What Matters Most is How Well You Walk Through the Fire by Charles Bukowski

that’s all right, because
    it’s 115 degrees and my girlfriend’s boys
    are playing outside
    on their bicycles
    and diving into the wading pool
    while waiting to grow up.
    for me,
    it’s too hot to fuck
    too hot to paint
    too hot to complain,
    those horses across the road don’t even
    brush off the flies,
    the flies are too tired and too hot to bite,
    115 degrees,
    and if I’m going to conquer the literary world
    maybe we can get it down to
    85 degrees first?
    right now I can’t write poetry,
    I’m panting and lazy and ineffectual,
    there’s a fly on the roller of my typer
    and he rides back and forth, back and forth,
    my literary fly,
    you son-of-a-bitch, get busy,
    seek ye out another poet and bite him
    on his ass.
    I can’t understand anything
    except that it’s hot, that’s what it is,
    hot, it’s hot today, that’s what it is, it’s hot, and
    that guy from Canada I drank with 3 weeks ago,
    he’s probably rolling in the snow right now
    with Eskimo women and writing all kinds of
    immortal stuff, but it’s just too hot for me.
    let him.

memory
    I’ve memorized all the fish in the sea
    I’ve memorized each opportunity strangled
    and
    I remember awakening one morning
    and finding everything smeared with the color of
    forgotten love
    and I’ve memorized
    that too.
    I’ve memorized green rooms in
    St. Louis and New Orleans
    where I wept because I knew that by myself I
    could not overcome
    the terror of them and it.
    I’ve memorized all the unfaithful years
    (and the faithful ones too)
    I’ve memorized each cigarette that I’ve rolled.
    I’ve memorized Beethoven and New York City
    I’ve memorized
    riding up escalators, I’ve memorized
    Chicago and cottage cheese, and the mouths of
    some of the ladies and the legs of
    some of the ladies
    I’ve known
    and the way the rain came down hard.
    I’ve memorized the face of my father in his coffin,
    I’ve memorized all the cars I have driven
    and each of their sad deaths,
    I’ve memorized each jail cell,
    the face of each new president
    and the faces of some of the assassins;
    I’ve even memorized the arguments I’ve had with
    some of the women
    I’ve loved.
    best of all
    I’ve memorized tonight and now and the way the
    light falls across my fingers,
    specks and smears on the wall,
    shades down behind orange curtains;
    I light a rolled cigarette and then laugh a little,
    yes, I’ve memorized it all.
    the courage of my memory.

Carlton Way off Western Ave.
    while the rents go up elsewhere
    this is where the poor people
    come to live
    the people on AFDC and relief
    the large families with bad jobs
    the strange lonely men
    on old age pensions
    waiting to die.
    here among the massage parlors
    the pawn shops
    the liquor stores
    caught in the smog and the squalor
    even the dogs look
    inept
    don’t bark or
    chase cats,
    and the cats walk up and down the
    streets
    and never catch a bird
    but the birds are there
    but you can’t see them
    you only hear them
    sometimes in the night
    at 3:30 a.m.
    after the last streetwalker has made her
    last score.
    the rents go up here too
    but compared to most others
    we are living for free
    because nobody wants to live with the
    likes of us.
    none of us have new cars
    most of us walk
    and we don’t care who wins the
    election.
    but we have wife-beaters
    here too
    just like the others
    and child-beaters
    just like the others
    and sex freaks
    and TV sets
    just like the others
    and we’ll die
    just like the others
    only a little earlier and we’ll eat
    just like the others
    only cheaper stuff
    and lie
    just like the others
    only with a little less
    imagination.
    and even though our streetwalkers don’t
    look as good as your wives
    I think our cats and our birds and dogs
    are better
    and don’t forget the low
    rents.

at the zoo
    here’s a male giraffe
    he wants it
    but the female’s not