yeah I know, he's a pretty good read

I thought I had mono, so I sold my blood to a study for a $20 gift card. Figuring that this was one of the world's most pathetic and low-class ways of making money, I took it and finally bought myself a volume of poems by Charles Bukowski. Felt appropriate.

millionaires

you
no faces
no faces
at all
laughing at nothing -
let me tell you
I have drunk in skid row rooms with
imbecile winos
whose cause was better
whose eyes still held some light
whose voices retained some sensibility,
and when the morning came
we were sick but not ill,
poor but not deluded, and we stretched in our beds and rose
in the late afternoons
like millionaires.

the veryest

here comes the fishhead singing
here comes the baked potato in drag
here comes nothing to do all day long
here comes another night of no sleep
here comes the phone ringing the wrong voice
here comes a termite with a banjo
here comes a flagpole with blank eyes
here comes a cat and a dog wearing nylons
here comes a machine gun singing
here comes bacon burning in the pan
here comes a voice saying something dull with authority
here comes a newspaper stuffed with small red birds
with flat brown beaks
here comes a woman carrying a torch
a grenade
a deathly love
here comes victory carrying one bucket of guts
and one bucket of blood
while stumbling over the berry bush
and here comes a little lamb
and here comes Mary at last
and the sheet hangs in the window
and the bombers head east west north south
get lost
get tossed like salad
all the fish in the sea line up and form
one line
one long line
one very long long line
the veryest longest line you could ever imagine
and we get lost
walking past purple mountains
we walk lost
bare at last like the knife blade
or the electric shock
having given
having spit it out like an unexpected olive seed
as the girl at the call service
screams over the phone:
"don't call back! you sound like a jerk!"

I wish I could write like him, but I don't want to go through what he went through in order to get there.

I'd rather be happy than brilliant.