A Bit of Poetry

Charles Bukowski. who ever said good ol chinaski was just an asshole with an ugly face that called himself a writer?

For Jane
====

225 days under grass
and you know more than I.
they have long taken your blood,
you are a dry stick in a basket.
is this how it works?
in this room
the hours of love
still make shadows.

when you left
you took almost
everything.
I kneel in the nights
before tigers
that will not let me be.

what you were
will not happen again.
the tigers have found me
and I do not care.

-- Charles Bukowski

A Bit of Poetry

The Lonesome Radio

the lonesome radio walks
like an orchid, a phaleanopsis,

quietly, without looking.
a long overcoat inside,

it smiles the kind of smile
that must be silent in the east coast,

and tells me about loving a woman 
in nineteen-seventy-six

when still an immigrant of hearts.
I think back, timelessly, like late-May sky.

the lonesome radio told me that Flaubert
was lost in literature and self-destruction.

the lonesome radio told me the soul 
wants to become three colors,

like three balloons or newspaper stands,
or three men walking in the afternoon.

I wanted to tell you that I dreamt of mine 
becoming red-yellow-black like arrows 

like children like nauseating oceans.
the lonesome radio tunes in just once,

while being drawn upright, and asks me
If I still look up when I think of sunrises, 

If I find them dangerous for our cells.
I say yes, like high-altitudes, despotic,

short of breath, I say sunrises make me
sticky & unmovable, confused & tangled.

maybe our souls are like living frequencies
mine a different pattern than yours
 
like bitten nails like striated muscles.
the lonesome radio told me that

I am grayscale without you, simple waves.
that night you wrote me back to tell me

that memory lives inside you as poems,
like radio frequencies like lonesome souls.

Question: Is there a song that has moved you beyond words?

Yes, there are many. and Albums, too. some of the ones i can name right away off the top of my head:

The Microphones - The Moon
Neutral Milk Hotel - Two-Headed Boy part 2
The Weakerthans - (Hospital Vespers)
Pink Floyd - Wish You Were Here
Broken Social Scene - Anthems for a Seventeen Year Old Girl

the list probably goes on, but out of those, the NMH song is closest to my heart.

There's something so honest about this song that makes me shiver every time:

Daddy please hear this song that I sing
In your heart there's a spark that just screams
For a lover to bring a child to your chest that could lay as you sleep
And love all you have left like your boy used to be
Long ago wrapped in sheets warm and wet

Blister please with those wings in your spine
Love to be with a brother of mine
How he'd love to find your tongue in his teeth
In a struggle to find secret songs that you keep wrapped in boxes so tight
Sounding only at night as you sleep

In my dreams you're alive and you're crying, as your mouth moves in mine soft and sweet, rings of flowers around your eyes and I'll love you for the rest of your life...

Brother see we are one in the same
And you left with your head filled with flames
And you watched as your brains fell out through your teeth
Push the pieces in place
Make your smile sweet to see
Don't you take this away
I'm still wanting my face on your cheek

And when we break we'll wait for our miracle
God is a place where some holy spectacle lies
And when we break we'll wait for our miracle
God is a place you will wait for the rest of your life

Two headed boy she is all you could need
She will feed you tomatoes and radio wires
And retire to sheets safe and clean
But don't hate her when she gets up to leave

over and out,
the UG'ster