Girlfriends - Analysis

Refusing the Past as a Kind of Self-Protection

Bukowski’s central claim is blunt: the past doesn’t deserve a second showing. The speaker’s old relationships “keep phoning,” and even when one woman “arrived from out of state” wanting to see him, he answers with a flat “no.” The insistence feels less like cruelty for its own sake than a practiced boundary: he is determined not to let previous intimacy regain a foothold. The poem reads like someone guarding his present life from being reopened, revised, or re-argued by people who once had access to him.

The Phone as an Unwanted Doorway

The opening image makes the past active and intrusive. These women aren’t remembered; they “keep phoning,” as if history has a ringing, mechanical persistence. When one “arrived from out of state,” the past gains a body, a real presence on the doorstep, and the speaker’s refusal becomes more charged. His explanation is not romantic or nostalgic but visceral: seeing them would be “awkward / gruesome and useless.” That trio matters: “awkward” suggests social discomfort, “gruesome” hints at emotional gore, and “useless” denies any redemptive purpose. He’s not claiming it would hurt; he’s claiming it would be pointless.

The Turn: From Women to Movies

The poem’s turn comes when he shifts from relationships to watching films: “I know some people who can / watch the same movie / more than once.” This comparison reframes the women as repeats, not individuals newly encountered. He draws a hard line—“Not me”—and then builds a philosophy of rewatching: once he knows “the plot,” once he knows “the ending,” the experience is over “forever.” By translating romance into narrative, the speaker treats past love as something already interpreted and concluded. The metaphor makes his refusal sound almost rational, like consumer choice: why rewatch what you already understand?

Certainty Versus the Messiness of Real People

There’s a tension in how confidently he talks. Real relationships rarely have clean “endings,” yet he speaks as if each one resolves into a single, knowable “plot,” whether “happy or unhappy / or just plain dumb.” That range is dismissive, especially “dumb,” which reduces complicated lives to a bad script. The poem’s hardness, then, is also a kind of self-deception: the speaker insists on certainty because uncertainty would force him into conversation, apology, tenderness, or responsibility. Calling the replay “gruesome and useless” lets him avoid the possibility that something unfinished might still be alive.

A Sharp Question Hidden in “Old Movies”

When he says he refuses “to let any of my old movies / play over and over again / for years,” the possessive “my” is doing quiet work. If these are his “movies,” then the women become scenes in his personal archive—memorable, maybe, but controlled. The poem leaves a pointed question hanging: is he protecting himself from pain, or protecting himself from being seen again by people who remember a version of him he’d rather keep offscreen?

The Tone: Cool Finality with a Hint of Fear

The tone is curt, even proud of its finality: “I won’t see them.” Yet the intensity of the language suggests the past still has force—otherwise the calls wouldn’t matter. The speaker’s refusal reads like a rule he has to repeat to keep it true. In the end, the movie metaphor isn’t just a clever comparison; it’s a defense mechanism, a way to declare that what happened is finished “forever,” even if the phone keeps ringing.