Email Poem

Your IP Address: 3.129.253.54
Your Email Address:
To Email Address:
Subject
Personal Note:
Poem Title:
Poem
Charles Bukowski Road Not Chosen
 
While reading Charles Bukowski poetry
On the metro ride home
Listening to Buddha bar music
On my oh too hip IPod
 
I begin to see myself as I was
Over 30 years ago when I was merely a bit player
A minor character in a Charles Bukowski poem
 
A wild young underemployed intellectual
Hanging out in dismal bars and dives all over Asia and California
Hanging with disreputable women and drunks and drinkers
And characters out of his kinds of haunts
 
A mad poet bard of the underground
A drunken poet in a drunken bum show
That nightly played in his head
 
Then one day I met the women of my dreams
And went down a different path
A long slow path to respectability
 
And now 30 years later
I am no longer a wild man
I am still a poet at heart
But I am now also a bureaucrat
In a button down suite
 
Doing the people's business
Working for the Government
I've become the Man
 
Sometimes I wonder
Would I have been better off
Going down that another path

Would I have ended up
Somewhere else
Doing something else
 
Would I have been as happy
Would I have been as successful?
 
There is no answer that satisfies
The longing in my heart
For that wild thing
That still lurks beneath
It's civilized cover
 
And I know that I am still
A mad poet at heart
Railing against the injustice of the world
 
As I work day by day in the belly of the great beast of State
I recall the ancient Chinese saying,
"Confucian during the day while Taoist rebel at night"
Playing out in my head and nightly dreams
In the true American Upper class patrician tradition
 
I close the book and look out the window
Get off the train, and walk slowly home
 
And realize I had no choice
But to take the path that I’ve trodden on
 
And so I put aside my misgivings
And say goodbye to my "Bukowskian"desires
For another night of domestic contentment
 
Was it worth it all to take the conventional path
And not take the bohemian road to hell and back
 
I look at my wife and realize
I had no choice, had no choice
But to follow her to the ends of the earth
 
And beyond by her side as we walked our path
Of shared destiny
 
Goodbye Charles Bukowski wherever you are
May I meet you in a bar in the next life
And figure out where we should have gone
 
Until then the drinks are on me.
CAPTCHA Preview
Type the characters you see in the picture
Required