Since I’m now 70, I can relate a bit more to this Charles Bukowski poem I published in Artcrimes #11 – Eat at Eternities, April 1991, guest edited by poet/artist Ben Gulyas.
~ ~ ~
somebody else
a hangover at 70
seems somewhat worse,
of course,
than one at
35,
but considering
most other things
I feel about the
same,
my strengths, my
ideals, my
confusions
remain
similar.
it is only when
say
I am walking
along
and I see my
reflection
in a
plate glass
window
that I wonder,
who is
that?
that thing
there.
that old fart.
disgusting.
– Charles Bukowski, 1991
I don’t have to compare my hangovers because I quit drinking in 1991, 25 years ago, and I don’t see “that thing” in the mirror because I’m not as ugly as he was . . . few men are.
I’m not rich like him, not famous at all, but I may well be healthier and happier than he ever was, at least according to the excellent documentary Bukowski: Born into This, 2003, directed by John Dullaghan (it has an imdb.com user rating of 7.9 out of 10).
I do have some old man ugly skin . . . 8 weeks throat cancer radiation 10 years ago seriously ravaged my neck scrotal, and 15 months of Mexican sun while living in Oaxaca damaged my arm skin.
Amusing story – guest editor Ben Gulyas in 1991 wrote asking Bukowski for poems, who sent a nice letter back with doodles on it and enclosed a dozen poems. Ben wrote back saying the poems lacked his usual fire, did he have any others? Bukowski never answered. So we published half what he’d sent in Artcrimes, and the other half in the Jim Lang/Gulyas Split Whiskey poetry paper.
~ ~ ~
Status Report 189
70 years on my head
and I’m still awaiting white hair
to make me look like a poet
Mirrors don’t show
the shards of 8 different decades
embedded in my mind
Fertilizing cultural clime
for climb
from 1946 to 2016
25,567 days of then
with each brief daily now
joining them
Quick new now just born appears
to get me through affaired arrears
and tangled tide
I’m still unknown
neither rich nor well off
50 years after my first rejection letter
But art and poems and friends and fotos
pile in amiable disarray
in my backspray
And body rage eases
as it ages
in pain
So happier in head
due wife and cat
and life
And grass
– Smith, 3.9.2016
