to the whore who took my poems

some say we should keep personal remorse from the poem,
stay abstract, and there is some reason in this,
but jezus;
twelve poems gone and I don't keep carbons and you have my
paintings too, my best ones; its stifling:
are you trying to crush me out like the rest of them?
why didn't you take my money? they usually do
from the sleeping drunken pants sick in the corner.
next time take my left arm or a fifty
but not my poems:
I'm not Shakespeare
but sometime simply
there won't be any more, abstract or otherwise;
there'll always be mony and whores and drunkards
down to the last bomb,
but as God said,
crossing his legs,
I see where I have made plenty of poets
but not so very much
poetry.

--Charles Bukowski

It's that one good sentence a year or two or three (to a year or how long is your sentence? Twenty-five l'chaim) that keeps me in this tourist town. It's the reason I should leave, learn to wing it already and ditch the car when it gets me somewhere with a good underground train and a basement with a door. Spontaneity not being my strong suit, I'll be here another year. Peut-être. If the quotidian escapes me much longer I'm going to have to start justifying this somehow; produce, and soon. Francoise, was it worth it? If I say I am no Alma does it reflect on the lot of you? I can certainly understand the draw.