Not Disappearing

for Charles Bukowski

Sometimes
I think about offing myself;
coming down with the hammer, or the razor;
or maybe not, and just wishing to disappear.

I’d no longer be able to flip
through the pages
of Bukowski’s poetry,
ravenously consuming each one
to get that feeling I get at the end
of the Bluebird, the Aliens, Alone with Everybody.

Bukowski is dead,
yet I feel communion with what he
left behind.
So I have to live,
or it’ll all disappear.