Buk-ku
Buk-ku
by jim benz
one tooth missing
when she smiles —
another morning
***
naked and drunk
on a flop house bed —
happy for the bed
***
the feel of you
our bodies sloshing together
in a filthy room
***
filled with blood
and the screaming outside
my throbbing temples
***
watching from behind
her thin black heels
the slamming door
***
a furious screech
hanging in the smoke —
she always comes back
***
empty bottles
crashing to the floor —
a telephone ringing
***
not your fault?
whose fault?
my fault?
***
it’s not death
that worries me
it’s his wife
***
an urge to scream —
when God created me
he created me
***
alone at nightfall
hours and hours of love
casting shadows
***
the way cats walk
weaving between bottles
sniffing at stains
***
like men who’d kill
because they’re crazy
and its the law
***
in a crowded bar
I’m drinking alone tonight
and feeling lucky
That’s a lot of haiku. This was perfect this morning. Good imagery.
I liked it as well. Typically I don’t post anything having anything to do with Bukowski. In fact, when I see his name in a poem or title I instantly delete it. I won’t go into the reasoning here, but I liked this as it’s a unique take on the well worn tribute every writer goes through at some point in their career. Good eye Jim.
ironically, i added post office to my bukowski collection yesterday and am in the process of reading it now, the first time i’ve witnessed your poem.
on the part where the christmas tree falls on him.
i vote win. (for your poem) haha
thanks. Ain’t that something? Ol’ Buk has become a cliché. I wonder what he’d think about that?
I don’t think that it’s so much that Bukowski has become a cliche. It’s just that no one has played the part of drunken poet better than him. And that concept — the drunken poet — is just fuckin’ tiresome.
That may be true Joe. Or it may just be an issue of too many lazy ‘poets’ who take themselves too fucking seriously while trying to immitate poets/concepts that make them feel hip. As far as I’m concerned, there’s no such thing as a tired concept, just a lot of tired minds that don’t have a clue how to make it fresh and interesting.
Well said Fogman,
I’ll drink to that!
sounds good, Halifax, I’m pouring. any other drunk poets want to jump in?
I’ll go drinking with you guys if you leave your drunken poet hat at home. They tend to get a person cut off just by mere association. If you guys won’t have me, that’s alright. I’d rather go drinking with the philosophy majors, especially guys who like to talk shit, and know their shit about Kant, Hegel, and Heidegger (and by ‘guys’ I mean both guys and gals). They know how to get down.
If you’ll let me talk about Meleau-Ponty and Wittgenstein, we could be drinkig buddies Joe. But don’t underrate a seriously drunk conversation on poetics – it can be every bit as entertaining. [and Bukowski is the last guy who’d ever come up.]
…fucking John Donne.
If we talk about Meleau-Ponty and Wittgenstein, you’ll be doing most of the talking, because I never heard of the first guy, and could never really get into Tractatus. What I do know of Wittgenstein are some things that a friend told me.
Now if you want to talk about Donne, you’ve got to talk about the Holy Sonnets. I used to have a couple of them memorized.
That’s because the Tractatus is not the most interesting thing about Wittgenstein. His ‘investigations’ used it as a starting point to get into ‘language games’ and that’s where his work really takes off. Frankly, a discussion about philosophy that avoids the 20th century is like a discussion of poetry that does the same. Or music. Or anything else for that matter.