one for the road (in memory of charles bukowski)

i keep reading this bukowski guy,

keep reading about all his escapades

with loose women while

he was drunk. and he was drunk a lot.

seems there was no end to the women

he linked-up with after those sodden

nights at the bar.

he would drink them pretty, then take

them to a motel. and next day hung-over

like hell, he realized he had made a

miserable mistake.

you’d think he would learn his lesson

one day. but oh no, night after night,

day after day the same.

one time i had a similar experience

with a woman I met at a bar.

her boyfriend left her there, walked

away because she became sloppy and

obnoxious after having too much to

drink.

still having an ounce of sober politeness

left in me, i offered her a ride home.

nodding her head in the affirmative,

and spilling her last drink all over the

bar,

she looked cross-eyed at me and

slurred, “yessir, dat would be sooo

kine of youuu.”

well, we staggered out of that place

arm-in-arm. (i myself was several shots

over the legal limit of sobriety, but damn

the law, we both needed to get home.)

i poured her into the car, seat-belted

her in, and managed to get us underway.

it took me the better part of an hour to

locate her place for she kept passing in

and out of cognizance while giving me

fractured directions i could barely understand.

“wooz youuu...(hic) wanna come in

for...(hic) a drink?” she asked me, nearly

falling as she got out of the car.

it may have been a mistake bukowski

made a hundred times over. but not i,

not this time. “thanks,” i told her.

“maybe next time.” a brain-strained

hangover in the morning was going to

be hard enough for me to endure.

now, where the hell am i, and how do i

get out of this place?

Chris Hanch 6-30-18