Lori Goff

“she likes that and I like it too because to/make a thing true all you've/got to do is believe”
― Charles Bukowski, You Get So Alone at Times That it Just Makes Sense

“and I sit there alone with you and Dostoevsky as the real and the artificial heart continues to falter, famished… I love you but don’t know what to do.”
― Charles Bukowski, You Get So Alone At Times That It Just Makes Sense

“(My vanishing act)

when I got sick of the bar
and I sometimes did
I had a place to go:
it was a tall field of grass
an abandoned
graveyard.
I didn’t consider this to be a
morbid pastime.
it just seemed to be the best
place to be.
it offered a generous cure to
the vicious hangover.
through the grass I could see
the stones,
many were tilted
at strange angles
against gravity
as though they must
fall
but I never saw one
fall
although there were many of those
in the yard.
it was cool and dark
with a breeze
and I often slept
there.
I was never
bothered.
each time I returned to the bar
after an absence
it was always the same with
them:
“where the hell you
been? we thought you
died!”
I was their bar freak, they needed me
to make themselves feel
better.
just like, at times, I needed that
graveyard.”
― Charles Bukowski, You Get So Alone at Times That it Just Makes Sense

“she's half-insane, looking for an out; she's hard, she's scared, she's been fooled, taken, abused, used, over-used . . .
but, under all that, to me she's the flower, I see her as she was before she was ruined by the lies: theirs and hers.”
― Charles Bukowski, You Get So Alone at Times That it Just Makes Sense