Back into Bukowski
I can read like Bukowski would have done.
I don’t have to put the bottle to my lips
or make cynical remarks about
getting paid to get drunk and read petty feelings—
You live any one place too long
and feel miserable enough, disconnected,
that in time the feeling eats at you,
hollows you out, and infests you with small pockets
of obligation like branching cysts as years accumulate.
I am just Bukowski again.
Everything I love is
just entrapment and in the thick of things,
I will be the one to do myself in
knowing no other can stop me
despite branching cysts accumulated
to bridge that gap between our
artificial distancing from
existential loneliness always lurking at the end.
I am sorry you will never
gain the prestiged needed to
be awarded my unwavering devotion—
So stop all of your emotional blathering.
The binding nature of familial love, attachments,
and all other modern caste-systems other civilians
feel they need for safety, identity, and stability
do not ascribe in the same ways to me.
4 thoughts on "Back into Bukowski"
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Never heard of him before…you are always teaching us something new!
I only heard of him from a random youtube video, but I would heavily recommend the poem “We Ain’t Got No Money, Honey, But We Got Rain” by C. Bukowski to observe a beautiful mastery of voice in poetry.
Lots of good things here, Stefan. I especially like “small pockets of obligation”–that is a brilliant and layered perspective.
I like the shock value of this poem – especially the last stanza. You force the reader to examine their own “emotional blathering”! Love that phrase, by the way!