Love is a Dog from Hell

by Charles Bukowski

She has saved me from everything that is not here.

You boys can keep your virgins give me hot old women in high heels with asses that forgot to get old.

We didn’t have to do it yet we had to do it.

You were once strong enough to live alone.

She didn’t do anything unusual. I only wanted her to.

But give me one truly alive woman tonight walking across the floor toward me And you can have all the poems

There’s no lie in her fire.

The next day she drove me to the airport. I promised to write. She promised to write. Neither of us has written.

She knew what she wanted and it wasn’t me. I know more women like that than any other kind.

I need a good woman. I need a good woman more than I need this typewriter, more than I need my automobile, more than I need Mozart; I need a good woman so badly that I can taste her in the air, I can feel her at my fingertips, I can see sidewalks built for her feet to walk upon, I can see pillows for her head, I can feel my waiting laughter, I can see her petting a cat,

I can see her sleeping, I can see her slippers on the floor. I know that she exists but where is she upon this earth as the whores keep finding me?

And if you have the ability to love

love yourself first

I suppose that at last like the average man: I’ve known too many women and instead of thinking, I wonder who’s fucking her now? I think she’s giving some other poor son of a bitch much trouble right now.

Sometimes when a woman runs out on you like that you wonder if it’s not economics, you can’t blame them— if I had to get fucked I’d rather get fucked by somebody with money.

It is good to be sitting someplace in a world at 2:30 in the afternoon without having the flesh ripped from your bones.

The thought has occurred to millions of men while shaving the removal of life might be preferred to the removal of hair

There is a loneliness in this world so great that you can see it in the slow movement of the hands of a clock.

There is always one woman to save you from another And as that woman saves you she makes ready to destroy.