the illusion is that you are simply reading this poem. the reality is that this is more than a poem. this is a beggar's knife. this is a tulip. this is a soldier marching through Madrid. this is you on your death bed. this is Li Po laughing underground. this is not a god-damned poem. this is a horse asleep. a butterfly in your brain. this is the devil's circus. you are not reading this on a page. the page is reading you. feel it? it's like a cobra. it's a hungry eagle circling the room.
this is not a poem. poems are dull, they make you sleep.
these words force you to a new madness.
you have been blessed, you have been pushed into a blinding area of light.
the elephant dreams with you now. the curve of space bends and laughs.
you can die now. you can die now as people were meant to die: great, victorious, hearing the music, being the music, roaring, roaring, roaring.
:: Charles Bukowski
Spring
Somewhere a black bear has just risen from sleep and is staring
down the mountain. All night in the brisk and shallow restlessness of early spring
I think of her, her four black fists flicking the gravel, her tongue
like a red fire touching the grass, the cold water. There is only one question:
how to love this world. I think of her rising like a black and leafy ledge
to sharpen her claws against the silence of the trees. Whatever else
my life is with its poems and its music and its cities,
it is also this dazzling darkness coming down the mountain, breathing and tasting;
all day I think of her – her white teeth, her wordlessness, her perfect love.
retreat
