everything we said it wasn’t

love is a light at
night running through the fog

love is a beercap
stepped on while on the way
to the bathroom

love is the lost key to your door
when you’re drunk

love is what happens
one year in ten

love is a crushed cat

love is the old newsboy on the
corner who has
given it up

love is what you think the other
person has destroyed

love is what vanished with the
age of battleships

love is the phone ringing,
the same voice or another
voice but never the right
voice

love is betrayal
love is the burning of the
homeless in an alley

love is steel
love is the cockroach
love is a mailbox

love is rain upon the roof
of an old hotel
in Los Angeles

love is your father in a coffin
(who hated you)

love is a horse with a broken
leg
trying to stand
while 45,000 people
watch

love is the way we boil
like the lobster

love is everything we said
it wasn’t

love is the flea you can’t
find

and love is a mosquito

love is 50 grenadiers

love is an empty
bedpan

love is a riot in San Quentin
love is a madhouse
love is a donkey standing in a
street of flies

love is an empty barstool

love is a film of the Hindenburg
curling to pieces
a moment that still screams

love is Dostoyevsky at the
roulette wheel

love is what crawls along
the ground

love is your woman dancing
pressed against a stranger

love is an old woman
stealing a loaf of
bread

and love is a word used
too much and
much
too soon

 .

 a definition, bukowski.

{the night torn mad with footsteps: new poems :: 2001}