I’m not capable at the moment of expending the brain power and effort on writing. I just don’t have the headspace. I’m on a cusp at the moment … and needing to do a lot of thinking about where to go from here, plans, goals, how it is I will have to go about the things I know need doing – as hard and as painful as I know some of them will be. I’m kind of stuck until I work these things out. This week is one of revelations, warmth and beauty, but also sadness about decisions I have to make. So it’s hard, too hard, to get my head around thinking about anything else.
So I’m cheating again 
and sharing a couple more of my favourite poems. This time by Bukowski. Both a little poignant and sad at the end… making them quite delicate pieces of work. The second is one of the saddest, if not the saddest, love poem I’ve ever read.
a smile to remember
we had goldfish and they circled around and around
in the bowl on the table near the heavy drapes
covering the picture window and
my mother, always smiling, wanting us all
to be happy, told me, “be happy Henry!”
and she was right: it’s better to be happy if you can
but my father continued to beat her and me several times a week while
raging inside his 6-foot-two frame because he couldn’t
understand what was attacking him from within.
my mother, poor fish,
wanting to be happy, beaten two or three times a
week, telling me to be happy: “Henry, smile!
why don’t you ever smile?”
and then she would smile, to show me how, and it was the
saddest smile I ever saw
one day the goldfish died, all five of them,
they floated on the water, on their sides, their
eyes still open,
and when my father got home he threw them to the cat
there on the kitchen floor and we watched as my mother
smiled
Charles Bukowski
*******************************
Confession
waiting for death
like a cat
that will jump on the
bed
I am so very sorry for
my wife
she will see this
stiff
white
body
shake it once, then
maybe
again
“Hank!”
Hank won’t
answer.
it’s not my death that
worries me, it’s my wife
left with this
pile of
nothing.
I want to
let her know
though
that all the nights
sleeping
beside her
even the useless
arguments
were things
ever splendid
and the hard
words
I ever feared to
say
can now be
said:
I love
you.
Charles Bukowski