Friday I'm In Love

Last night I actually got some decent time to sit back and read. I'm currently flipping through (I usually alternate between about 4 poetry books at once, I cover more ground and awaken my mind more that way) "What Matters Most Is How Well You Walk Through The Fire" by Charles Bukowski. I think I feel a slight kindredness to him lately being jobless and frazzled and for whatever reason craving a cigarette even though I've never REALLY craved a cigarette even when I was a (casual) smoker. So instead of smoking I read Bukowski. And then I crave alcohol and an open window. So I move on to somebody else older and refined like Ezra Pound to save me from falling into Summer '06 all over again.

But I still love Bukowski, like many unknowing women have and I decided I'd start my poetry project (I haven't figured out a name for it) with one of my favorites from him that I find very fitting for this re-animation of a part of myself that I've let weeds grow all over.

Roll The Dice

if you’re going to try, go all the
way.
otherwise, don’t even start.

if you’re going to try, go all the
way.
this could mean losing girlfriends,
wives, relatives, jobs and
maybe your mind.

go all the way.
it could mean not eating for 3 or 4 days.
it could mean freezing on a
park bench.
it could mean jail,
it could mean derision,
mockery,
isolation.
isolation is the gift,
all the others are a test of your
endurance, of
how much you really want to
do it.
and you’ll do it
despite rejection and the worst odds
and it will be better than
anything else
you can imagine.

if you’re going to try,
go all the way.
there is no other feeling like
that.
you will be alone with the gods
and the nights will flame with
fire.

do it, do it, do it.
do it.

all the way
all the way.

you will ride life straight to
perfect laughter, its
the only good fight
there is.

- Charles Bukowski


Now to go and actually go all the way...