Cows In Art Class, a poem by Charles Bukowski.

Post 403 - Henry Charles Bukowski (1920 – 1994) was an American poet, novelist, and short story writer. His writing was heavily influenced by the geography and atmosphere of his home city of Los Angeles, and emphasizes on the ordinary lives of poor Americans, the act of writing, alcohol, relationships with women, and the drudgery of work. A prolific author, Bukowski wrote thousands of poems, hundreds of short stories, and six novels, and eventually had over 60 books in print. In 1986 Time called Bukowski a "laureate of American lowlife."

A heavy drinker all his life, he once observed, “Drinking is an emotional thing. It joggles you out of the standardism of everyday life, out of everything being the same. It yanks you out of your body and your mind and throws you against the wall. I have the feeling that drinking is a form of suicide where you're allowed to return to life and begin all over the next day. It's like killing yourself, and then you're reborn. I guess I've lived about ten or fifteen thousand lives now ... I don't like jail, they got the wrong kind of bars in there.”

Cows In Art Class by Charles Bukowski.

good weather
is like
good women -
it doesn't always happen
and when it does
it doesn't
always last.
man is
more stable:
if he's bad
there's more chance
he'll stay that way,
or if he's good
he might hang
on,
but a woman
is changed
by
children
age
diet
conversation
sex
the moon
the absence or
presence of sun
or good times.
a woman must be nursed
into subsistence
by love
where a man can become
stronger
by being hated.