It started snowing at about 1 am last night like it was making up for the week of clear skies. Outside, it looks like a sideways salt shaker.

I was trying to find a nice Charles Bukowski poem to put up here for Christmas – Death Wants More Death, for example – but I stumbled on this old article instead – about a guy who found some of his poems in the street in my old neighborhood in LA –

“…In any event, just weeks after Bukowski’s death, Stella came upon an important piece of the poet’s life in a heap of trash on a Los Feliz curb.”

As long as we can still discover poetry in the Los Angeles garbage, there’s hope – for both poetry and my city. (And for garbage.) I wish I was at home, especially over the holidays, careening down Franklin towards the Valley, but Charles’s ghost is doing a great job of holding down the fort. If you’re in LA, do me a favor – check your trash for poems tonight. And your poems for trash.

I have two Christmas parties tonight, one with little kids. I bought one of them a box of 64 Crayolas. She’s probably too young for it, but I want to give it to her anyway. I remember my 64-crayon box very well.

And then rehearsals resume tomorrow.

“….
and I run child-like
with God’s anger a step behind,
back to simple sunlight,
wondering
as the world goes by
with curled smile
if anyone else
saw or sensed my crime”