I am rough around the edges...
dusty shoes
the women that I have left behind grow fat, listless, age
rapidly, they coarsen, are embittered and some just finally
die alone
but the living still often think of me
with some regret
with some longing
now realizing that I made the nights and the days
electric for them
like it had never been and
that even asleep after making love
they rested and dreamed better than
ever before.
it didn't matter that
I caused them consternation in odd places like
drug stores, parks, elevators, laundromats, airports,
doctors' offices, restaurants and in many other
places.
I was funny,I was strange, I was not quite
right.
I puzzled those ladies, sometimes made them angry
often delighted them,
kept them interested
in things
and I was difficult to keep
around:
"hey! where are you going? you
just got here!"
after me, there was nobody for them.
some of them knew it right away.
with others it took months and with a few,
years.
I wasn't really a lady's man, I was just an aberration
with the ability to transcend the
ordinary; I was unshaven with dusty shoes, wrinkled
shirt, crushed
pants
but
I brought something to each one of them that
they had never ever experienced before
and when I took it away
new men, travel, parties, weekends, concerts,
meals, beds, books, pictures, days, nights, movies, TV, etc.
all those things lost their edge,
became dull, more ordinary,
less satisfying.
it was, I fear,
a truly difficult experience
for them to attempt to
go on living without
me.
I wouldn't want to try
it.
Charles Bukowski
