What Matters Most is How Well You

I sat and waited for happier
times.

I finish eating
walk down to the first floor and out,
and nearby is a penny arcade.
I remember it from the 1940s.
I walk in.
it is full of young Latinos and Blacks
between the ages of six and
fifteen
and they shoot machine guns
play mechanical soccer
and the piped-in salsa music is very
loud.
they fly spacecraft
test their strength
fight in the ring
have horse races
auto races
but none of them want their fortunes told.

I leave my door open and the cats of the
neighborhood all come in. they walk over to me
and across the top of my couch
and into the bathroom, and one of them goes to
sleep on my
bed. one other sits by me and we listen
to Richard Strauss.
we’re in trouble but we don’t
know what to do.

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During his lifetime he published more than forty-five books of poetry and prose,

He died in San Pedro, California, on March 9, 1994, at the age of seventy-three, shortly after completing his last novel, Pulp (1994).

CHARLES BUKOWSKI is one of America’s best-known contemporary writers of poetry and prose, and, many would claim, its most influential and imitated poet.

He was raised in Los Angeles and lived there for fifty years. He published his first story in 1944 when he was twenty-four and began writing poetry at the age of thirty-five.

roll the dice

and you’ll do it
despite rejection and the
worst odds
and it will be better than