i

wine pulse
from The Night Torn Mad With Footsteps by Charles Bukowski

this is another poem about 2a.m. and how I'm still at the
machine listening to the radio and smoking a good
cigar.
hell, I don't know, sometimes I feel just like Van Gogh or
Faulkner or,
say, Stravinsky, as I sip wine and type
and smoke and there's no magic as gentle as this.
some critics say I write the same things over and over.
well, sometimes I do and sometimes I don't, but when I do the
reason is that it feels so right, it's like making love and
if you knew how good it felt you would forgive me
because we both know how fickle happiness can be.
so I play the fool and say again that
it's 2a.m.
and that I am
Cezanne
Chopin
Celine
Chinaski
embracing everything:
the sweep of cigar smoke
another glass of wine
the beautiful young girls
the criminals and the killers
the lonely and
the factory workers,
this machine here,
the radio playing,
I repeat it all again
and I'll repeat it all forever
until the magic that happens to me
happens to you.