Charles Bukowski

At Eastern Market DC nearly six years ago, I bought an indie black t-shirt of Charles Bukowski holding a can of beer. It says: "To do a dangerous thing with style is what I call art." If he only knew that a poetry student would fashionably sport around his face as a bohemian-nouveau trend.

Bukowski like Joseph Brodsky like Hemingway  have a scotch in one hand and shotgun in the other personal flair, yet still have the capacity to craft delicately. He seems less dangerous and a little more know-able.

No. 6

I'll settle for the 6 horse
on a rainy afternoon
a paper cup of coffee
in my hand
a little way to go,
the wind twirling out
small wrens from
the upper grandstand roof,
the jocks coming out
for a middle race
silent
and the easy rain making
everything
at once
almost alike,
the horses at peace with
each other
before the drunken war
and I am under the grandstand
feeling for
cigarettes
settling for coffee,
then the horses walk by
taking their little men
away --
it is funereal and graceful
and glad
like the opening
of flowers.

A Slight Illumination, A Pacific Vapor

By: Jeffrey Levine

Had he been able to sing... It was almost a song.
The phrases enveloped in his voice’s flesh
Were of the hardness of a writing near at hand.
He would note: the kernel. The stone
On which he constructs a temple of music.
A school of gongs.

How to hold the earth in place.
Which accords us the grace to be what we can.
And before the traveling a “never”
That took the visible half of the world
From them, and in exchange, gave them the invisible.

Always the garden, but a lazy garden. Feckless.
Kept, the promise gave them bizarre riches.
Everything—
We could have had, we had.

The air where we meet, the beauty of the air where the street,
The café is found: a slight illumination.
A Pacific vapor.
Together in the interior where the impossible
Doesn’t enter.

Copyright © Jeffrey Levine

Copyright © 2008 Ploughshares