Bukowski

I love literature/poetry with a hardboiled facade. Writers who drown their sorrows in whiskey like Hemingway, and then cry in their rooms when alone like Nick in "The Sun Also Rises". This is such an honest and multifaceted poem-- I adore it. In other news, getting two more poems published in the Spring 2010 Tablet! Although this is the third Tablet I'm published in, and so far they've only chosen my poems that have something to do with childhood and growing up in the Soviet Union. I think Tablet has Sovietophilia. Or maybe those are my only poems that are any good...

Bluebird

there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I’m too tough for him,
I say, stay in there, I’m not going
to let anybody see
you.
there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I pour whiskey on him and inhale
cigarette smoke
and the whores and the bartenders
and the grocery clerks
never know that
he’s
in there.

there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I’m too tough for him,
I say,
stay down, do you want to mess
me up?
you want to screw up the
works?
you want to blow my book sales in
Europe?
there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I’m too clever, I only let him out
at night sometimes
when everybody’s asleep.
I say, I know that you’re there,
so don’t be
sad.
then I put him back,
but he’s singing a little
in there, I haven’t quite let him
die
and we sleep together like
that
with our
secret pact
and it’s nice enough to
make a man
weep, but I don’t
weep, do
you?
--Charles Bukowski