I’m in love
she’s young, she said,
but look at me, I have pretty ankles,
and look at my wrists, I have pretty
wrists
my god,
thought it was all working,
and now it’s her again,
every time she phones you go crazy,
you told me it was over
you told me it was finished,
listen, I’ve lived long enough to become a
good woman,
why do you need a bad woman?
you need to be tortured, don’t you?
you think life is rotten if somebody treats you
rotten it all fits,
doesn’t it?
tell me, is that it? do you want to be treated like a
piece of shit?
and my son, my son was going to meet you.
told my son
and I dropped all my lovers.
stood up in a cafe and screamed
I’M IN LOVE,
and now you’ve made a fool of me...
I’m sorry, I said, I’m really sorry.
hold me, she said, will you please hold me?
I’ve never been in one of these things before, I said,
these triangles...
she got up and lit a cigarette, she was trembling all
over. she paced up and down, wild and crazy. she had
small body. her arms were thin, very thin and when
she screamed and started beating me I held her
wrists and then I got it through the eyes: hatred,
centuries deep and true. I was wrong and graceless and
sick. all the things I had learned had been wasted.
there was no living creature as foul as I
and all my poems were
false.
Other works by Charles Bukowski...
