You Get So Alone Sometimes That It Just Makes Sense.

Okay, I don't really have much to say today.  Cleaning the apartment and working on comics.  If any of you read American Ambition, you're in for some of the funniest shit we've done yet.  If any of you were waiting for more chapter in K, hang tight, it's only getting better.

It's Friday, that means a new poem.  This one is a few years old, written before I moved out.

My Stupid Dog

“There are worse things than being alone,”

-CB

On the couch reading Bukowski

and pissed that I can’t emulate, imitate

or steal a style so simple, so honest.

Direct as a fist

shoved into a mouthful

of teeth.

My stupid dog plops his big head on my lap.

I never wanted a dog,

I want the poems

that smell like the sweat beating

off a reluctantly beating heart.

I want the heart

that burns clear through

the restrictive ribcage.

But I got a dog.

Well, my mother’s dog.

We got him so Dad would put down the

chops and wine and maybe

go for a walk now and then.

But the dumb dog doesn’t walk.

Quakes at the very mention

of leaving the house.

So Dad’s still out of shape

and Mom has a dog

and a derelict son—

two pieces of expensive

breathing furniture.  

He’s not big, but heavy

leans on me and waits.

He doesn’t really like me,

but I’m warm and I’ll do

until his mother gets home.

My eyes move in typewriter

motion across the lines trying

to burn them

somewhere in the soft

meat behind the pupils.

Dumb dog’s eyes are

almost human

and stare right through me.

Reminds me of the eyes resting

gracefully in the sockets

of the girls who laid under me

while they too were waiting

for other people.

But I was warm and I would do.

Dogs want to please

it’s what they do.

He knows I think he’s stupid

and doesn’t care

he wants me to like him

so badly.

I’m not sympathetic

but I know the feeling

of wanting to be liked.

He brings me his toys.

An offering of great importance

to him alone.

And I write

poems people have

as much a use for

as I do rubber bones.

But he’ll keep trying

because he wants to please

that’s what he does.

That’s what we do.

—So lost and so simple

and so very, very stupid.

Big brown-eyed stupid dog.

I never wrote to be praised

but I want those poems.

I want that heart.

I doubt Bukowski wanted

to be himself sometimes,

let alone have imitators.

For a good scratch behind the ears

I’d write a thousand poems,

out-drink Bukowski,

live on park benches

and die at 26.

Did you enjoy this?

I wrote it for you.

Just call me,

I’ll be

your

dog.