I recently finished reading The Last Night of the Earth Poems by Charles Bukowski (Ecco, 2002; previously published by Black Sparrow Press in 1992). Bukowski feels like an old friend to me, and I love picturing him sitting in his house, drinking wine and listening to classical music on the radio while he bangs away at the typewriter.

The book is a beefy collection filled with the typical Bukowski charm—a combination of vulgarity, humor and humanity.

As someone of advancing age, often filled with regret over the detours and wrong decisions I’ve made in my life, one particular poem hit home for me.

Cut While Shaving

It’s never quite right, he said, the way people look,
the way the music sounds, the way the words are
written.
It’s never quite right, he said, all the things we are
taught, all the loves we chase, all the deaths we
die, all the lives we live,
they are never quite right,
they are hardly close to right,
these lives we live
one after the other,
piled there as history,
the waste of the species,
the crushing of the light and the way,
it’s not quite right,
it’s hardly right at all
he said.

don’t I know it? I
answered.

I walked away from the mirror.
it was morning, it was afternoon, it was
night

nothing changed
it was locked in place.
something flashed, something broke, something
remained.

I walked down the stairway and
into it.