Charles Bukowski’s Tips on Family Time for the Holiday Season

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Family time breaks my bones

and I

laugh.

1:

Drown them, or yourself,

in whiskey and sweet kisses

of the whore you brought to dinner.

They won’t ask her name.

2:

Slice the ham,

tough like my drunk-tank of a heart.

It steams upon puncture.

Teeth tear away my sins.

3:

Grandma weeps, the fruitcake,

consumed by despair,

the loneliness of knowing.

Aged like flowers.

4:

Possessions of dissatisfaction

A bottle and a book

Would cause the fools

to smile, for once.

5:

Family,

pleasant when

absent. Yet without,

life is the dankest hell.