Here I Am
Here I Am - fact Summary
Notable Publication Detail
Charles Bukowski's "here i am" reads as a blunt, autobiographical monologue written in the small hours. The speaker is drunk, physically failing, and alone, imagining illness and death with a darkly comic edge—his cats, his organs, and a life without a caregiver recur as concrete details. He admits a vow against writing "old man" poems yet turns exhaustion and self-deprecation into creative fuel: he returns to the typewriter, pours another drink, and mixes sexual longing with a grimly humorous acceptance of decline. The poem fuses bleak realism with wry persistence.
Read Complete AnalysesDrunk again at 3 a.m. at the end of my 2nd bottle of wine, I have typed from a dozen to 15 pages of poesy, an old man maddened for the flesh of young girls in this dwindling twilight, liver gone, kidneys going, pancrea pooped, top-floor blood pressure. While all the fear of the wasted years laughs between my toes no woman will live with me no Florence Nightingale to watch the Johnny Carson show with. If I have a stroke I will lay here for six days, my three cats hungrily ripping the flesh from my elbows, wrists, head. The radio playing classical music... I promised myself never to write old man poems but this one's funny, you see, excusable, because I've long gone past using myself and there's still more left here at 3 a.m. I am going to take this sheet from the typer, pour another glass and insert, make love to the fresh new whiteness. Maybe get lucky again first for me, later for you.
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