Come with me, I said, and no one knew
where, or how my pain throbbed,
no carnations or barcaroles for me,
only a wound that love had opened.

I said it again: Come with me, as if I were dying,
and no one saw the moon that bled in my mouth
or the blood that rose into silence.
O Love, now we can forget the star that has such thorns!

That is why, when I heard your voice repeat
Come with me, it was as if you had let loose
the grief, the love, the fury of a cork-trapped wine

that geysers flooding from deep in its vault;
in my mouth I felt the taste of fire again,
of blood and carnations, of rock & scald.

I can’t say I’ve read much from Charles Bukowski, Well other than some poems actually.   Thing about dear old Chuck is that he pretty much loved to phrase things in a way that our inner bastard would readily understand, while our tasty PC outer shell does gasp and writhe upon every line.  I know one thing, as I get older I’m certainly becoming more at peace with my inner bastard.  I wanted to read you my favorite poem by Charles called, "To the Whore that stole my Poems”  but I thought better of it.  Here instead is "Some People":

The moon and three brave stars peeked through the advection haze of a warm winters night.  I stood alone in a snow crunch, thread bare place, not ready to go in.  The Doppler din of passing cars mixed with the ticky-tacky hiss of spinning tires on a wet country road.  My nose still burned from the chlorine bath of countless kayak rolls. My fingers pressed against my watering eyes. The air horn blast of a Great Northern diesel shot from the west to ricochet off the dark silhouette south-eastern hills. I looked up to see the tiny yellow lamp of a small plane escorted by flashing Christmas light wings as it rose over the northern horizon.  As it passed I heard the buzzing of it’s bumble bee engine fighting to catch up. I pressed my hand on my cold but still burning nose.