Wounded Flowers by Thomas Fucaloro

We asked Thomas Fucaloro about his connection with Charles Bukowski  and he explains through a poem

WOUNDED FLOWERS

I think it’s important to love the art

but not necessarily the one birthing

or vomiting it.

 

 I don’t want to know the painter

just want to know that it has been

painted.

 

 Charles says: Hello, welcome to my wounds,

they are warm and they are read and they are honest

and they are drunk and always

 

a part

 

 of the bigger circle

we call a square

the page

a napkin

 

we wipe our mouths with

to let us know it is ok

to be human

to bleed

to hurt

to love

to make mistakes

and to make new ones

to try

and change

and have change try for us.

 

What Charles Bukowski has shown me

is that it is ok to be

Thomas Fucaloro.

 

That it is ok for us to understand and heal

through poetry

through art

through a drunk old man’s fingertips.

 

(You call them fingertips, I call them flowers.)

 

I like open-wound-poetry.

I like Charles Bukowski.

 

I love poets who point the finger

 

at themselves.