Bukowski said that there was everything and nothing.
BUKOWSKI BY CRISTINA CARTER 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 47
Bukowski
said that there was everything
and nothing
for the grocery clerk
for me
everything and nothing
and nothing
and nothing
I am a blank page
empty
as the people standing before me
I touch
their beer
their overripe tomatoes
their money covered in blood or shit
their money pulled from their bra
wet
from a muggy Sacramento July
empty
as the woman before me
thinking of spreading her legs
on the American river
nothing and nothing
as I clock in
at 3am
crisp air and solitude
as I clock out at midnight
darkness and exhaustion
waiting and waiting
before the blank page
as I crumble underneath
the clown faces
of my managers
as they laugh at how
they make me dance
I want to watch
their jester faces
melting under broken bones
to do something
to have everything
but only nothing
to burn my lungs
with my third cigarette
to cover the smoke
with cold coffee
while I look at nothing
I want to eat the dirt
from your grave
I want to find your words
and spit them out
CRISTINA CARTER
I’m a clerical worker for the State of California and a gas station attendant in Reno Nevada. Working two jobs doesn’t allow much free time but I make do. I go between Truckee California and South Reno. There is nothing more mystical than the fog sitting on the mountains in the morning.
I had a poem Baptism published in the Calaveras Station Literary Journal. This was at my alma mater California State University of Sacramento. After that life got in the way and I lost creativity. Which is where this poem came from. That place within me filled with frustration and creativity and disappointment and even anger. Being stuck between the place of wanting to write, having images play in your head, having words scream at you, and then it all disappears. When you finally get the words out you know deep down they aren’t right.
Bukowski’s poem Something For The Touts, The Nuns, The Grocery Clerks, And You spoke to me at the same time I was working at the grocery store. I was thrilled to see him speaking about people, all types of people, hard-working, drunk, down-and-out people. People like me. This poem came out of an alien place inside of me. The place where we feel like we don’t belong. Being torn between two worlds, between people who won’t understand you. Only wanting something from you when you only want to be able to get out what you need to say. So during the cold wet Sacramento winter I wrote about the people I see every day at work, about the hot summers, about the emptiness I feel when I can’t write and about the emptiness I see in people around me.