents sure
they'd find the way. Blue
(or vaguely gray), flecked gold
no miners mine, or can,

diminished thing from David's
bolder day, it chooses you.
Palmed in your closing hand,
it's good, the heft of it, live weight
to tell a tale that's true.

When I was eight, I threw a rock at my cat.
I wanted something to love me, and he
didn't. Unfamiliar with rage and unskilled
at throwing rocks, I missed and hit the fence.
I was and am ashamed of this.
I wasn't that kind of kid.

Once, a boy sent me photos from Scotland,
daybreak over  the snowy moors where he
hunted grouse with his father. He was skinny,
and sweet. I stopped writing him because I
had a thousand words for love, and he
couldn't spell any of them.

And once, I took your love for granted. It was vanity;
I felt like the lost works of a prolific master.
I wanted someone to delight in discovering me,
to wonder where I had been. It was easy to
blame you; all those years and you didn't
know what you had.

If you believe in all possible universes,
I aimed for the fence and hit the cat.
I married a sweet, skinny boy who will never
love a poem. I never had anything to prove
and I don't need you to forgive me.

A poem falls short; I'd like, instead
to draw a single line from me to you
and watch it curl into a word
so beautiful it's still unsaid –
or press paper to the window pane
so that the day might saturate
a note that brightly warms your hands,
spills birdsong from imagined trees
and buzzes like fat bumblebees,
but I am bound by language, love; I can't.

This One Time,
                        I stripped naked
        and ****** my couch.
This other time
  I threw a copy of The Fountainhead
at an RV moving at 64 miles an hour
  I have a tree
            In the foothills
    named Clementine Valencia Jeff
  and the same day, me and John
made a religion with Adam based
       on cloud formations
      You see, I'm a weird guy
         I got
           I got problems
      I see a therapist
           Her name's Rhonda
        She likes Batmaa aaaaan
     She sees people worse than me
        but recognizes I got problems
     and she
         she tries to help
       cause
            cause I got problems
      and the
         and the problem
                   with having problems
         is
           is function
   You
         You can't do anything
  You live to defy expectation
  And - and it's really hard
     to get into college
    You never really get accepted
       and and
            and even if
        even if you do you
            you
               you never really accept that
  It's hard out there for a freak
I get lost within my own
       ridiculous quandaries
  You feel like you're not
    you're not built right
      like something's wrong
  and you just punch and
    and kick and
       and destroy
   Whatever feels des-
           destroy able because it gives
   purpose
     Bu
       But I finally think I -I
               found my mantra
My my
       My compass thing
   My map whatever


   It has the same number of
letters of something very very dear
     to me
   and
      and that holds meaning
  I
    I wrote it on the back of my door
      my door
  and- and I sprayed it on a
           shirt
  I actually got it from a videogame with
   with a
    with Ayn Randian themes
   It's religious
  and
   and every night now
before I go to sleep
     I
       I- I look into Neil Patrick Harris's
        eyes
   feel the warmth of my wonderful blanket
  admire some handiwork
    read about serial arson
close my eyes and tell myself
     She is our Salvation

Tonight I married a graffiti artist.
This is the third time I’ve been proposed to
at some ***** house party.
This time there was an ordained all-faith minister
on the porch smoking a cigarette. That was enough.
I said yes.
We’re all strictly first-name-basis here, nicknames are even better.
So to him I’m just Mimi. Focused intently on my hand,
he draws my wedding ring with a permanent marker
and kisses each finger as he finishes.
There is a tiny replica of his tattoo on the underside of my finger
in addition to my gigantic drawn-on diamond.
It is my favorite part.
We talk politics and eventually art.
Turns out he’s sort of an amazing artist.
He said he’d put my name up on a wall but I don’t believe him.
Intricate, passionate, and thoughtful.
His smile is adventure.
That’s why I married him.
He asked to read my poetry and in my fuzzy judgment I let him.
Maybe he even liked a few phrases.
And he was polite as a hopped up boy can be.
Getting me home before three,
lending me his jacket without me asking.
I know he’ll forget to call, or that he even has my number.
and that we won’t watch Pulp Fiction
tomorrow.
That I was really just a glorified
snort of some white powder,
I am like all the glitter that fades in the morning
like smiles do, or permanent marker
after a few washes.