To The Whore Who Took My Poems [Turkish translation]

Some say we should keep personal remorse from the poem,

Stay abstract, and there is some reason in this, but Jesus;

Twelve poems gone and I don't keep carbons and you have my paintings too, my best ones; it's stifling:

Are you trying to crush me out like the rest of them?

Why didn't you take my money? they usually do

From the sleeping drunken pants sick in the corner.

Next time take my left arm or a fifty

But not my poems !

I'm not Shakespeare

But sometime simply

There won't be any more, abstract or otherwise;

There'll always be money and whores and drunkards

Down to the last bomb,

But as God said,

Crossing his legs,

I see where I have made plenty of poets

But not so very much

Poetry

• Artist:Charles Bukowski