pull a string, a puppet moves...

pull a string, a puppet moves...

each man must realize

that it can all disappear very 

quickly:

the cat, the woman, the job

the front tire, 

the bed,  the walls, the 

room; all our necessities

including love-

rest on foundations of sand-

and any given cause, 

no matter how unrelated: 

the death of a boy in Hong Kong

or a blizzard in Omaha...

can serve as your undoing. 

all your chinaware crashing to the 

kitchen floor, your girl will enter

and you'll be standing, drunk, 

in the center of it and she'll ask: 

my god, what's the matter? 

and you'll answer: I don't know, 

I don't know...

Poem: Charles Bukowski, from "Burning in Water Drowning in Flame. Poems 1972-1973"

Photo: Tony Rohrbach