"Photographs" by Charles Bukowski

Photographs

they photograph you on your porch

and on your couch

and standing in the courtyard

or leaning against your car

these photographers

women with big asses

which look better to you

than do their eyes or their souls

-this playing at author

it´s real Hemingway

James Joyce

stageshit

but look-

there are the books

you´ve written them

you haven´t been to Paris

but you´ve written all those books

there behind you

(and others not there,

lost or stolen)

all you´ve got to do

is look like Bukowski

for the cameras

but

you keep watching

those

astonishingly big asses

and thinking-

somebody else is getting

it

“look into my eyes,”

they say and click their cameras

and flash their cameras

and fondle their cameras

Hemingway used to box or go

fishing or to the bullfights

but after they leave

you jerk-off into the sheets

and take a hot bath

they never send the photos

like they promise to send the photos

and astonishingly big asses are

gone forever

and you´ve been a fine literary fellow-

now alive

dead soon enough

looking into and at their eyes and souls

and more.

(Bukowski, photographs, in: love is a dog from hell)