Remember that all things fade.
All creatures must have an end
To bear new beginnings.
And all new beginnings
Come from resolution.

I am holding
my last cigarette
and sitting.
Reading my favorite novel,
Vanity Fair.
Pouring the wine.
I used to drink all the night
with some friends
that nobody knows about them.
The poem was written after,
the ***** poem.
They told me
sometimes my poem was about it.
It was too late to say
that the things they only have
is about ***** mind.

Rich old man, knowing much
of nothing others value,
by virtue
of early alienation, wound
early
sense, first sense, early mind to matter process,
each thought forms from ache to know
some
source charged, as it were, wound up, set to spring
forth
in time thought lost
in Proust, and rightly so, if
now you read this that I wrote, without doubting
Proust could not imagine the access to knowns I own,
the access, I own, not the knowns, the stores of stories,
whole lives lived in accordance with visions
recorded in annals and journals and liturgical redoables,
walk this way,
rock was rolling, say again
scream what? Walk this way, with a wiggle? Nah, this way,
aim at ever after now,
think next is better until the other shoe drops,
and this
is real, as real as any message to you, from a dead prophet.

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.

Let my words slide like slithering snakes on your tongue
Devour my sentence structure like children ******* thumbs
Feel the anguish of fake people that can't see, touch or hear
Then when your tears sludge the page, I am your master puppeteer
May every letter leave you wetter and each comma stir up drama
And when you reach the end of it all, you'll be begging for more trauma.

I could write a novel, with all these words I didn't say. And, I could hold a concert, with all these screaming voices in my brain.

Young, naïve lawyer,
For-profit business school dean,
A Quixotic quest.

Idealism,
Despite the odds,
May yet win the day.

Or will it be crushed?
Humor, angst, triumph, heartbreak,
All par for the course.

Love found and love lost,
Trial by fire tempers or breaks,
Steel in life's hot forge.

Which for our young dean?
Will he too tilt at windmills,
Thinking them cruel knights?

Or will he prevail,
Stay true to his quest until,
He succeeds or fails?

You can hear me read the complete first nine chapters from my new novel referenced in this "teaser poem" in my podcasts at https://open.spotify.com/show/1zgnkuAIVJaQ0Gb6pOfQOH

You, you had me hooked from the very first, the very first moment,
Stories of Peter Pan running in my head,
We flew away and had times of the greatest value,
Now here I am, stuck in this tragic place,
Under the ground of a trainstation,
Like the punished soul of that Anna you missed,
A russian girl you'll never forget.

You, you had me hooked from the very beginning,
Our eyes met only for a short recognition,
Only then I knew who she was to you
And what I meant all along.