Mourning a friend

I was sitting here at my desk looking out the window,watching the frozen leaves try and resist the wind. There wasn't anything in particular that reminded me of my old friend. I think it was just the dreary weather and the reminders of death, with all of the signs of impending winter and the dark cold days ahead. I don't have time anymore to indulge my meloncholy in the ways I used to when I was younger and single and childless. I'm sure when I'm older, and single and childless I'll find too ample the time to nurse the saddness that companions the long winter months... years.

Depression and regret are the flypaper of feelings, once you land there it's near impossible to pull yourself away. But, I knew as soon as the feelings bubbled up to the surface they would not be quickly quieted until I gave them their due. I hope I can pay the emotional toll with a few sad songs and memories and a few "what if's" and "if only's" and maybe those feelings will release and let me flit about my day.

I'm thinking of my friend who always reminded me of the poet Charles Bukowski.My friend with whom I almost shared my life but then did not.My friend whom I had not spoken to in years and learned of his death by chance when reading a random blog. I never met Bukowski but his writing has such a raw but rythmic edge to it... the tragic lost genius who laughs at the rest of us taking life so seriously. I wonder what would have happened if Hank and Charlie had ever met. They probably would have sat down in a dive apartment on broken furniture with cockroaches and drank beer talked about women and monumental bowel movements or they would have pitied eachother or maybe all of that and something else. They were kindred souls and of course I get to make all the predictions of what could have been because I'm the only one of the three us still able to use a keyboard.

the crunch
by Charles Bukowski

too much
too little

too fat
too thin
or nobody.

laughter or
tears

haters
lovers

strangers with faces like
the backs of
thumb tacks

armies running through
streets of blood
waving winebottles
bayoneting and fucking
virgins.

or an old guy in a cheap room
with a photograph of M. Monroe.

there is a loneliness in the world so great
that you can see it in the slow movement of
the hands of a clock.

people so tired
mutilated
either by love or no love.

people just are not good to each other
one on one.

the rich are not good to the rich
the poor are not good to the poor.

we are afraid.

our educational system tells us
that we can all be
big-ass winners.

it hasn't told us
about the gutters
or the suicides.

or the terror of one person
aching in one place
alone

untouched
unspoken to

watering a plant.

people are not good to each other.
people are not good to each other.
people are not good to each other.

I suppose they never will be.
I don't ask them to be.

but sometimes I think about
it.

the beads will swing
the clouds will cloud
and the killer will behead the child
like taking a bite out of an ice cream cone.

too much
too little

too fat
too thin
or nobody

more haters than lovers.

people are not good to each other.
perhaps if they were
our deaths would not be so sad.

meanwhile I look at young girls
stems
flowers of chance.

there must be a way.

surely there must be a way we have not yet
thought of.

who put this brain inside of me?

it cries
it demands
it says there is a chance.

it will not say
"no."
-Charles Bukowski, Love is a Dog from Hell (1977)

Charlie, I always did think your existential arguements were crap it was all for show. But I did love you and I hope you are more than dust.