By Ken Bruen

                    "AWAIT THE OLDEST CURSE OF ALL"                                                 

-Charles Bukowski

 

"One Night Stand" from Poems Written Before Jumping Out of a Six Story Window

                                                    

A recent interview I did, they asked me about the blog on Murderati

“How could you expose yourself so openly?”

Never my plan

When Alex invited me to join the crew, I thought

“No way, not even for Alex.”

And then I thought, maybe you can write a different kind of blog, where writers are not

vilified

Then life took over and I wrote about how things are on a daily basis

James Taylor …. I’ve seen fire and I’ve seen rain ………….

Something Louise wrote in her last blog triggered a memory, my first time in America, I was 17 and oh so damn scared

Of everything

I got a job as busboy in Central Park

And learned what it’s like to be truly bottom of the food chain, Led Zepplin had their first album out and people were murmuring about a coming event at some place

called ……. Woodstock

Yeah, right, how long have I been around

Too long

The chef, I dunno why, took a shine to me and taught me how to ride a Harley and introduced me to heroin

I was flying

On all cylinders

I met a woman named Nancy, she was 25 ………… and that was so Mrs. Robinson for me

She thought my accent was cute and my naiveté even cuter

My visa ran out after five months and my last night in New York, before I went home to

attend Trinity in Dublin, I told her I loved her

Her laugh resonates even now

She said

“You crack me up.”

I gave her a ring I’d saved for and she looked at it, said

“It’s fake.”

My late brother came over for a weekend, he was a high flyer then, money to am …. burn ………..  and women just adored him, honest to god, we’d go in a bar, two seconds, he’d have a woman chatting him up and he’d say to me

“You need to lighten up, women don’t like that serious look you always have?”

They’d agree in Arizona

He thought life was just one massive joke and me, I never got the punchline, still don’t

I took him to Times Square, back then it was dangerous and not Disneyfied and went to see a movie that had just opened called The Wild Bunch

When I left him at the airport, he said

“Why do you always look on the dark side?’

He was already on his second bourbon, eyeing up a gorgeous lady and said

“Them books will be the death of you.”

His flight was called and he was already chatting up the lady, shouted

“Learn how to smile for fooksake.”

I did

Learn

Smiling is easy

He looked like David Cassidy, if anyone remembers him ……… and everything came easy to him, and that was his curse

I loved him to bits, still do

He never read a book in his short un-encumbered life, he saw his existence as …………… party on

I don’t regret for one moment not being invited to that party

And it’s unlikely at this stage I’ll ever get an invite

For a real smart guy, he was wrong about one thing

Books were my salvation

And remain so

I so deeply regret he never got to see either of my daughters, they saw his photo and asked

“Gee dad, were you jealous?’

Not one moment

He was my brother, gold and burning

Years later, I remember so much of my life that appeared gold, was indeed ………. fake

Nancy married a doctor, god bless her, no doubt he gave her real stuff

I don’t look back on that summer when I grew up, with bitterness, I do regret the three awful days, locked in a room going cold turkey from heroin

Rehab, like the internet, was unheard of

My next stint in New York, I was a security guard at The Twin Towers and gee, I’d really grown up, not tough cos I hate that shite, but as they say able to mind me own self and

Thank god, not one bit cynical

I swear on all that’s holy, I hadn’t learned how to be bitter or cynical then, I did later, but then I still, if not outwardly, at least lived in hope

How dumb was that

I still believed ….  in basic human goodness, all the shite that Oprah makes a friggin

Fortune upon

I got me Doctorate and was good to go

Right

Am …………?

Stuff happened, ugly, violent and dark

I continue go to New York, I just love that city ………..  but live there ……….  I wish………… I

Lost something along the way, I know, not so much spirit as commitment

Jason Starr was asked in Arizona last weekend what I was like……….. that I sounded controlling, intense and dark

Nailed right there

A guru I heard recently said  …………..  go with the flow

Bollix

I do the only thing I know

I write

Get in fights

And recently had a woman tell me

“I think you’re not quite what I’d been led to expect”

Fake perhaps?

Nancy would agree with her

I read my daily dose of philosophy and today it’s Jorge

“If only morning meant oblivion”

But God forbid I end on a dark note, I had an email from a lieutenant in Iraq, saying

“American Skin is getting us through this horror.”

That is all I need to know

It’s been worth it for that

In Galway they say, the old people,

“He meant well.”

I didn’t  ……………  not a lot of the time but now and again  …………….

You know ……………

Fire and ……………………… the damn rain

Mostly I remember my brother loved James Taylor, I’m glad he didn’t get to see James lose his hair

He loved James’s hair, not unlike his own

Go figure

And when I played him Led Zepplin’s first, he said

“That shite will never sell.”

He was Bukowski, without the poetry

KB