Palm Leaves
By: Charles Bukowski
at exactly 12:00 midnight 1973-74 Los Angeles it began to rain on the palm leaves outside my window the horns and the firecrackers went off and it thundered. I'd gone to bed at 9:00 p.m. turned out the lights pulled up the covers -- their gaiety, their happiness their screams, their paper hats, their automobiles, their women their amateur drunks... New Year's Eve always terrifies me life knows nothing of years. now the horns have stopped and the firecrackers and the thunder... it's all over in five minutes... all I hear is the rain on the palm leaves, and I think, I will never understand men, but I have lived it through.
Happy New Year!
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God I love Bukowski. As all good writers do, he puts into words what I can't quite express: "their gaiety, their happiness...." I was wondering about my "scrooginess" yesterday for hating all the loud laughter and fake few minutes of drunken joviality I could hear around me. But I soon got over it and returned to doing what I love and what fills me up, irrespective of it being New Year's Eve.
Jomo is my New Year's Eve motto. The Joy of Missing Out. It also puts me first as you may notice...
Happy New Year either way! I'm excited to think of my Poetic Outlaws tee and cup flying through the sky on their way to New Zealand...
Live it through. It gets easier each New Years. One finds out what is most important when you travel light.