Friday, August 18, 2006
Portrait of A Middle-Aged Loner
My mock personal ad reminded me of two modern American poems.
Charles Bukowski, Poem For My 43rd Birthday:
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Charles Bukowski, Poem For My 43rd Birthday:
To end up aloneKenneth Rexroth, The Advantages of Learning:
in a tomb of a room
without cigarettes
or wine--
just a lightbulb
and a potbelly,
grayhaired,
and glad to have
the room.
I am a man with no ambitions
And few friends, wholly incapable
Of making a living, growing no
Younger, fugitive from some just doom.
Lonely, ill-clothed, what does it matter?
At midnight I make myself a jug
Of hot white wine and cardamon seeds.
In a torn grey robe and old beret,
I sit in the cold writing poems,
Drawing nudes on the crooked margins,
Copulating with sixteen year old
Nymphomaniacs of my imagination.
