If we take

if we take what we can see:
the engines driving us mad, 
lovers finally hating, 
this fish in the market 
staring upward into our minds; 
flowers rotting, flies web-caught; 
riots, roars of caged lions, 
clowns in love with dollar bills, 
nations moving people like pawns; 
daylight thieves with beautiful 
nighttime wives and wines; 
the crowded jails, 
the commonplace unemployed, 
dying grass, 2-bit fires; 
men old enough to love the grave. 

These things, and others, in content 
show life swinging on rotten axis. 

But they've left us a bit of music 
and a spoiked show in the corner, 
a jigger of scotch, a blue necktie, 
a small volume of poems by Rimbaud, 
a horse running as if the devil were 
twisting his tail 
over the bluegrass and screaming, 

and then, love again 
like a streetcar turning the corner 
on time, 
the city waiting, 
the wine and the flowers 
the water walking across the lake 
and summer and winter and summer and summer 
and winter again. 

Charles Bukowski