I began drinking about 17 with older boys who roamed the streets and robbed gas stations and liquor stores. they thought my disgust with everything was a lack of fear, that my non-complaining was a soulful bravado. I was popular and I didn’t care whether I was popular or not. I was Frozen. they set great quantities of whiskey and beer and wine in front of me. I drank them down. nothing could get me drunk, really and finally drunk. the others would be falling to the floor, fighting, swinging, swaggering, and I would sit quietly at the table draining another glass, feeling less and less with them, feeling lost, but not painfully so. just electric light and sound and bodies and little more.

Charles Bukowski, Notes of a Dirty Old Man

they smile and bring the food 

they smile and bow 

as a light hurricane rattles the 

blinds

as the scarlet ibis appears 

and dances in the guano 

on my plate

I’m not hungry anyhow

Leda, Tyndareus, Clytemnestra, 

Castor, Pollux or anybody else 

I know wouldn’t 

eat this stuff.

I ask for a doggy bag. 

they smile and scoop the meal 

into there.

later in my kitchen I divide 

the meal onto their plates 

place them upon the floor

as my 3 cats remain motionless 

staring up at me 

as I ask them, “What’s the matter? 

What’s the matter? Eat it!”

the hurricane scratches 

branches against the window 

as I switch out the kitchen 

light 

walk out of there and into 

the other room 

switch on the tv 

just as a cop shoots a 

man at the top of a fire escape 

and he falls and falls 

toppling and flattening in the 

street:

he will never have to eat 

Szechwan shrimp with Chinese 

peas 

again.

Charles Bukowski, « windy night », War all the time. Poems 1981-1984