The Seizure of Our Engine

Landed our car in the shop this month; the loan of a car took us to Wisconsin this weekend to get the emissions test taken care of for our fine, lending friend. The trip back took us to Jack's Cozy Cafe in Kenosha and then to Illinois Beach Sate Park. In the nature preserve there, we saw deer, wildflowers, and a bluebird, the second this year. Further south, we stopped at a Salvation Army where I found an old table-mount mitre guide from Minneapolis that I can use to make frames; then we stopped in Evanston to see Herzog's Cave of Forgotten Dreams (more on that later). We had time before the showing and we went to Barnes & Noble where I picked up jubilat, Noon (check out the current cover!), The Southern Review, and Poetry East.
This morning, I looked up a very old friend's old-school bookstore in San Fran's old Mission--Scott Harrison's Abandoned Planet--to see if it was still around. It isn't, but I found a funny little bittersweet video someone made about Scott and his store (closing):



I was friends with Scott when I first started writing poetry. He was a little friendly with Charles Bukowski, who I admired, and I think I remember Scott had had Bukowski in for readings in his store in Santa Monica, The Bluest Eye.
During that era I worked in a Rizzoli bookstore in Pasadena. One morning, a tall jocky-looking guy was prowling the front door really anxiously before we opened. I unlocked at nine and he accosted me, in a slightly alarming way, asking if I was Anna. I said yes and he asked if I liked Bukowski and I said yes, internally cursing a friend who worked at a neighboring bookstore (those were the days—5 top-shelf bookstores in a few blocks radius with a few stragglers in between to boot); I suspected the friend had sent this dude to me. Then the jocky dude started crying, telling me his friend had been killed by a shark the day before, surfing, and that the friend had liked Bukowski, and that he wanted to read one of his poems at the funeral, and could I pick something for him. I'd read about the shark attack in the paper that morning. I sat him on a stool, panicked, and then picked The Man With the Beautiful Eyes, the first Bukowski poem I had read.



Tonight, I looked up Poetry East online to look into their submissions policy. They have a nice vertical reading pane where you can scroll down through poems they have liked to publish. I scrolled down and there was The Bluebird by Bukowski--the poem I used, 15 years ago?, to explain to my Dad how I felt about Bukowski.

The Bluebird
by Charles Bukowski
there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say, stay in there, I'm not going
to let anybody see
you.
there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I pour whiskey on him and inhale
cigarette smoke
and the whores and the bartenders
and the grocery clerks
never know that
he's
in there.
there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say,
stay down, do you want to mess
me up?
you want to screw up the
works?
you want to blow my book sales in
Europe?
there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too clever, I only let him out
at night sometimes
when everybody's asleep.
I say, I know that you're there,
so don't be
sad.
then I put him back,
but he's singing a little
in there, I haven't quite let him
die
and we sleep together like
that
with our
secret pact
and it's nice enough to
make a man
weep, but I don't
weep, do
you?