here’s a poem entitled the lost generation by charles bukowski. i discovered it yesterday:

have been reading a book about a rich literary lady

of the twenties and her husband who

drank, ate and partied their way through

Europe

meeting Pound, Picasso, A. Huxley, Lawrence, Joyce,

F. Scott, Hemingway, many others;

the famous were like precious toys to

them,

and the way it reads

the famous allowed themselves to become

precious toys.

all through the book

I waited for just one of the famous

to tell this rich literary lady and her

rich literary husband to

get off and out

but, apparently, none of them ever

did.

Instead they were photographed with the lady

and her husband

at various seasides

looking intelligent

as if all of this was part of the act

of Art.

perhaps because the wife and husband

fronted a lush press that

had something to do

with it.

and they were all photographed together

at parties

or outside of Sylvia Beach’s bookshop.

it’s true that many of them were

great and/or original artists,

but it all seems such a snobby precioius

affair,

and the husband finally committed his

threatened suicide

and the lady published one of my first

short stories in the

40’s and is now

dead, yet

I can’t forgive either of them

for their rich dumb lives

and I can’t forgive their precious toys

either

for being

that.