You don’t drown by falling into water, you drown by staying there.

For The Foxes
by Charles Bukowski

don't feel sorry for me.
I am a competent,
satisfied human being.

be sorry for the others
who
fidget
complain

who
constantly
rearrange their
lives
like
furniture.

juggling mates
and
attitudes

their
confusion is
constant

and it will
touch
whoever they
deal with.

beware of them:
one of their
key words is
"love."

and beware those who
only take
instructions from their
God

for they have
failed completely to live their own
lives.

don't feel sorry for me
because I am alone

for even
at the most terrible
moments
humor
is my
companion.

I am a dog walking
backwards

I am a broken
banjo

I am a telephone wire
strung up in
Toledo, Ohio

I am a man
eating a meal
this night
in the month of
September.

put your sympathy
aside.
they say
water held up
Christ:
to come
through
you better be
nearly as
lucky.

In July or September you will come knocking on my door
when you shouldn’t
because I no longer live there.

You will offer me dandelions and romance
through a hole in the door.
In exchange for forgiveness you will offer
to add additions onto my home
a back porch for the summer and a bedroom for our baby.
When you receive no response
you will cry and bang harder
threatening to unscrew the frame
or crawl through a window.

 

The day you come looking for me
you will wear a salesman’s suit and tie
and you will sweat under the layers.
With the script well rehearsed
your hands will clench the book like gospel
and your heart will be beating rapidly.
At first you will try the bell
but when you don’t hear footsteps
you will begin talking to yourself
from under the stairs.
You will play back the tape in your head
and prepare your face for the performance of a lifetime.

 

You will try yelling at me from the lawn
you will shake the front door
then the back door.
You will try to break down the walls with an ax
or dig a hole with a pitchfork.
You will consult the neighbors.
You will telephone the friend of a friend
and send letters.

You will try prayer and meditation
and living an honorable life.
You will get a haircut
and write love sonnets
and you will make commitments to yourself
to be a better citizen.
to call me your wife.

And when you finally make it inside
and no one is there
you will start a fire in the living room
by placing your hands in the flames
to feel something
other than the space between us.

 

 

Helen of Troy Does Countertop Dancing
Margaret Atwood

The world is full of women
who'd tell me I should be ashamed of myself
if they had the chance. Quit dancing.
Get some self-respect
and a day job.
Right. And minimum wage,
and varicose veins, just standing
in one place for eight hours
behind a glass counter
bundled up to the neck, instead of
naked as a meat sandwich.
Selling gloves, or something.
Instead of what I do sell.
You have to have talent
to peddle a thing so nebulous
and without material form.
Exploited, they'd say. Yes, any way
you cut it, but I've a choice
of how, and I'll take the money.
I do give value.
Like preachers, I sell vision,
like perfume ads, desire
or its facsimile. Like jokes
or war, it's all in the timing.
I sell men back their worse suspicions:
that everything's for sale,
and piecemeal.