“I Made a Mistake” Poem by Charles Bukowski

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Charles Bukowski often wrote about love gone wrong. Women captivated him, but even after he gained fame and the attention that came with it, he had a difficult time finding peace inside his relationships; especially before he met his wife, Linda Lee Bukowski.

Perhaps it was because it took so long for women to look his way and he had trouble letting go of the resentment.

By his own account, he lost his virginity at the age of 24—”I wasn’t a pretty guy, I didn’t have any money, I was a bum.”—to a sex worker, which turned out to be a less than satisfying encounter.

Or it could have been his difficult childhood, full of isolation from the other children and beatings from his father. Or simply the result of being an introvert.

In the poem, “I made a mistake,” from the collection “Love Is a Dog From Hell,” Bukowski asks the wrong question and gets an understandable response. The reader is left wondering if he did it on purpose, and if so, why? Possibly a fear of intimacy, as hinted at with the line, “ashamed of my sentimentality and possible love.” He is not willing to admit he is in love, but will admit to its possibility, but only in connection to shame.

The full poem follows.

“I made a mistake,” by Charles Bukowski

I reached up into the top of the closet
and took out a pair of blue panties
and showed them to her and
asked “are these yours?”
and she looked and said,
“no, those belong to a dog.”
she left after that and I haven’t seen
her since. she’s not at her place.
I keep going there, leaving notes stuck
into the door. I go back and the notes
are still there. I take the Maltese cross
cut it down from my car mirror, tie it
to her doorknob with a shoelace, leave
a book of poems.
when I go back the next night everything
is still there.
I keep searching the streets for that
blood-wine battleship she drives
with a weak battery, and the doors
hanging from broken hinges.
I drive around the streets
an inch away from weeping,
ashamed of my sentimentality and
possible love.
a confused old man driving in the rain
wondering where the good luck
went.