Charles Bukowski

photographs

they photograph you on your porch
and on your couch
and standing in the courtyard
or leaning against your car
 
these photographers
women with big asses
which look better to you
than do their eyes or their souls
 
—this playing at author
it’s real Hemingway
James Joyce
stageshit
 
but look—
there are the books
you’ve written them
you haven’t been to Paris
but you’ve written all those books
there behind you
(and others not there,
lost or stolen)
 
all you’ve got to do
is look like Bukowski
for the cameras
but
 
you keep watching
those
astonishingly big asses
and thinking—
somebody else is getting
it
“look into my eyes,”
they say and click their cameras
and flash their cameras
 
and fondle their cameras
Hemingway used to box or go
fishing or to the bullfights
but after they leave
you jerk-off into the sheets
and take a hot bath
 
they never send the photos
like they promise to send the photos
and the astonishingly big asses are
gone forever
and you’ve been a fine literary fellow—
now alive
dead soon enough
looking into and at their eyes and souls
and more.
Other works by Charles Bukowski...



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