A note before I start this: sometime, someday, I will have to dig up, re-key, and post the poem I wrote that was at least partly about the death of Charles Bukowski. (Re-key because the Jaz drive that I saved a lot of my UVA files to is a piece of crap.)
Tony is sounding a little down on his blog tonight. So I channeled Bukowski at him in a comment, which I reprint here in its entirety. Read it, then go give him some love:
I’m not sure that Bukowski never whined. You could, if you were feeling uncharitable, interpret his works as one long cry for help. Or you could do what I think it is you do, and interpret them as a celebration of where he was, and the joy of being able to write, and the perplexity that the rest of life wasn’t that simple. It’s like he says, “you get so alone at times that it just makes sense.”
A toast to Bukowski, who would have known exactly what to do about this war: switch the radio to Mahler, open another bottle of wine or three, and go screw some broad.
And with that, I’m off to sleep.