I Am Not Bukowski or Toni or Erma Just In Case You Were Confused

There is a poem that Bukowski wrote,

that a silent friend reminded me of.
Bukowski, Chuck was an effed up dude

but brilliant. You should look him up.

He said "if you’re going to create

you’re going to create whether you work
16 hours a day in a coal mine
or
you’re going to create in a small room with 3 children
while you’re on
welfare"

which reminds me of something another writer said

I think it was Toni Morrison

who said she wrote at night all night while her babies slept

until they wailed then she nursed them

then she wrote some more.

And Erma? She was the first

to find funny what has always been funny

and after the Dayton Shopping News

it was $3 a pop for her perfectly funny genius

but she carried on with the laundry and the cleaning and the cooking

and made real measure of what is measureless work and she did it

On a typewriter.

I have never been on welfare or in a coal mine

or done anything more than once for 3 bucks

and the best I remember of infants at my breast

was waking at four or three or whatever it was

nearly weeping

to get back to sleep, no thought of anything

creative

but a dream I wished to continue

and the pat pat of a burp's sweet relief and

my pillow.

I can't keep up the pace.

I am not committed

nor talented nor funny nor able enough

to tell and write and thinky think

and tend and mend with my whole self

which I need to do and which I don't regret

And also sometimes

I just want to watch bad TV.

So I'm gonna be a lazy creator when I can

(when I want to be)

stringing words on gossamer and iffy ideas

stringing dirty socks out a window and hauling them home

like I do, like I've done and sometimes regret...

I've strung up myself enough

for long enough, for longer than I thought,

to worry too much about

why I do it or worse, to worry about

that or Chuck and Toni and Erma

or

this.