Poetry Place Collected Poems

Charle Bukowski Road Not Chosen

While reading Charles Bukowski's poetry
On the metro ride home
Listening to Buddha bar music
On my oh-too-hip iPod

I begin to see myself as I was
Over 30 years ago when I was merely a bit player
A minor character in a Charles Bukowski poem


A wild young underemployed intellectual
Hanging out in dismal bars and dives all over Asia and California
Hanging with disreputable women and drunks and drinkers
And characters out of his kinds of haunts


A mad poet bard of the underground
A drunken poet in a drunken bum show
That nightly played in his head


Then one day I met the woman of my dreams
And went down a different path
A long slow path to respectability


And now 30 years later
I am no longer a wild man
I am still a poet at heart
But I am now also a bureaucrat
In a button-down suite


Doing the people’s business
Working for the Government
I’ve become the Man


Sometimes I wonder
Would I have been better off
Going down that other path

Would I have ended up
Somewhere else
Doing something else


Would I have been as happy
Would I have been as successful?


No answer satisfies
The longing in my heart
For that wild thing
That still lurks beneath
It’s a civilized cover


And I know that I am still
A mad poet at heart
Railing against the injustice of the world


As I work day by day in the belly of the great beast of State
I recall the ancient Chinese saying,
“Confucian during the day while Taoist rebel at night”
Playing out in my head and nightly dreams
In the true American Upper-class patrician tradition


I close the book and look out the window
Get off the train, and walk slowly home


And realize I had no choice
But to take the path that I've trodden on


And so I put aside my misgivings
And say goodbye to my “Bukowskian” desires
For another night of domestic contentment


Was it worth it all to take the conventional path
And not take the bohemian road to hell and back


I look at my wife and realize
I had no choice, had no choice
But to follow her to the ends of the earth


And beyond by her side as we walked our path
Of shared destiny


Goodbye Charles Bukowski wherever you are
May I meet you in a bar in the next life
And figure out where we should have gone


Until then the drinks are on me.


One of the easiest ways to learn how to do something is by imitation. From the very first words we speak as infants, we are encouraged to follow the ways of others to learn the proper ways of doing things. We mimic those behaviors over and over until they become second nature and we develop the confidence we need to venture out on our own.

Writing poetry can be learned in much the same way. When we started writing poetry, many of us probably recalled the Mother Goose rhymes of our childhood and made our first humble attempts with that model in mind. The technical aspects of both classical and modern poets can be emulated to great advantage. Read their poetry and study it closely. When you come upon a poem or passage that impresses you, scrutinize it, break it down word by word to learn the techniques and devices that make it work so well. If you study a particular poet extensively, you may find your own writing inadvertently following similar emphasis and inflection, even though you intended to write independently. It becomes contagious. The important thing is to develop the skills and build your confidence in the use of various poetic tools.

While imitation of the technical elements of crafting can be helpful, the philosophies and ideas of others should not be copied directly just because they are successful or popular. If they appeal to you, do the research and study the primary sources on the topic until you have a full comprehension of the topic. Only then will you be able to express those thoughts in your own terms.

Language is a malleable medium, like clay, to be molded and shaped to suit each individual’s purpose. Once you have developed the skills to mold effectively by imitation, you will be able to find your own style and rhythm so that every element in your being can contribute to your poetry. No one else was born to your parents at just that time and place and has lived through the exact same experiences and reached the same conclusions as you have. Therefore, you are the only one qualified to express precisely what you think about any situation. This is what makes your work original. Emotional freedom, integrity and the special quality of your own work are not what you start with, but they are what you finally attain through patience, diligence and inspiration.

EXERCISE: Review the following poems in detail:


Evenings I hear
the workmen fire
into the stiff
magnolia leaves,
routing the starlings
gathered noisy and
befouling there.

Their scissoring
terror like glass
coins spilling breaking
the birds explode
into mica sky
raggedly fall
to ground rigid
in the clench of cold.

The spared return,
when the guns are through,
to the spoiled trees
like choiceless poor
to a dangerous
dwelling place,
chitter and quarrel
in the piercing dark
above the killed.

~” A Plague of Starlings” by Robert Hayden

*********


Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel to both
And be one traveler, I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted to wear it;
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves, no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

~” The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost

note: my poem "Charles Bukowski Road Not Chosen" has been published in several places.

ASSIGNMENT: Write a 10-15 line poem using your favorite poet as a model. If you don’t have a favorite, use one of the poems quoted in the EXERCISE above.

Let the creativity flow from your soul!


Dave