Invocation of a Muse/Charles Bukowski "Beers"

BEER
 from: Love is A Mad Dog From Hell by Charles Bukowski


I don't know how many bottles of beer
I have consumed while waiting for things
to get better
I dont know how much wine and whisky
and beer
mostly beer
I have consumed after splits with women-
waiting for the phone to ring
waiting for the sound of footsteps,
and the phone to ring
waiting for the sounds of footsteps,
and the phone never rings
 until much later
and the footsteps never arrive
until much later
when my stomach is coming up out of my mouth
 they arrive as fresh as spring flowers:
"what the hell have you done to yourself?
it will be 3 days before you can fuck me!"

the female is durable
she lives seven and one half years longer than the male,
and she drinks very little beer
 because she knows its bad for the figure.


while we are going mad
they are out
dancing and laughing with horney cowboys.


well, there's beer
sacks and sacks of empty beer bottles
 and when you pick one up
 the bottle fall through the wet bottom
of the paper sack
rolling
clanking
spilling gray wet ash
and stale beer,
or the sacks fall over at 4 a.m.
 in the morning
 making the only sound in your life.

beer
 rivers and seas of beer
the radio singing love songs
as the phone remains silent
and the walls stand
straight up and down
 and beer is all there is.


http://www.charlesbukowski.20m.com/bukowski_poems.html

Reflection:

I love this poem because it reminds me a lot of some of my nights.  Bukowski really paints a dark picture of what could be his personal life. He talks about how his splits with women have made him pick up the bottle but it is also the reason why some of his relationships have been ruined. Is kinda an endless cycle for him, where alcoholism seems a better solution if not a simpler one. I think one of the reason speaks to me is because they sound like conversations that I had before. When my friends and I drink, beer, mostly beer, we discussed our relationships, how to fix them, how they sucked or about how beer makes the relationships better. Bukowski also uses a pretty casual language which makes the poem less dramatic and more real in a weird sense. He also has a great taken on the end-line, just when you think something is gonna happen boom
a drop of a line and the take of the poem changes. My favorite lines were:
 " the female is durable
she lives seven and one half years longer than the male,
and she drinks very little beer
 because she knows its bad for the figure."

I'm not 100% sure if women do live 7 1/2 years more than men. I think most men will more than willingly give up 7 1/2 years of their lives if they couldn't drink beer.