Charles Bukowski – The Icecream People

the lady has me temporarily off the bottle
and now the pecker stands up
better.
however, things change overnight--
instead of listening to Shostakovich and
Mozart through a smeared haze of smoke
the nights change, new
complexities:
we drive to Baskin-Robbins,
31 flavors:
Rocky Road, Bubble Gum, Apricot Ice, Strawberry
Cheesecake, Chocolate Mint...

we park outside and look at icecream
people
a very healthy and satisfied people,
nary a potential suicide in sight
(they probably even vote)
and I tell her
"what if the boys saw me go in there? suppose they
find out I'm going in for a walnut peach sundae?"
"come on, chicken," she laughs and we go in
and stand with the icecream people.
none of them are cursing or threatening
the clerks.
there seem to be no hangovers or
grievances.
I am alarmed at the placid and calm wave
that flows about. I feel like a leper in a
beauty contest. we finally get our sundaes and
sit in the car and eat them.

I must admit they are quite good. a curious new
world. (all my friends tell me I am looking
better. "you're looking good, man, we thought you
were going to die there for a while...")
--those 4,500 dark nights, the jails, the
hospitals...

and later that night
there is use for the pecker, use for
love, and it is glorious,
long and true,
and afterwards we speak of easy things;
our heads by the open window with the moonlight
looking through, we sleep in each other's
arms.

the icecream people make me feel good,
inside and out.

Carl Sandburg – Monotone

The monotone of the rain is beautiful,

And the sudden rise and slow relapse

Of the long multitudinous rain.

    The sun on the hills is beautiful,

Or a captured sunset sea-flung,

Bannered with fire and gold.

    A face I know is beautiful —

With fire and gold of sky and sea,

And the peace of long warm rain.

Thomas Stearns Eliot – Song 2

If space and time, as sages say,

    Are things which cannot be,

The fly that lives a single day

    Has lived as long as we.

But let us live while yet we may,

    While love and life are free,

For time is time, and runs away,

    Though sages disagree.

The flowers I sent thee when the dew

    Was trembling on the vine,

Were withered ere the wild bee flew

    To suck the eglantine.

But let us haste to pluck anew

    Nor mourn to see them pine,

And though the flowers of love be few

    Yet let them be divine.

Anne Spencer – For Jim, Easter Eve

If ever a garden was Gethsemane,

with old tombs set high against

the crumpled olive tree--and lichen,

this, my garden, has been to me.

For such as I none other is so sweet:

Lacking old tombs, here stands my grief,

and certainly its ancient tree.

Peace is here and in every season

a quiet beauty.

The sky falling about me

evenly to the compass . . .

What is sorrow but tenderness now

in this earth-close frame of land and sky

falling constantly into horizons

of east and west, north and south;

what is pain but happiness here

amid these green and wordless patterns,--

indefinite texture of blade and leaf:

Beauty of an old, old tree,

last comfort in Gethsemane.

Charles Bukowski – I Met A Genius

I met a genius on the train
today
about 6 years old,
he sat beside me
and as the train
ran down along the coast
we came to the ocean
and then he looked at me
and said,
it's not pretty.

it was the first time I'd
realized
that.