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Charles Bukowski Road Not Taken

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 woman 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?? 
 
 
No answer satisfies? 
The longing in my heart? 
For that wild thing? 
That still lurks beneath? 
It’s a 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 “Bukowski an” 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.?

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