For Jane: With All the Love I Had, Which Was Not Enough:
Charles Bukowski * Track #1 On The Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over The Hills
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Album The Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over The Hills
For Jane: With All the Love I Had, Which Was Not Enough: by Charles Bukowski
Performed by
Charles BukowskiAbout
This poem is about Jane Cooney Baker considered to be Charles' most cherished girlfriend and muse. She was 10 years his senior and their said to have met in a bar when she was living off money from older men and doing menial work in cheap hotels. She died in 1962 from a perforated stomach ulcer. Her...
For Jane: With All the Love I Had, Which Was Not Enough: Annotated
I pick up the skirt,
I pick up the sparkling beads
in black,
this thing that moved once
around flesh,
and I call God a liar,
I say anything that moved
like that
or knew
my name
could never die
in the common verity of dying,
and I pick
up her lovely
dress,
all her loveliness gone,
and I speak to all the gods,
Jewish gods, Christ-gods,
chips of blinking things,
idols, pills, bread,
fathoms, risks,
knowledgeable surrender,
rats in the gravy of two gone quite mad
without a chance,
hummingbird knowledge, hummingbird chance,
I lean upon this,
I lean on all of this
and I know
her dress upon my arm
but
they will not
give her back to me.