Alone With Everybody by Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski (1920-1994)





the flesh covers the bone
and they put a mind
in there and
sometimes a soul,
and the women break
vases against the walls
and the men drink too
much
and nobody finds the
one
but keep
looking
crawling in and out
of beds.
flesh covers
the bone and the
flesh searches
for more than
flesh.

there's no chance
at all:
we are all trapped
by a singular
fate.

nobody ever finds
the one.

the city dumps fill
the junkyards fill
the madhouses fill
the hospitals fill
the graveyards fill

nothing else
fills.







Bukowski, like many writers, had his ups and downs. He was first published in the 1940s. Soon after, he gave up writing and joined the work force and bars. Myth says he didn't write or publish anything for nearly 20 years. READ MORE

poet, poems, bukowski

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Wilson by Deborah White

His smile was easy
as dawn's slip
into a darkened room.

The hat he wore
he'd found diving
through the dumpster

outside the local Waffle-House.
It sat cocked to the left
on his head,

a mimic of Pisa
a tower he'd
never seen.

His hands slick as a greased
hairless feline, crouched
ready to rummage

my purse in hope
its void would spare
a dollar or two.

His voice purred, hypnotic
rumbles, sensuous as Flack's croon
of promised sunrises.

But, it was the speak
of his eyes that engaged me,
they told his story of way when.

The lights of his soul swirled
with Coffee-House yesterdays
maryjane, beatnik pads, flower power.

Cool Cat Wilson-Man
still gorged with peace,
love and happiness.

He's boarded the here
and now bus, taking rides
that fray his pants,

tatter his hat, gray his beard,
ride, ride there's no getting off.

poem, poetry

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What is Poetry.

There are two basic types of poetry.

1. Traditional - follows standard rules of grammar and syntax with a regular rhythm and rhyme scheme.
2. Modern - avoids rhyme and standard grammatical organization and seeks new ways of expression.
   

One Rule!

Read a poem several times. That way you can "hear" the piece and feel its emotion.


The poetry here on WANDERER'S NOOK is mainly the "modern" form of poetry.

I consider myself a modern writer of poetry.

I refuse to really call myself a "Poet" because I haven't matured enough in writing in order to have the honor to sit at a desk next to Billy Collins, Margaret Atwood, Rita Dove, etc. So, I tap, tap, tap on, at this key board until the Poet in me breaths life.

Basics of Poetry: READ MORE

poetry, writing

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The Truth the Dead Know by Anne Sexton

Anne Sexton 1928-1974



Gone, I say and walk from church,
refusing the stiff procession to the grave,
letting the dead ride alone in the hearse.
It is June. I am tired of being brave.


We drive to the Cape. I cultivate
myself where the sun gutters from the sky,
where the sea swings i like an iron gate
and we touch.. In another country people die.


My darling, the wind falls in like stones
from the white-hearted water and when we touch
we enter touch entirely. No one's alone.
Men kill for this, or for as much.

And what of the dead? They lie without shoes
in the stone boats. They are more like stone
than the sea would be if it stopped. They refuse
to be blessed, throat, eye and knuckle bone.


Read About Anne Sexton


Personal Note: Anne Sexton is so Plath-like with her writing. The sadness in her life mirrors Plaths too.

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Daddy by Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath

You do not do, you do not do
Any more, black shoe
In which I have lived like a foot
For thirty years, poor and white,
Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.

Daddy, I have had to kill you.
You died before I had time---
Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,
Ghastly statue with one gray toe
Big as a Frisco seal

And a head in the freakish Atlantic
Where it pours bean green over blue
In the waters off the beautiful Nauset.
I used to pray to recover you.
Ach, du.

In the German tongue, in the Polish town
Scraped flat by the roller
Of wars, wars, wars.
But the name of the town is common.
My Polack friend

Says there are a dozen or two.
So I never could tell where you
Put your foot, your root,
I never could talk to you.
The tongue stuck in my jaw.

It stuck in a barb wire snare.
Ich, ich, ich, ich,
I could hardly speak.
I thought every German was you.
And the language obscene

An engine, an engine,
Chuffing me off like a Jew.
A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen.
I began to talk like a Jew.
I think I may well be a Jew.

The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna
Are not very pure or true.
With my gypsy ancestress and my weird luck
And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack
I may be a bit of a Jew.

I have always been sacred of you,
With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo.
And your neat mustache
And your Aryan eye, bright blue.
Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You----

Not God but a swastika
So black no sky could squeak through.
Every woman adores a Fascist,
The boot in the face, the brute
Brute heart of a brute like you.

You stand at the blackboard, daddy,
In the picture I have of you,
A cleft in your chin instead of your foot
But no less a devil for that, no not
Any less the black man who

Bit my pretty red heart in two.
I was ten when they buried you.
At twenty I tried to die
And get back, back, back to you.
I thought even the bones would do.

But they pulled me out of the sack,
And they stuck me together with glue.
And then I knew what to do.
I made a model of you,
A man in black with a Meinkampf look

And a love of the rack and the screw.
And I said I do, I do.
So daddy, I'm finally through.
The black telephone's off at the root,
The voices just can't worm through.

If I've killed one man, I've killed two---
The vampire who said he was you
And drank my blood for a year,
Seven years, if you want to know.
Daddy, you can lie back now.

There's a stake in your fat black heart
And the villagers never liked you.
They are dancing and stamping on you.
They always knew it was you.
Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I'm through.

Personal Note: I haven't posted a poem by Sylvia Plath in quite a while. She's another of my favorite poets. She paints her depression in a vivid and moving way.