An Almost Made Up Poem


I see you drinking
at a fountain
with tiny blue hands,
no, your hands are not tiny
they are small,
and the fountain is in France
where you wrote me that last letter and
I answered
and never heard from you again.

You used to write insane poems
about ANGELS AND GOD,
all in upper case,
and you knew famous artists
and most of them were your lovers,
and I wrote back,
it’ all right,
go ahead,
enter their lives,
I’ not jealous because we’ never met.

We got close once in New Orleans,
one half block,
but never met,
never touched.

So you went with the famous
and wrote about the famous,
and, of course, what you found out
is that the famous are worried
about their fame –– not the beautiful
young girl in bed with them,
who gives them that,
and then awakens in the morning
to write upper case poems
about ANGELS AND GOD.

We know God is dead,
they’ told us,
but listening to you
I wasn’t sure.

Maybe it was the upper case.
You were one of the best female poets
and I told the publishers and editors:
“Her, print her, she’ mad but she’ magic.
There’ no lie in her fire.”

I loved you like a man loves a woman
he never touches,
only writes to,
keeps little photographs of.

I would have loved you more
if I had sat in a small room
rolling a cigarette and listened to you
piss in the bathroom,
but that didn’ happen.

Your letters got sadder.
Your lovers betrayed you.
Kid, I wrote back, all lovers betray.
It didn’ help.

You said you had a crying bench
and it was by a bridge
and the bridge was over a river
and you sat on the crying bench
every night
and wept for the lovers
who had hurt and forgotten you.

I wrote back but never heard again.
A friend wrote me of your suicide
3 or 4 months after it happened.

If I had met you
I would probably have been unfair to you
or you to me.

It was best like this.

― Charles Bukowski Tweet