Some poems

"The City"
Constantine P. Cavafy

You said: “I’ll go to another country, go to another shore,
find another city better than this one.
Whatever I try to do is fated to turn out wrong
and my heart lies buried like something dead.
How long can I let my mind moulder in this place?
Wherever I turn, wherever I look,
I see the black ruins of my life, here,
where I’ve spent so many years, wasted them, destroyed them totally.”

You won’t find a new country, won’t find another shore.
This city will always pursue you.
You’ll walk the same streets, grow old
in the same neighborhoods, turn gray in these same houses.
You’ll always end up in this city. Don’t hope for things elsewhere:
there’s no ship for you, there’s no road.
Now that you’ve wasted your life here, in this small corner,
you’ve destroyed it everywhere in the world.


--


"Regardless"
Charles Bukowski

the nights you fight best
are
when all the weapons are pointed
at you,
when all the voices
hurl their insults
while the dream is being
strangled.

the nights you fight best
are
when reason gets
kicked in the
gut,
when the chariots of
gloom
encircle
you.

the nights you fight best
are
when the laughter of fools
fills the
air,
when the kiss of death is
mistaken for
love.

the nights you fight best
are
when the game is
fixed,
when the crowd screams
for your
blood.

the nights you fight best
are
on a night like
this
as you chase a thousand
dark rats from
your brain,
as you rise up against the
impossible,
as you become a brother
to the tender sister
of joy and

move on

regardless.


--


Funny, I love both poems but they have such different opinions. Some days I feel like the first and other days I feel like the second. But recently, the second has not been happening much. Bukowski has a way with words that makes me feel like decent people still exist, he spills his honesty and candidness with such an earnest disposition I cannot help but believe what he says. It is like he manages the find the good in people, in situations, even if it is a little delusional sometimes, I think he makes it sound so real. It reminds me, "Hope is the thing with feathers." But the first poem is much more reflective of life nowadays, of the constant disappointments, the reality of growing up and leaving that cocoon your parents have woven around you. It addresses that desire to escape, to leave everything horrid behind you, find a new place, start over. A significant departure from Bukowski's optimism, the first poem is everything I dread. The inability to sever everything you don't want from your entity, the haunting of your inadequacies and incapable flaws like a half starred horror movie. "Don't hope for things elsewhere", the poem says. In moments of overwhelming helplessness, I automatically agree.