Humor me for a brief moment, oh God
Help me become
unaware
for tastes of regret
on my travels
so long
Wrap your hands around the life of me
show not mercy
for my struggle
to be free
Death by fire
to my un-lassoed mind
For only in Your humor will I find
a path into the bluest passion
a streak of desire
in my fashion

penny rene’ – 1995

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About fourteen years ago I went to a party wearing baggy pants and a white cotton shirt with a red ribbon hanging from my neck. It was Valentine’s Day, 1985, and I had my eye on Steve Tompkins. We danced the unmistakable dance of teen angst, first crushes and embarrassment. Well, I danced it in my head while he flirted with my friend’s older sister. Later that night, I lay awake in my bed, wondering how I would ever survive a life without him. Torture and slow death! All the things I wanted to say running around in my head. I turned on my lamp, found some paper and a pen, wrote it all down and finally fell asleep. The next morning when I woke, I read the sleepy handwriting that became my very first poem. Since that day, I have written hundreds of poems and though many of them, in the beginning, were about Steve, I never had to pay him a dime for the inspiration. See, I’d be a poet even if we’d never met. I know that, even if he doesn’t. When people ask me why I write, I say, “To breathe.”
What’s poetry mean to me?
…oxygen.

what makes?

“listen Hank,” he asked, “what makes a man a
writer?”
“well,” I said, “it’s simple, it’s either you
get it down on paper or you jump off a
bridge.
writers are desperate people and when they stop
being desperate they stop being
writers.”
“are you desperate?”
“I don’t know…”
I walked on through and as I took the escalator up
I saw him sitting there, probably thinking it was possibly
bullshit, he had wanted me to suggest some special
school, some special way, like some way to get out
of that red coat, it was not an enlightening job
like designing a bridge or batting cleanup for the
Dodgers but
he wasn’t desperate enough, the desperate don’t ask,
they do
and at the top of the escalator, I pushed through the
glass doors and as I did, I thought, son of a bitch,
I should have asked him his name, and then I felt
bad for him and for myself but a few minutes ater
I had forgotten all about him hom
and the other way around
and he watched more hand-stamps under the lamp
and I watched the toteboard and the horses and
the desperate people
desperate in all the wrong
way, in-
deed.
-Charles Bukowski-
from “Third Lung Review” – 1992

for more on Bukowski, go HERE

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“The world is no longer a romantic place. But some of its people are. Don’t let the world win.”

-John “Biscuit” Cage from Ally McBeal