The Shower

we like to shower afterwards
(I like the water hotter than she)
and her face is always soft and peaceful
and she'll watch me first
spread the soap over my balls
lift the balls
squeeze them,
then wash the cock:
"hey, this thing is still hard!"
then get all the hair down there,-
the belly, the back, the neck, the legs,
I grin grin grin,
and then I wash her. . .
first the cunt, I
stand behind her, my cock in the cheeks of her ass
I gently soap up the cunt hairs,
wash there with a soothing motion,
I linger perhaps longer than necessary,
then I get the backs of the legs, the ass,
the back, the neck, I turn her, kiss her,
soap up the breasts, get them and the belly, the neck,
the fronts of the legs, the ankles, the feet,
and then the cunt, once more, for luck. . .
another kiss, and she gets out first,
toweling, sometimes singing while I stay in
turn the water on hotter
feeling the good times of love's miracle
I then get out. . .
it is usually mid-afternoon and quiet,
and getting dressed we talk about what else
there might be to do,
but being together solves most of it
for as long as those things stay solved
in the history of women and
man, it's different for each-
for me, it's splendid enough to remember
past the memories of pain and defeat and unhappiness:
when you take it away
do it slowly and easily
make it as if I were dying in my sleep instead of in
my life, amen.

Charles Bukowski

A Poet's Advice

A poet is somebody who feels, and who expresses his feelings through words.

This may sound easy, but it isn't. 

A lot of people think or believe or know they feel -- but that's thinking or believing or knowing; not feeling. And poetry is feeling -- not knowing or believing or thinking.

Almost anybody can learn to think or believe or know, but not a single human being can be taught to feel. Why? Because whenever you think or you believe or you know, you're a lot of other people: but the moment you feel, you're nobody-but-yourself.

To be nobody-but-yourself -- in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else -- means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.

As for expressing nobody-but-yourself in words, that means working just a little harder than anybody who isn't a poet can possibly imagine. Why? Because nothing is quite as easy as using words like somebody else. We all of us do exactly this nearly all of the time - and whenever we do it, we are not poets.

If, at the end of your first ten or fifteen years of fighting and working and feeling, you find you've written one line of one poem, you'll be very lucky indeed.

And so my advice to all young people who wish to become poets is: do something easy, like learning how to blow up the world -- unless you're not only willing, but glad, to feel and work and fight till you die.

Does this sound dismal? It isn't.

It's the most wonderful life on earth.

Or so I feel.

Edward Estlin Cummings

Enemies with benefits

Nos quedamos despiertos

hasta las dos de la mañana

esperando que algo salga de nosotros

algo de lo que no hablamos todavía

algo que nos haga acercarnos

que rompa este silencio que dice nada

que nos deseamos con los ojos

que no queremos apartar la mirada

que no hemos sabido buscarnos

pero que queremos que algo ocurra

una madrugada en la que no despegarnos

de esto que es la noche de luna

en la que somos desvestidos

de tal forma que tiene sentido la vida

mientras en la oscuridad mucho bebemos

esperando que todo sólo siga

pues queremos lo que hacemos

pues destruimos la salida

en el momento de conocernos

pues eres tú la que brilla

hoy que nos observamos

como si el tiempo no fuera ahora

lo que ocurre entre los dos

como si no te acercaras de esta forma

para desvestirnos juntos

como si el espacio no existiera

de tal forma que tiene sentido la existencia

para no quedarnos despiertos.

Q.V.E. (2011)