while at my
favorite book store
I told my friend the
proprietor
that he had things in the
poetry section
arranged in such a way
that I had to move
Emily Dickinson
to get to
Charles Bukowski.
the ironic imagery
was not lost on
me.
Bukowski
hiding behind
Dickinson,
the two of them
living next to each other
in the only place
where that would be
possible.
so I tried
imagining
them living next to each other
in the same
apartment complex,
each day
holed up in
their rooms
writing their observations
within and without,
her window shade open,
the glass clean and sparkling
as she wrote letters
to keep friends close and
visitors away,
and his dirty shade
tattered and closed
while he peered out only
to see who rang his doorbell
while he hid
from the landlord,
and each night
Miss Dickinson banging on
the wall of her apartment
to tell Bukowski
to turn down his radio
as they both sat
alone
in self-imposed
seclusion.
Bukowski
living next door to
Dickinson.
only in the
poetry
section.
Ken Owen
Van Niddy Press January 2020
You know, it looks like Buk was inspired by Emily in this poem:
ReplyDeleteTo the Whore Who Stole My Poems
some say we should keep personal remorse from the
poem,
stay abstract, and there is some reason in this,
but jezus;
twelve poems gone and I don't keep carbons and you have
my
paintings too, my best ones; its stifling:
are you trying to crush me out like the rest of them?
why didn't you take my money? they usually do
from the sleeping drunken pants sick in the corner.
next time take my left arm or a fifty
but not my poems:
I'm not Shakespeare
but sometime simply
there won't be any more, abstract or otherwise;
there'll always be mony and whores and drunkards
down to the last bomb,
but as God said,
crossing his legs,
I see where I have made plenty of poets
but not so very much
poetry.
Charles Bukowski
This is Tove, by the way.
ReplyDelete