Bukowski once said in one of his poems, that the tigers were looking for him, when he described his feeling of loss and his loneliness for Jane, someone he in fact still loved but had long time lost.

And then at the end, he said words to the effect, ‘they… the tigers are here and they’re circling me in my room, it’s 3:OOAM in the morning and I don’t care.’

And I thought to myself, I wonder if she’d felt the same way for him? If she would have felt the same way for him, if the situation had been reversed?

And then I thought what if the feelings he had expressed, had only been his not hers? Only going one way?

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A wise man said…

‘No there is no such thing, no actual thing defined by the L word.’

And yet this absurd four-letter word exists.

But there are such things as…

Feelings, feelings even though so intense, still so sadly only go one-way.

And when this is so…

Here’s how it might go.

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Well…ok

There is you and there is me, but no there is not us.
Oh and I look at you and you look at me.
And what we see and feel are not quite the same, an understatement true.
There is this distance you say, and you say a difference.
And within this difference, is the real core of what is the distance between you and i.
Not mere physical miles, no, these are emotional and psychological miles, and this distance between you and i, amounts to a great journey to the stars.
And, as well we know, to touch those distant stars, all you have to do is… simply dream.

But everything is good and everything is cool, and there’s a mutual understanding, that this fun thing, this … really nothing, this understatement that we have, will go nowhere, and will eventually, without ever really beginning come to an end, harming no one. But I do wonder if we sometimes pretend?

I could tell you about dreams, how it feels. Do you want to see all the things that mere words simply fail to say?

Well you know, all the clichés are here, the pain, emotion, light, darkness, elation, emptiness, a yearning hunger, a head in hands and a heart lifting and sinking.

And no I’m not going to bore you with it all, but just try to imagine when these are all so real.

But yeah. Enough of all that, I’ll tell you how I see the end.

There is this calm before the storm in a southern Pacific sea, and I’m floating, drifting.

And it’s a bit like old Charles waiting in his room. Only now I’m treading dead in deep un-chartered waters watching the smiling ‘Greats Whites,’ who are circling and teasing on the horizon, just waiting to come in and nip, shred and feed on the remains of an empty, God knows what.

And like Charles I think I’ve forgotten how to care and I’m calling them all in, all because of something that never really happened, that never really began, somehow came to an end.

And when all this happens we have a word, a tiny insignificant absurd four-letter word to describe all of this, all of this? But no I think not, and like the wise man I will beg to differ.

But back to Charles I say, ‘if we ever meet somewhere, someday, I’ll stand you a drink and then raise my own glass and say.’

‘When something needed to be said, something about life, something real, something from the gutter of a soul, true and mean, then Charles Hank Bukowski I salute you, because you were the master of hitting the fucking nail on the fucking head, and concisely saying it all.’

Cheers!

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And hypothetically of course… that’s how a situation like that might go.