To The Whore Who Took My Poems by Charles Bukowski

some say we should keep personal remorse from the

poem,

stay abstract, and there is some reason in this,

but jezus;

twelve poems gone and I don't keep carbons and you have

my

paintings too, my best ones; its stifling:

are you trying to crush me out like the rest of them?

why didn't you take my money? they usually do

from the sleeping drunken pants sick in the corner.

next time take my left arm or a fifty

but not my poems:

I'm not Shakespeare

but sometime simply

there won't be any more, abstract or otherwise;

there'll always be mony and whores and drunkards

down to the last bomb,

but as God said,

crossing his legs,

I see where I have made plenty of poets

but not so very much

poetry.