The dread of life

is that swarm of trivialities

that can kill quicker than cancer

and which are always there –

license plates or taxes

or expired driver’s license,

or hiring or firing,

doing it or having it done to you, or

roaches or flies or a

broken hook on a

screen, or out of gas

or too much gas,

the sink’s stopped-up, the landlord’s drunk,

the president doesn’t care and the governor’s

crazy…

— Charles Bukowski from poem The Shoelace