As I Watched the Cars Go By

Written by Carmen X, @animagebook, our poetry writer, and edited by Lilah, @lilahwilliamss, one of our editors!

(We skipped church and sat in the café corner of the corner café. Erik Satie played somewhere. We were incredibly lazy those weekends. She was talking about Bukowski. She said he was a bastard but he wrote like a son of a bitch.) He could write all right. He was one of the real ones. Some or maybe lots don’t like him, but I do. Maybe we don’t like him anymore because he’s too real. Right? (I said Right.) Real life is too old and too dirty. It can get anyone down. You don’t need to be a poet to know that. So why do I have to hear it from him? Right? (I sipped my coffee and said Right. It wasn’t that long ago that you could still get a decent cup at a good price and have it taste all right.) But I like him because he wrote with a sword, he could cut all the bullshit. And who says it’s his sword? Maybe I can use it, or you, or that lady over there, or that other lady over there, or that—you know what I mean. Cut all the shit ourselves, cut even Buk himself, because he was full of shit too. Like poetry you just have to get it out sometimes. It’s not his fault he was blessed with a crappy life. Or maybe it was. Right? (I said Right and finished my coffee. I coughed to hide a fart, failed, and she laughed.)