they die young, them

All the beautiful people die young.
Or they grow so old and withered and in a sudden outburst, they die
young.
The last time that happened, THAT happened, and
a sparrow flew across the sky to break a beak when a child on a beach
threw a lucky stone,
Fifteen years later, she’s sitting on a lakeside cry alone
and smoking cancer the way stone cold foxes do
when they are without an answer phone.

but it’s not the way she walks,
it’s the way she doesn’t.

It’s not the way lovers leave,
it’s the way they don’t.

It’s not the way I am alone,
it’s the millions of tactical terms that tell me I’m not when I am in a threesome or an ephiphany or a Sunday afternoon walkabout.

When you were always in love the whole time with the one guy you told him “No”.
(let alone a night apart after six nights together.)
That beautiful person in me, she died when I realized that the one thing I am good at is to
run
leave
disbelieve
I am like the sparrow that never saw it coming
and flew away straight after,
like the beautiful people are dying and leaving the ugly
to get more ugly.

And I’ll still be sitting on my ego,
and writing poems about other people.

For Bukowski

Part I


The thing of it is
I just don’t care.

For the wet towel to get that rotting smell if I don’t hang it up
now,
or the sleeping on sheet-free mattresses and a plump pillow,
or the once romantic dream of riding on the back of a station wagon pick-up truck, going out to the stars and listening to the stars, resting upon a splinter from kicking wooden planks too hard,
we just made love and I just don’t care.

I lie there,
cigarette in my hand for proof of a good end.

The electric fan takes up another body’s space like the threesome
we should probably have,
Thinking about ex-lovers and the holding of hands and whether that meant
I ever wanted a white picket fence,

The mosquitoes live like disdain and dread, sucking from me as I suck from a new need,
(the next need),
The spiders die upon a phobic scream,
eating through their heads to terrify my brain,
The next-door housemate lives the nineteenth
century at moon age twenty, listening to my impurity
on Sunday, Thursday, Monday, Tuesday,
Friday nights.
Mornings, too.
But nothing is worse than being a perfectly shaped girl-formed girl in a perfectly shaped girl-formed world when you don’t want any of that New Orleans getaway (too late now for that anyway),
the promise of a second date,
the white slip under a white dress,
the soft laugh before drinks at last,
sharing a Nalgene bottle at soaking music festivals or licking an ice cream cone on a glossy brochure spread.
I just don’t care.

Wanting to be fucked in humid air on the cement stairs
of China.
I just don’t care.
Wet white tee-shirt in the shower when I’m not clean but
you are
I just couldn’t care.
“Sorry,” he cuddles against me, “Is that better?” like I wanted
anything.
I just didn’t care.
Falling asleep to wake up once more with feeling of needing
to pee.
That I do care.

I sit on strange beds and café stools when I tell the truth
with a lie.
I cry on shoulders and streetcars when I live the lie to tell
the truth.

If Bukowski was burning in water and drowning in flame,
If Burroughs was dining naked in his own throne,
What am I to say towards being alone?
If comic artists replicate and con artists imitate,
If Jesus was a man with both a soul and a mate,
What rhyme am I writing towards being alone?

Bunk beds sing three’s a crowd and I’d rather sleep alone in the same room than across the hall.

Impeccable taste in beautiful moments, I have
to pretend I don’t care about.
(Can’t have it, don’t want it.)
Morgan, you’re so much fun and I had a great time
is my favourite exit line.

Some people are born with greatness, some have greatness thrust upon
them,
and some will spend the rest of their typing lives, searching in
the meantime and waiting on
the sideline,
feeling less than allowed even in a safe place,
great love and great passion,
greater lives and greatest complacence,
I just don’t care.
Can’t have it, don’t want it.
I just don’t care.

Mascara massacre when I sleep over at night is the only promise three days’ pornography has borrowed for me.
He doesn’t see the little marks the way I don’t when I look down my
body.
When somebody does,
I will stop talking in circles
about bedroom boredom and fearless fucks (that I just don’t care).
I will stop taking the streetcar
to go straight to work in another boy’s shirt (that I don’t want to wear).
I will stop tearing the lights down
to find love alone in the dark when nobody else is around.
I will stop I will stop I will stop
One day.



Part II


That trembling surgeon and I, we will stop one day.
That sexy rapist and I, we will stop one day.
But the black cat keeps coming back to tell
the boys born on the cusp when the girls are trying so goddamn hard,
that chewing gum always loses its flavour and
fun.

Only in the poems without poetry that I write every night,
will we stop one day
when the world is a better place
for the martyr pressing a button on the next
atom bomb,
for the American birds hitting windex window screens
to travel America,
for the man who never wore shoes and the leper who never had a
good whore,
for the father and the son-to-be who gave me unmatched gloves
for a fee,
for the woman hiding under your bed and the man who feels almost
no pain,
for the coward waiting to inherit the world and the meek waiting for
the coward to die,
for the ticket-taker at a freak show who never forgets to clean
her fingernails,
for the boy in love with the Arts like a bulldog making love to a beautiful girl,
for the foot fetishists that seem only too easy to please
by feet!
for the most miserable man you can find in his
most miserable moment,
for the timid and the famous and the sullen, jaded lives
of twenty years,
for the Jewish spies about whom I am not allowed to write in
sad truth,
for the Peeping Toms and the city with the highest sale of
binoculars,
for the writers from whom I have plagiarized the most in their
post-partum lives,
for the single made-in-china tear I shed when my grandmom falls asleep on the toilet seat,
for the man who invented a cult and the men who pretended to
believe,
for me,
for you and me and me and you and
San Pedra, California.

Where Bukowski died when he was seventy-three.

hipster

I am sick of going up
to come down to go up again
I am tired of knowing better (or worse)
like when you see the last chip with no grains of dip
before you even start the bowl
before you even smoke the bowl
(before you even shoot the smack, the celebrities know)
I am weary of waiting
for the makeup to turn to grease
I am sitting on a million black cats’ back
couch fibers less synthetic than my animal moods
I am not writing a poem to me.

If I were though, if I were to deny writing poems for not me...
if I could miss the diss when I minimize to hide,
if I could see my death proudly before my laptop light,
if I could smell the feces of my backspace key,

I am still not writing a poem to me.

Gary wanted to feel a connection but all he got was an excuse chord, an alley-way alliteration:
a manual to set time (press start to start time)
a wealthy assassin (press play to page down)
a new years’ poetry competition (press write to come in(come)

Still.
I am not writing a poem to me.
Not today.
Because today I hate writing poetry.