Secret Origins of a Blog Title

I've talked a lot of smack about Charles Bukowski: both the boozy, bleary, blowzy persona and the lazy-ass writing. And I can't say he doesn't deserve it. Especially towards the end when all the hipsters in porkpie hats kowtowed to His Honor the Drunkard of the LA Racetrack, it quickly became pastiche and self-parody, which he would then self-parody.


I won't defend that, but I can't really argue with this.

For Jane

Charles Bukowski 

225 days under grass
and you know more than I.


they have long taken your blood,
you are a dry stick in a basket.
is this how it works?


in this room
the hours of love
still make shadows.


when you left
you took almost
everything.


I kneel in the nights
before tigers
that will not let me be.


what you were
will not happen again.


the tigers have found me
and I do not care.




Until researching this post, I had no idea Jane was a real person, Jane Cooney Baker. She was, according to several biographers, the love of his life. (And yes, you can determine how big a scoundrel someone was by tallying the number of their biographers.) It's a so simple and so full of loss, so empty.


Personally, I could give a rat's rear end for the lifestyle and the swagger, the barfly nights and gambling days. But every now and again he could do some real work. 


And I've mentioned that's what being a poet is all about, right? Somebody who will sit down and do the ugly, stinking, dirty, useless, completely unnecessary work of scratching marks on a page for somebody they've never met to understand. It's like that Discovery TV show "Dirty Jobs" but without the glamor of a hard hat and work gloves.


And I should cop to something else I've been nervous to admit - the name of my blog came from Bukowski/Chinaski/Whatshisname. He wrote a poem and named a collection after it: "The Days Run Away Like Horses Over the Hills." I've had that phrase in my head half my life courtesy of U2's "Dirty Day" so thanks, Bono: you've found one more way to improve my life and ruin me.


Here it is, when they were a band still uncomfortable with being a corporation.