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.

Under the sheets after I have snapped off the light her panties are still on. She expects an opening performance. I can’t blame her. But wonder why she’s here with me? where are the other guys? how can you be lucky? having someone the others have abandoned?

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

Escape from the black widow spider is a miracle as great as art. What a web she can weave slowly drawing you to her she’ll embrace you then when she’s satisfied she’ll kill you still in her embrace and suck the blood from you.

Human relationships simply aren’t durable. I think back to the women in my life. They seem non-existent.

Love dries up, I thought as I walked back to the bathroom, even faster than sperm.

I loved you like a man loves a woman he never touches, only writes to, keeps little photographs of. I would have loved you more if I had sat in a small room rolling a cigarette and listened to you piss in the bathroom, but that didn’t happen.

All I’ve ever known are whores, ex-prostitutes, madwomen. I see men with quiet, gentle women—I see them in the supermarkets, I see them walking down the streets together, I see them in their apartments: people at peace, living together. I know that their peace is only partial, but there is peace, often hours and days of peace.

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

The grace is being able to like rock music, symphony music, jazz… anything that contains the original energy of joy.