Christmas and New Year’s move
toward us
again

the old sickening
duet

the masses coming out
of their tv
caves

the family
gatherings

the gross
dull
nothingness,
the fake
drunks,
the fake
smiles,
the fake
people

may we live
through this
somehow,
one more
time


* This “found poem” is a reworking, in poetic form, of an excerpt from a letter that Charles Bukowski wrote to Douglas Goodwin on December 4, 1992 (12:16 AM). Reworked by Jay Dougherty, from letters that Douglas Goodwin provided to Dougherty. See also the book Reach for the Sun: Selected Letters 1978–1994, Volume 3, and see additional letters from Bukowski to Goodwin in [bju:k]—das jahrbuch der Charles-Bukowski-Gesellschaft, Jahrbuch 2015/16, published by the Charles Bukowski Gesellschaft, Bamberg, Germany.

 

Charles Bukowski was one of the most influential poets of the late 20th Century. In a late interview, he said, "The nine-to-five is one of the greatest atrocities sprung upon mankind. You give your life away to a function that doesn’t interest you. This situation so repelled me that I was driven to drink, starvation, and mad females, simply as an alternative. The ideal, for one like me, of course, is to make it off of your writing, your creativity." Bukowski died on March 9, 1994.