Gamblers All by Charles Bukowski
Gamblers All
sometimes you climb out of bed
in the morning and you think,
I’m not going to make it,
but you laugh inside
remembering all the times
you’ve felt that way, and
you walk to the bathroom, do your toilet,
see that face
in the mirror, oh my oh my oh my,
but you comb your hair anyway,
get into your street clothes,
feed the cats, fetch the
newspaper of horror,
place it on the coffee table, kiss your
wife goodbye, and then you are backing
the car out into life itself,
like millions of others you enter the arena
once more.
you are on the freeway
threading through traffic now,
moving both towards something and
towards nothing at all as you punch
the radio on and get Mozart, which is something,
and you will somehow
get through the slow days and
the busy days and the dull
days and the hateful days and the rare days,
all both so delightful
and so disappointing because
we are all so alike and so different.
you find the turn-off, drive through
the most dangerous
part of town, feel momentarily wonderful as Mozart works
his way into your brain and
slides down along your bones and
out through your shoes.
it’s been a tough fight worth fighting
as we all drive along
betting on another day.
The only proper place I feel to read Bukowski is on the toilet. How terrible is that? I think because someone in a workshop class one year wrote a poem about doing that. Now it’s all I can ever think of.
M. Dominic´s last blog ..Eyes Closed