Raw With Love by Charles Bukowski

little dark girl with
kind eyes
when it comes time to
use the knife
I won't flinch and
I won't blame
you,
as I drive along the shore alone
as the palms wave,
the ugly heavy palms,
as the living does not arrive
as the dead do not leave,
I won't blame you,
instead
I will remember the kisses
our lips raw with love
and how you gave me
everything you had
and how I
offered you what was left of
me,
and I will remember your small room
the feel of you
the light in the window
your records
your books
our morning coffee
our noons our nights
our bodies spilled together
sleeping
the tiny flowing currents
immediate and forever
your leg my leg
your arm my arm
your smile and the warmth
of you
who made me laugh
again.
little dark girl with kind eyes
you have no
knife. the knife is
mine and I won't use it
yet.

Quenching Vinegar

Climbing, the dirt crumbles under
the calloused balls of your dauntless feet.
Now on the backbone of mountains
We found it, the adorned tops of trees
and how they crown all that you see,
hats glowing in their own sunset,petite.

A frost on the window; confined beauty in bliss,
Bountiful knowing, the shining of stems.
this valley of rocks formed for the senses

The trees bend their shade to convey this,

ornamenting landscapes for you and the friendses
teaching us how to see through green lenses:

the dew dribbled on the chin of lawns.

Some God smirking from the raw while chewing and gnawing
the divinest of things.
He forgets the finite, starts to remember the certain
colored blocks of sees, like the darling resonance of buzzing
inside the shell of a bee.

He feels the pines laugh at me
like a capitalized word,
peaking into their hats as if they held keys,

or knew how to hold bones,
or make them talk like the trees.

mike

this might not just be puppy love
can you imagine
my bedsheets are your new clothes

"I am in bliss with you," she said
"I long to kiss you, just not in my bed."
blinded bracing for the fall,
arms crossed as she bled
"Now I don't feel this at all"

Trees teach you ratios of breath
the warmth of awake
an un-read bounty in this,
quite clear off the bed, up to the wall.
I pull the dawn up to your ears upon their narrow folds
slowness of day creeps open,
finds us swirling with its golds.

there is something to be said for the way my fingers press on to the keys, the page, like a string of the simplest song that i know all of the notes by heart and feel them pulsing through my veins, my vines, this web of strings stuck spun and stung into my spine. when people refer to writing as an escape i think that's bullshit, this is the most in tune that these fingers of strings have ever become. the writing gets things going and makes connection(emotion), possible by relating these fires into words.. articulating my mental jabber, my thoughtless brain can finally speak and be thought about,have pages, own sentence structures and sizes and colors of fonts and autographs, these whispers of longing and exhilerated rush. i love this. i wouldn't settle for anything less than my fingertips orchestrating a slew of words that rips soul out of a place that i didn't know where it was until i had the time to write it all down. what a gift it is to appreciate simplicity, articulation, sentiment. what a blessing it is to be consumed with language. what a blessing it is to keep writing without looking at what is on the page.

"I am in love with poetry. Every way I turn
this, my weakness, smites me. A glass
of chocolate milk, head of lettuce, dark-
ness of clouds at one o'clock obsess me.
I weep for all of these or laugh."
Ted Berrigan, "Words for Love"

i would rather share secrets than be one

"No one worth possessing
Can quite be possessed"
-Sara Teasdale

Discord

Past false messiahs silently minded
our brief visit of finding breath, life spinning, glorified:
Calypso.
They urged us to be reticent bounded smile shining
assuming the finding-- the waiting Penelopes.

But just simply to see! Unblinded by words,
unravel confined beauty of flowers,
not just smells, hidden secrets-- the patterns.

See Calypso's gift, just your whistle changes tides,
now breasts are not for hiding.

What is more lady-like than Arachne
and her web of divinest strings,
established in her 8-eyed grin,
with just the quality of knowing all
too well of female sin.

a dog that never plays

I have committed the deadliest sin,
to look at words writ (trapped) in voids between
margins of love sick
and sad; the Page.

lay with you

lie with you