"He wants to take leave among strangers passing out bits of his heart like hors d'oeuvres." Damn! I felt that!

i am watching this at 4 am

Amazing Bird

So it has come to this...

substitute 'cheap red wine' for 'cocoa' and you'd think it was a bukowski poem

A TV ad for Hershey's cocoa: Still photo of Anne Sexton with mug. Her lips move like in those creepy youtube animations of dead poets reciting their work. As Sexton's lips move on her otherwise motionless face we hear: "Dear God, wouldn’t it be good enough just to drink cocoa?"

So it has come to this - insomnia at 3:15 A.M., the clock tolling its engine like a frog following a sundial yet having an electric seizure at the quarter hour. The business of words keeps me awake. I am drinking cocoa, the warm brown mama. I would like a simple life yet all night I am laying poems away in a long box. It is my immortality box, my lay-away plan, my coffin. All night dark wings flopping in my heart. Each an ambition bird. The bird wants to be dropped from a high place like Tallahatchie Bridge. He wants to light a kitchen match and immolate himself. He wants to fly into the hand of Michelangelo and come out painted on a ceiling. He wants to pierce the hornet’s nest and come out with a long godhead. He wants to take bread and wine and bring forth a man happily floating in the Caribbean. He wants to be pressed out like a key so he can unlock the Magi. He wants to take leave among strangers passing out bits of his heart like hors d’oeuvres. He wants to die changing his clothes and bolt for the sun like a diamond. He wants, I want. Dear God, wouldn’t it be good enough just to drink cocoa? I must get a new bird and a new immortality box. There is folly enough inside this one.