Wednesday, April 9, 2014

Day 10- about my very tortured friend...

PROMPT

Write a very conversational poem to a friend that frequently struggles with life. Charles Bukowski wrote this poem about his "tortured friend" Peter. It is a personal, intimate and frank conversation between friends. Make it funny, heartfelt or sad. Choose your own tone.

Begin: About my very tortured friend, ________....

Bukowski's grave stone reads, "Don't try." It's his advice to writers.

"'What do you do? How do you write, create?' You don't, I told them. You don't try. That's very important: 'not' to try, either for Cadillacs, creation or immortality. You wait, and if nothing happens, you wait some more. It's like a bug high on the wall. You wait for it to come to you. When it gets close enough you reach out, slap out and kill it. Or if you like its looks you make a pet out of it." --Charles Bukowski

Part of "About My Very Tortured Friend, Peter...

...“I can’t quit my job,” he said. “I always have trouble getting a
job. I walk in, they look at me, listen to me talk and
they think right away, ah ha! he’s too intelligent for
this job, he won’t stay
so there’s really no sense in hiring
him.


now, YOU walk into a place and you don’t have any trouble:
you look like an old wino, you look like a guy who needs a
job and they look at you and they think:
ah ha!: now here’s a guy who really needs work! if we hire
him he’ll stay a long time and work
HARD!”.....
---




About My Very Tortured Friend ( in the manner of Bukowski)

He calls and tells me there's a pirate ship floating in the clouds above him.
Figurative? literal? Fuckered up? Drunk off his tits? What?
He says his life is intersecting in the clouds over his head and he can"t breathe
That other self that is he, up in the clouds
The sails are illuminated by the moon
I"d expect no less I tell him
Did I tell you about the time someone dosed me with K?
I was praying to a shrimp boat almost sitting on shore
I couldn't move
It had flood lights fixed on me like gravity beams. Serious as fuck.
He got mad. A pirate boat that's real. Not a K Hole shrimp boat.
You never believe me,
Which wasn't true. I believed him too much.
I still look for him on the pirate ship in the clouds.

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