to the whore who took my poems
By Charles Bukowski
- 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; it's 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 money 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.
This poem was taken from his collection Burning in Water Drowning in Flame,
Selected Poems 1955-1973. Published by Black Sparrow Press, 1993.