Great Exudations

“The rich have become richer, and the poor have become poorer; and the vessel of the state is driven between the Scylla and Charybdis of anarchy and despotism.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley from “A Defense of Poetry” (published posthumously in 1840)

What a film. I was sitting in the theater and watching previews at the tender age of 15. I don’t recall what we were seeing that night but suddenly the trailer for “Alien” began. It felt entirely different from anything I had seen before or since. I turned to my friend and whispered, “what the fuck was THAT?!” I still can feel it. A work that encapsulates an entire genre. All too rare.

“Let us prepare our minds as if we’d come to the very end of life. Let us postpone nothing. Let us balance life’s books each day… The one who puts the finishing touches on their life each day is never short of time.”

Seneca (4 BC — 65 AD), Roman stoic philosopher

patient: bukowski, charles
exam: ct abdomen and pelvis with contrast
date: better-late-than-never
interpreting staff: charles bukowski

it takes guts

it’s pretty clear from my angle
lying here half naked
with half a heart that doesn’t much move
a little grit and spittle in my left lung
or is that the right?
though it makes no difference to
the smoke and dust trucking in and out

surprised I’ve got any liver left at all
maybe it grows back while you’re
sleeping it off
lots of things can creep up on you that way,
especially if you don’t want them to.

vented my spleen a thousand-thousand times
but it’s still there
and yet I have no right to it
take it, it’s yours.
who’s the fool now?

and would you look at that fat pair!
pair of kidneys, mind you
though I know what you were thinking
and that’s true, too.
my piss runs like a racehorse
on Lasix
wakes the neighbors,
guess they need better dreams.

well I already knew I was full of crap
my dad informed me so,
as did the US postal service,
and they should know.
but it’s nothing a little cheap beer
and chili won’t cure.

it takes guts to look inside yourself…

all the rest, I’d reckon, is standard issue
bones look about as they feel,
brittle as chalk and sharp at the edges.
there’s an old broken rib on the starboard flank
I remember that night
she was a redhead
Milly or Molly
and he wasn’t treating her well
but I tried to,
at least at first.

they’ll say that scars and such
are signs of a life lived in full.
They’re full of it I’ll say,
though I’m lucky
and glad today
to pat myself down,
get up
and walk away.

I think her name was Molly.