Posted by Spillwords Publishes Charles Bukowski’s Road Not Chosen
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Charles Bukowski Road Not Chosen
While reading Charles Bukowski’s poetry
On the metro ride home
Listening to Buddha bar music
On my oh too hip IPod.
I begin to see myself as I was
Over 30 years ago when I was merely a bit player
A minor character in a Charles Bukowski poem.
A wild young underemployed intellectual
Hanging out in dismal bars and dives all over Asia and California
Hanging with disreputable women and drunks and drinkers
And characters out of his kinds of haunts.
A mad poet bard of the underground
A drunken poet in a drunken bum show
That nightly played in his head.
Then one day I met the woman of my dreams
And went down a different path
A long, slow path to respectability.
And now 30 years later
I am no longer a wild man
I am still a poet at heart
But I am now also a bureaucrat
In a button-down suite.
Doing the people’s business
Working for the Government
I’ve become the Man.
Sometimes I wonder
Would I have been better off
Going down that other path?
Would I have ended up
Somewhere else
Doing something else.
Would I have been as happy?
Would I have been as successful?
No answer satisfies
The longing in my heart
For that wild thing
That still lurks beneath
It’s a civilized cover.
And I know that I am still
A mad poet at heart
Railing against the injustice of the world.
As I work day by day in the belly
of the great beast of State
I recall the ancient Chinese saying,
“Confucian during the day while Taoist rebel at night”
Playing out in my head and nightly dreams
In the true American Upper-class patrician tradition.
I close the book and look out the window
Get off the train, and walk slowly home.
And realize I had no choice
But to take the path that I’ve trodden on/
And so I put aside my misgivings
And say goodbye to my “Bukowskian” desires
For another night of domestic contentment.
Was it worth it all to take the conventional path?
And not take the Bohemian road to hell and back?
I look at my wife and realize
I had no choice, had no choice
But to follow her to the ends of the earth.
And beyond by her side as we walked our path
Of shared destiny.
Goodbye, Charles Bukowski, wherever you are
May I meet you in a bar in the next life?
And figure out where we should have gone.
Until then, the drinks are on me.
Spillwords has published a number of my works over the years. See the following:
JAKE COSMOS ALLER
SPOTLIGHT ON WRITERS – JAKE COSMOS ALLER
ONE NIGHT IN BOMBAY
MOZART BLUES
REFLECTIONS IN MY BEER
LONELY DOG
DAZZLING LIGHT OF THE FULL MOON
STRANGERS SLEEPING ON THE STREETS
EVE EATS THE APPLE
JUST ENOUGH FOR COFFEE
MOCKING FACES STARING AT ME
CHAOS
DORA THE INTERGALACTIC EXPLORER
EVERYDAY I TURN ON THE NEWS
MORNING LIGHT
RAMBLING MAN, WHERE IS YOUR HOME?
DARK DANGEROUS THOUGHTS
IN SEARCH OF AMERICA – HITCHHIKING TALES
BUS RIDES IN AMERICA’S UNDERBELLY
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