PHOTOGRAPH: RONALD THOMAS N.D.

“…yet you cannot help being a woman…”

Charles Bukowski, Sleeping Woman, “The Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over the Hills.”

WHAT I CANNOT HELP

From my journals dated January 25, 1978 (two years after my communication with the poet had ended).

The bad weather keeps me safe from people knocking at the [studio] door for a while. Time to read Bukowski’s new poetry. My favorite fantasy has him knocking at the studio door—I’ve been reading his work—he’s fresh scrubbed, clean, polite—with flowers, a bottle of good wine under his arm. “I owe this to you,” he says—“We should have one sane, serious, friendly afternoon together.” He’ll ask what I think of the new poems & I’ll tell him there are a couple of brilliant works in there begging to be freed from the bulk of the shit. He’ll look at this current canvas & say he knew exactly that this would be my work—We’ll drink the wine—I’ll clean glasses for the occasion. Some things will make us chuckle, sometimes we will sympathize with each other—there will be no anger, though & some things will make us howl with laughter—he’ll say, after three or four hours, that he’s got to get back to some woman in his life—& he’ll thank me for the woodcuts & he’ll leave a poem for me. It’s a wonderful fantasy I think.