Ol' Buk
alone in this room
I am alone in this room as the world
washes over me.
I sit and wait and wonder.
I have a terrible taste in my mouth
as I sit and wait in this room.
I can no longer see the walls.
everything has changed into something else.
I cannot joke about this,
I cannot explain this as
the world washes over me.
I don't care if you believe me because
I have lost interest in that too.
I am in a place where I have never been before.
I am alone in a different place that
does not include other faces,
other human beings.
it is happening to me now
in a space within a space as
I sit and wait alone in this room.
Charles Bukowski
----------
I wonder what he was getting at. Maybe it's death, despair, or some extreme form of loneliness that's his muse in the poem. Or maybe it's something deeper, beyond the negativity associated with an old drunk running out of time. I have a sense that comes and goes that may be akin to what Buk was experiencing. I see the poem as the voice of an old man resigned completely to his life as it was at the time. Maybe I'm off track, correlating what Buk may have been going through with my own recurring theme. Yet, there are times when I sit, alone, but not separate, taking everything in at once and without preference. As he said, the world washes over me. On grey days like today, when the cloud-filled sky encompasses the totality of my life, I can delve into it a bit more. That's what it is, in a sense, a complete delving into this-ness. And you know, like Buk, I don't care if you believe me. Being here with wonder is enough, wherever it is.
I am alone in this room as the world
washes over me.
I sit and wait and wonder.
I have a terrible taste in my mouth
as I sit and wait in this room.
I can no longer see the walls.
everything has changed into something else.
I cannot joke about this,
I cannot explain this as
the world washes over me.
I don't care if you believe me because
I have lost interest in that too.
I am in a place where I have never been before.
I am alone in a different place that
does not include other faces,
other human beings.
it is happening to me now
in a space within a space as
I sit and wait alone in this room.
Charles Bukowski
----------
I wonder what he was getting at. Maybe it's death, despair, or some extreme form of loneliness that's his muse in the poem. Or maybe it's something deeper, beyond the negativity associated with an old drunk running out of time. I have a sense that comes and goes that may be akin to what Buk was experiencing. I see the poem as the voice of an old man resigned completely to his life as it was at the time. Maybe I'm off track, correlating what Buk may have been going through with my own recurring theme. Yet, there are times when I sit, alone, but not separate, taking everything in at once and without preference. As he said, the world washes over me. On grey days like today, when the cloud-filled sky encompasses the totality of my life, I can delve into it a bit more. That's what it is, in a sense, a complete delving into this-ness. And you know, like Buk, I don't care if you believe me. Being here with wonder is enough, wherever it is.