To the Whore who took my poems

Some say we should keep personal remorse from the poem,

stay abstract, and there is some reason in this,but jezus;

twelve poems gone and I don't keep carbons and you have my paintings too,

my best ones;

its stifling:are you trying to crush me out like the rest of them?

why didn't you take my money?

they usually do from the sleeping drunken pants sick in the corner.

next time take my left arm or a fifty but not my poems:

I'm not Shakespeare but sometime simplythere won't be any more, abstract or otherwise;

there'll always be money and whores and drunkardsdown to the last bomb,

but as God said,

crossing his legs,

I see where I have made plenty of poetsbut not so very much poetry.

Charles Bukowski