(...)

          

          

          the escape

escape from the black widow spider
is a miracle as great as art
what a web she can weave
slowly drawing you to her
she'll embrace you
then when she's satisfied
she'll kill you
still in her embrace
and suck the blood from you

I escaped my black widow
because she had too many males
in her web
and while she was embracing one
and then the other and then
another
I worked free
got out
to where I was before.

She'll miss me - 
not my love
but the taste of my blood,
but she's good, she'll find other
blood;
she's so good that I almost miss my death,
but not quite;
I've escaped. I view the other
webs.

----------------------------------------------------

          dog

a single dog walking alone on a hot sidewalk of 
summer
appears to have the power 
of ten thousand gods,

why is this?

-----------------------------------------------------

           the meek have inherited

if I'd suffer at this 
typewriter
think how I'd feel
among the lettuce-
pickers of salinas?

I think of the men 
I've known in
factories
with no way to
get out - 
choking while living
choking while laughing
at Bob Hope or Lucille
Ball while
2 or 3 children beat
tennis balls agains
the walls.

some suicides are never
recorded. 


Charles Bukowski, in Love Is a Dog From Hell, Poems 1974-1977