Ham on Rye

Keegan and I went exploring around Robinson Park on Saturday. The boy scouts (god love em') were out cutting new trails and putting up wooden bridges. I guess they're good for something after all. I quit Webelos after one meeting, remembering the Groucho Marx maxim about groupthink. The trail is a nice loop cut through the ravine, I'd guess about 2 miles, but the cool thing is that there is now an iron bridge that links over to Camp Wokanda, where there are several miles. Despite an abundance of 5 year year old energy from KJ, we only made it as far as the bridge, about an hour total, so I have yet to explore the connector trail and the entirety of Wokanda's offerings. Still, I'm stoked about yet another place to run in the area.

Under the great Tulip Tree in Oakland Cemetery, cold Amber Bock in hand, I remember what I love about Charles Bukowski. It has been about 12 years since I've last read his stuff, having read virtually all of his novels and much of his poetry, and you know, sometimes the memory dulls what the spark of a writer can do to one's soul. I give you exhibit A, B, and pick a letter:


To The Whore Who Took My Poems -Charles Bukowski

some say we should keep personal remorse from the
poem,
stay abstract, and there is some reason in this,
but jezus;
twelve poems gone and I don't keep carbons and you have
my
paintings too, my best ones; its stifling:
are you trying to crush me out like the rest of them?
why didn't you take my money? they usually do
from the sleeping drunken pants sick in the corner.
next time take my left arm or a fifty
but not my poems:
I'm not Shakespeare
but sometime simply
there won't be any more, abstract or otherwise;
there'll always be money and whores and drunkards
down to the last bomb,
but as God said,
crossing his legs,
I see where I have made plenty of poets
but not so very much
poetry.