sometimes I forget about him and his peculiar
innocence, almost idiotic, awkward and mawkish,
he liked walking over bridges and through cornfields.
to night I think about him, the way the lines were,
one felt space between his lines, air
and he told it so the lines remained
carved there
something like van Gogh.
he took his time
looking about
sometimes running to save something
leaving everything to save something,
then at other times giving it all away.
he didn’t understand Hemingway’s neon tattoo,
found Faulkner much too clever.
he was a midwestern hick
he took his time.
he was as far away from Fitzgerald as he was
from Paris.
he told stories and left the meaning open
and sometimes he told meaningless stories
because that was the way it was.
he told the same story again and again
and he never wrote a story that was unreadable.
and nobody ever talks about his life or
his death.
Other works by Charles Bukowski...
