Please Enjoy My Inadequacy.

I mentioned before that I had been reading a Bukowski collection and that had me thinking over the last couple weeks that I should write a similarly dirty collection of recollections of my misspent youth.

Granted, I’ve never been as bad of a guy as Bukowski, but I’m also not nearly as talented of a poet. In fact, if you know two things about me, it's these:

1. He’s awesome,
2. except for his poetry.

That being said, I thought it might be a fun project to exorcise some of my demons by putting together a little collection. I have no idea what I would ultimately do with that collection. Edit it, I guess, and try to make it suck less. Anyway, below are some of the poems I have dashed off in the margins of my notebook over the past couple weeks. I have not quite figured out yet what the collection would feel like, so these are sort of exploratory writing attempts on my part.

It can not possibly be stressed enough that these are all EXTREMELY FIRST DRAFT in their “quality”. But what’s the point of having a writing blog if all you’re doing is posting finished stuff? Writing is an embarrassing process and I’m sharing that embarrassment with you, dear reader. Please enjoy my inadequacy.

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How to Play the Piano.

I have been reading a Bukowski collection called Play the piano drunk like a percussion instrument until the fingers begin to bleed a bit and it is an interesting mix of what we think of when we think of poetry and also some narrative-like pieces. Some of them are as quintessentially reprobate as we always expect from Bukowski (like “fire station” wherein he pimps out the woman he is with without her knowing), while others have that jagged and beautiful sorrow that nobody else seems to be able to do quite as well.

It is a kind of travesty to read a poem and then just go, “Oh I love these two lines!” but I am going to do it anyway.

These are some of the bits I’ve enjoyed the most:

-

torn by a temporary wind

we come back together again

-

what kind of shit is

this?

it’s so easy to be a poet

and so hard to be

a man.

-

we came out of the bar

because we were out of money

but we had a couple of wine bottles

in the room.

-

I’ve learned to feel good when

I feel good.

-

there is a mirror behind the

bar.

the reflections are not

kind.

-

the ladies of summer will love

so long as the price is not

forever

-

I sit at the window

with her electric typewriter

and watch young girls’ asses

which are attached to

young girls

-

eyes like a Russian pianist

-

it irritated me to be almost murdered by a

fool in a sequin jacket

-

the boxing matches and the racetracks are

temples of learning

-

you son of a bitch, she said, I am

trying to build a meaningful

relationship.

you can’t build it with a hammer,

he said.

-

high lonely drunken grin of grief

I love you

-

I am dying of sadness and alcohol

he said to me over the bottle

on a soft Thursday afternoon

in an old hotel room by the train depot.

I have, he went on, betrayed myself with

belief, deluded myself with love

tricked myself with sex.

the bottle is damned faithful, he said,

the bottle will not lie.

meat is cut as roses are cut

men die as dogs die

love dies like dogs die,

he said.

listen, Ronny, I said,

lend me 5 dollars.

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Some Virtue.

One of the difficult things about being single and basically a monk - which I basically am - is that there is no one to talk to about the small things like what I should read over the summer, or whether or not I should test out the shaved-head-and-beard look, or is this Bukowski poem good or have I just had too much wine?

I’ve long been saying that the little things in life are the most important and the most odd and also the most interesting. I do - if I’m being honest - miss being able to share the little things with someone. I lived with a girl once who let me read to her in bed at night until she fell asleep and I miss that sort of thing. I remember the books I read to her and all of those books are special to me and I can’t imagine that it is simply because for two years I was on a hot streak of good-book-picking.

There is - I’ve realized - some virtue in going through this whole being-alive-thing alone. My life is busy and I crowbar freedom into it as I can and that would be impossible if I had to account for the minutia of someone else’s life. Also, I’m not certain that I would be a very good partner right now and so I’m not anyone’s partner. This is just me being honest because this is a blog that no one reads.

Two things, I guess, are certain though: this is a good Bukowski poem and I have had too much wine.

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Kafka Can’t Cross a Street.

Kafka Can’t Cross a Street

by james bezerra

One night

Bukowski visits me,

dead more

than twenty years now

he looks

the same, since he always looked

mostly dead

anyhow, except for his liver which

always appeared

to be a throbbing stone.

Perched at the corner of

my mattress,

shoulders slumped like

Rodin’s sketchbook,

he’s a patient Jacob Marley smoking

the cigarettes

I hide from myself in a kitchen cup and

he’s ashing

into my carpet.

“We fuckers are all beatified now,”

he growls,

looking at me across his sharp

shoulder blade,

“You know how many movies they’ve made

about Ginsberg?

We’re all whores, to be sure

but death

is humiliating enough without getting

screenwriters involved.”

Ash. Puff. Ash. Puff.

Ash. Puff.

“They teach McCullers in classrooms now

class rooms!

She tabledanced with Marilyn Monroe and

lived with

Gypsy Rose Lee and

she’d be

mortified if she found out.

Kafka can’t

cross a street without signing

an autograph.

Poor bitch so shy he couldn’t drop

his trousers

on a nudist beach.

They make us into idols so they can

forget us.

Kerouac is chained to the radiator at a

book group

right now. You wanta go bust him out?”

Instead we drink whiskey from

coffee mugs

until the dawn breaks and his

cock crows

and he fades away so slowly

leaving nothing

but stubbed out butts and a hole

of smoke.

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Tremble.

This has been on my mind alot lately. If I had biceps, I would get this tattooed on it:

we are here

to laugh

and live our lives

so well that

death

will tremble

to take us

- Charles Bukowski -


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