Raw with Love
Raw with Love - context Summary
Published in 1977 Collection
Published in the 1977 collection Love Is a Dog from Hell, this poem fits Bukowski’s autobiographical focus on fraught, intimate relationships. The speaker addresses a young woman and frames a moment of potential violence, then shifts into a long remembrance of shared domestic details and physical closeness. Memory supplies tenderness and regret—kisses "raw with love," small rooms, records, coffee—while images of shore and palms add a lonely backdrop. The poem ends with an uneasy reversal: the speaker claims control of the knife but postpones its use, capturing ambivalence between love, possession, and restraint.
Read Complete AnalysesLittle dark girl with kind eyes when it comes time to use the knife I won't flinch and I won't blame you, as I drive along the shore alone as the palms wave, the ugly heavy palms, as the living does not arrive as the dead do not leave, I won't blame you, instead I will remember the kisses our lips raw with love and how you gave me everything you had and how I offered you what was left of me, and I will remember your small room the feel of you the light in the window, your records, your books, our morning coffee, our noons our nights, our bodies spilled together sleeping, the tiny flowing currents immediate and forever, your leg, my leg, your arm, my arm, your smile and the warmth of you who made me laugh again. Little dark girl with kind eyes you have no knife. The knife is mine and I won't use it yet.
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