Getting It

(Apologies to Charles “Hank” Bukowski)

Dear Robert,

It’s been quite some time

Since the last, beautiful disaster

I don’t know who feels worse:

My ex wife or the drunken whore down the hall?

The streets in town

Are different now

Too clean, all the guts and grime

Gone, no soul

I’m afraid to go to the liquor store

Too many unfamiliar stares

My insides can’t handle that shit

“No more, no more,” I scream

But still they come, like maggots

Sometimes I wish

I could just quit

The human fucking race.

Dangling by a thread,

Hank

-RD