This is the second image of this series, now accompanied by poetry unencumbered by rules, and possibly direction. Not the straightforward language I love in Bukowski’s works, but how can anyone expect clearheadedness from a tiny man who experiences the daily questions, the constant attention of a giantess who wants to know his every thought? In case he ever has any. I wrote this for my very real little man, and a constant source of inspiration, Hopier.

Bukowskiing 2

Why do you always ask

which one I love the best?

I love them both equally, and I know you are going to say

that I have to pick one and I can’t and don’t

 

You chose me the way light moves through space

You shrank me the way the sun rises

unstoppable, inescapable, unerring

You made me yours, a part of your geography

 

Don’t make me part of your politics

My brain is too small to lean to this side, or that

but it lobbies endlessly for your decision

left, right, center, where you tell me I belong

 

I’m where you want me to be

no discussion or argument or a face made of masks

but how can you feel it?

laughter that rings through your body from your back pocket

smiles born into taut darkness

 

How do you do it? How can you tell?

You feel that too?

You feel everything? Even that?

Especially that. Always that.

My answer to your questions is wordless, thoughtless, and real

 

If you move me, it will move with me

grab me and shove me from left to right

and when you are tired of East and West, go out and

tell your friends when they ask about me

that “I’m in the middle of things”

 

“In a dark place” you’ll say with a smile

“Cheeky bastard” you’ll begin to laugh uncontrollably

and they’ll look at you and frown as I tickle

your funny bone and your tail bone and your tale bone and your tall bone

 

And I’ll make my own jokes to my audience of blue fabric

I have a bone to pick with her

I’ll throw her a bone

bad to the bone

 

Then I won’t be able to think anymore

because you are walking again and you know what happens

when you walk and the earth moves

and the moons move and I’m their satellite

 

In the orbit of your curved path

rotating the only trajectory I know

gyrating in concert with masses too large to understand

gravity too strong to resist

pulling me closer and closer to the end and the beginning

 

So don’t ask me to choose

I never will and I never can

you chose me, you make me, you build my method

I go where you go, where you put me

pick pocket me, bury me there, that, then

 

You’ll always hear a peep out of me

a back talk out of me, a rearview mirror of your thoughts

that are larger than they appear

I’ll always watch your back oh I’m ruining it?

I’ll shut up now