What Matters Most is How Well You Walk Through the Fire by Charles Bukowski

on my shoulders and shakes me.
    Lorca was shot down in the road but here
    in America the poets never anger anybody.
    the poets don’t gamble.
    their poetry has the smell of clinics.
    their poetry has the smell of clinics
    where people die rather than live.
    here they don’t assassinate the poets
    they don’t even notice the poets.
    I walk out on the street to buy a
    newspaper.
    Assault follows me.
    we pass a beautiful young girl on the sidewalk.
    I look into her eyes, she stares
    back.
    you can’t have her, says Assault, you are an old man,
    you are a crazy old man.
    I’m aware of my age, I say with some dignity.
    yes, and aware of death too.
    you’re going to die and
    you don’t know where you’re going
    but I’m coming along with you.
    you rotten bastard, I say, why are you
    so fond of me?
    I get a newspaper and come back.
    we read it together.
    ah, my companion!
    we bathe together, sleep together, eat
    together, we
    open letters together.
    we write poems together.
    we read poems together.
    I don’t know if I am Chinaski or
    Assault.
    some say I love my pain.
    yes, I love it so much I’d like to give it to you
    wrapped in a red ribbon
    wrapped in a bloody red ribbon
    you can have it
    you can have it all.
    I’ll never miss it.
    I’m working on getting rid of it, believe me.
    I might jam it into your mailbox
    or throw it into the back seat of your car.
    but now
    here on DeLongpre Ave.
    we have just
    each other.

raw with love
    little dark girl with
    kind eyes
    when it comes time to
    use the knife
    I won’t flinch and
    I won’t blame
    you,
    as I drive along the shore alone
    as the palms wave,
    the ugly heavy palms,
    as the living do not arrive
    as the dead do not leave,
    I won’t blame you,
    instead
    I will remember the kisses
    our lips raw with love
    and how you gave me
    everything you had
    and how I
    offered you what was left of
    me,
    and I will remember your small room
    the feel of you
    the light in the window
    your records
    your books
    our morning coffee
    our noons our nights
    our bodies spilled together
    sleeping
    the tiny flowing currents
    immediate and forever
    your leg my leg
    your arm my arm
    your smile and the warmth
    of you
    who made me laugh
    again.
    little dark girl with kind eyes
    you have no
    knife. the knife is
    mine and I won’t use it
    yet.

wide and moving
    it is 98 degrees and I am standing in the center
    of the room in my shorts.
    it is the beginning of September
    and I hear the sound of high heels biting
    into the pavement outside.
    I walk to the window
    as she comes by
    in a knitted see-through pink dress,
    long legs in nylon,
    and the behind is
    wide and moving and grand
    as I stand there watching the sun run through
    all that movement
    and then she is gone.
    all I can see is brush and lawn and pavement.
    where did she come from?
    and what can one do when it comes and leaves
    like that?
    it seems immensely unfair.
    I turn around, roll myself a cigarette,
    light it,
    stand in front of my air cooler
    and feel unjustifiably
    cheated.
    but I suppose she gives that same feeling to a
    hundred men a day.
    I decide not to mourn
    and remain at the window to
    watch a white pigeon
    peck in the dirt
    outside.

demise
    the son-of-a-bitch
    was one of those soft liberal guys
    belly like butter who
    lived in a big house, he
    was a professor
    and he told
    her:
    â€œhe’ll be your
    demise.”
    imagine anybody saying
    that: “ demise ”!
    we drove in from the track,
    she’d lost $57 and she said:
    â€œwe better stop for something to
    drink.”
    she wore an old army jacket
    a baseball cap
    hiking boots
    and when I came out with the bottle
    she twisted the top off
    and took a long straight swallow
    a longshoreman’s suicide gulp
    tilting her head back behind those dark glasses.
    my god, I thought.
    a nice country girl like that
    who loves to dance.
    her 4 mad sisters will never forgive me
    and that soft left-wing