Unloved by the addicts

 There ought to be a place to go

when you can’t sleep

or you’re tired of getting drunk

and the grass doesn’t work anymore,

and I don’t mean to go

to hash or cocaine,

I mean a place to go to besides

the death that’s waiting

or to a love that doesn’t work

anymore.

there ought to be a place to go

when you can’t sleep

besides to a tv set or to a movie

or to buy a newspaper

or to read a novel.

it’s not having that place to go to

that creates the people now in madhouses

and the suicides.

I suppose what most people do

when there isn’t any place to go

is to go to some place or to something

that hardly satisfies them,

and this ritual tends to sandpaper them

down to where they can somehow continue even

without hope.

those faces you see every day on the streets

were not created

entirely without

hope: be kind to them:

like you

they have not

escaped.

Charles Bukowski

A Plausible Finish