Jam on Rai

It is as though Bukowski rolled himself and his bitterness
And left a foul breath of words oozing
From the pores of my tongue these days.
You know, the kind of bland, diffusing bitter taste
Of stale coffee sitting on your bed on the sleepless nights
That you remember, with the guilt and the embarrassing zeroness of your existence. 
I've been tasting that a lot lately
And not out of an idle mind like many will say,
Certainly not out of the influence of Plath or Wallace,
Who shared their self-doubt in their short-lived lives
Through the greatness they made (wrote) for themselves.
Believe me,
I know for a fact my words are not worth shit.
Perhaps I'm only selling bitterness because I seemed to have lost track of my life
That so swiftly slipped away like stray ribbons, out of my palms.
I miss it,
I miss the smooth bitterness of my morning coffee brewing in the mug that said
"Carpe Diem!"- "Seize the Day!"
I miss afternoon walks in the honking roads of a city I can no longer call mine
And I miss the boy who smelled of Neruda in spring
And promised to meet me in the horizon 
Before he left to live in the sky.
But it took me years to see
That the clouds are ever changing
And though the eyes can betray,
The sky doesn't meet the ocean at any horizon. 
I let my coffee go cold again 
And today, of all days, when it's Neruda's birthday
I pushed him aside and stroked
The dog ears of Bukowski without a flinch-
This bitterness has made its home.
  
(Title influenced by Charles Bukowski's Ham on Rye )