Free What Matters Most is How Well You Walk Through the Fire by Charles Bukowski

searchlight invades our windows
    illuminating the blinds it doesn’t matter
    like it used to matter. it’s as simple
    and clear as that.

Nana
    she has fucked 200 men in ten
    states.
    5 have committed suicide
    3 have gone entirely mad.
    every time she moves to a new city
    10 men follow her.
    now she sits on my couch
    in a short blue dress
    and she seems
    quite healthy and chipper
    even looks innocent.
    â€œI lose interest in a man,”
    she says,
    â€œas soon as he begins to care for
    me.”
    I refill her drink
    as she pulls her dress up,
    shows me her black panties.
    â€œdon’t these look sexy?” she asks.
    I tell her that they do look sexy.
    she gets up, walks across the room
    through my bedroom and into the bathroom.
    soon I hear the toilet flush.
    her name is Nana and she has been living on
    earth for the past
    5,000 years.

poor Mimi
    poor Mimi Trochi
    she is probably the most beautiful woman I know
    and young too, still young, but
    she keeps running into trouble,
    twice in the madhouse,
    shacked up and deserted
    beyond counting
    but she knows I am one of those rare old-fashioned men
    and she comes to me for strength
    but all I can give her are hot kisses,
    and we are always interrupted by lightning or chance
    or bad luck
    and poor Trochi and I never seem to get beyond the
    hot kisses,
    and I am usually luckier that way,
    and she certainly must be—if you want to call it luck—
    with her several children to prove it.
    for one of the handsomest women on earth
    this all could be a puzzle
    especially since she has a mind and a soul, but
    Trochi simply chooses wrong,
    she chooses indifference to begin with,
    she believes indifference is strength, and
    I have suffered right along with Mimi Trochi and
    her indifferent men and
    although I have never stuck it into her
    she keeps coming back
    with stories and sobs
    looking more handsome than ever,
    we don’t even kiss anymore,
    all those hot kisses gone forever,
    I am just not indifferent enough.
    â€œyou had your chance,” she tells me,
    showing me her newest baby.
    I don’t know what to do about it
    so I phone my girlfriend and say,
    â€œdo come over. Mimi is here with her baby
    and we are celebrating.”
    my girlfriend comes over, picks up the baby and
    tortures it in her loving way
    just as she does me.
    and then I tell Mimi that we must leave for dinner,
    my girlfriend and I,
    and Mimi says, well, all the traffic
    now, it’s 5 in the afternoon, could I stay a while?
    and so we leave handsome Mimi Trochi
    there and drive off,
    and I don’t worry too much
    because I feel that Mimi does love me in her own
    way,
    and coming back the next morning
    I find nothing missing,
    only a small phone bill later,
    a call to Van Nuys and a call to Pasadena,
    hardly anything for a woman in her state,
    you know how it usually is:
    a call to New York or Philadelphia
    or London or Paris or worse.
    I have her phone number written down
    and I am going to invite her to my New Year’s party
    if she’s still in town
    then.
    that day we left her at my place
    she said she was going to try to get a job
    as a belly dancer
    at the Red Fez. a Turk, she said, owned the Red
    Fez and he was giving her some real
    trouble
    but might offer her the job
    anyway.
    having known Mimi Trochi this long
    I was afraid to ask her
    what the trouble was.

a boy and his dog
    there’s Barry in his ripped walking shorts
    he’s on Thorazine
    is 24
    looks 38
    lives with his mother in the same
    apartment building
    and they fight like married folk.
    he wears dirty white t-shirts
    and every time he gets a new dog
    he names him “Brownie.”
    he’s like an old woman really.
    he’ll see me getting into my Volks.
    â€œhey, ya goin’ ta work?”
    â€œoh, no Barry, I don’t work. I’m going to
    the racetrack.”
    â€œyeah?”
    he walks over to the car window.
    â€œya heard them last