Tag: Bukowski

It turns the bathwater
   chemical blue
reminding me of the 
   Mediterranean
and better days.

Of absorbing Vitamin D
  through 
my skin as a beautiful
  man
begged to worship at the
   temple
of my body.

 Where I felt
   alive
being carried on the
   waves
which rolled like a
  skilled 
lover's hips. 

This fiberglass tub
   is
a cheap, lifeless
  imitation
of that Middling Sea;

The blue stain
  ringing
the basin a reminder
  of that.

You were my Humbert,
 and I was your Lo.

Together we created
 an unholy concoction

of synthetic love and
  questionable consent.

I keep getting these emails
about making my cock bigger. 

Which is strange because
I don't have a cock. 

Well, I do. 
I bought it. 
It's mine. 

I don't want love, not really. 
Not the contented domesticity of a
white wedding, a swollen pregnant belly,
a house in the suburbs or a white picket fence. 

None of the considerations and
compromises that leave you 
resentful, thinking about how
you're losing out on your best
fucking years as you brush your
teeth while your partner takes a piss.

No - what I want is, in comparison, 
hedonism. The blaze of passion, white
hot and unquenchable. To worship your
body with my mouth, my hands. 

I want to shiver under your touch, 
feel the desire of your gaze and
die the little death beneath you.

I want the romance of dancing in the 
kitchen, of falling asleep in your arms,
to hold your deepest secrets in confidence,
to know you better than anyone else. 

Then I want the drama. 
I want you to break my heart, 
to shatter it so that I can write
shitty poems for a lifetime. 

I feel hollow -
 skin tight like a drum - 
bouncing my fingers upon
 my chest to hear the echo
of my heart.

It lay heavily on my tongue,
       syrupy with a cloying sweetness,
            before I swallowed, feeling the burn
   of Napalm.

"That was the only alcohol in the place,"
                                 you observed, dryly
                                       but not without
                                     amusement. 

"Did you want a taste?"
                   the words were too
                      mature for me
                                    but you knew that,
                    and perhaps
                       that was the appeal for you.

The darkness slipped inside me
 at the end of a knotted winter scarf
  slung over the dilapidated door of a
   hotel room. 

There swung the jerking feet of my
 hopes for faith, love, brotherhood and
  a well adjusted childhood. 

It took me decades to understand
 that you can't change the shifting
  hands of Fate, much less the accidental
    slip of the foot.

The sky is grey,
pressing down on me,
always pressing down
into that hollow cavity
where my heart should be. 

The muscle and sinew
still there, of course, 
useful only to keep time.
It does that well, at least,
better than a Rolex.

There's a void at the center of my being. 
          I don't mean my heart.
I mean a pillar, as if God drilled out the
           core of me,
Some glorified test tube surrounded by flesh.
           It's not comfortable, 
But I admit it's a good place to store baggage. 

Time crawls during an episode,
 the days and nights extending
  before you; a vanishing horizon. 

You begin to take notice of little
 things; the exact rhythm of your heart,
  the way a water droplet holds light.

But mostly I sit in the stillness
 of apathy, stagnate as everything around
  me grows and changes while I molder. 

It's happened enough times for me
 to know that it's all a matter of time
  before it passes. 

So I sit, and smoke, and drink
  black coffee and wait until 
   the light returns.