Ak Coffman

“Trapped

don't undress my love
you might find a mannequin:
don't undress the mannequin
you might find
my love.
she's long ago
forgotten me.
she's trying on a new
hat
and looks more the
coquette
than ever.

she is a
child
and a mannequin
and death.
I can't hate
that.
she didn't do
anything
unusual.
I only wanted her
to.”
― Charles Bukowski, Love Is a Dog from Hell

“I was glad I wasn't in love, that I wasn't happy with the world. I like being at odds with everything. People in love often become edgy, dangerous. They lose their sense of perspective. They lose their sense of humor. They become nervous, psychotic bores. They even become killers.”
― Charles Bukowski, Women

“I could understand the moon leaning across a bar on skid row
and asking for a drink, but I couldn't understand anything about
myself,
I was murdered, I was shit, I was a tentful of dogs,
I was poppies mowed down by machine-gun fire
I was a hotshot wasp in a web
I was less and less and still reaching for
something, and I thought of her corny remark
a night or so ago:
You have wounded eyes.”
― Charles Bukowski, The People Look Like Flowers at Last

“i am with the roots
of flowers
entwined, entombed
sending up my passionate blossoms
as a flight of rockets
and argument;
wine churls my throat,
above me
feet walk upon my brain, monkies fall from the sky
clutching photographs
of the planets,
but i seek only music
and the leisure
of my pain”
― Charles Bukowski, The Roominghouse Madrigals: Early Selected Poems, 1946-1966