(Source: amazon.com)
(Source: henrycharlesbukowski)
naked along the side of the house,
8 a.m., spreading sesame seed oil
over my body, Jesus, have I come
to this?
I once battled in dark alleys for a
laugh.
now I’m not laughing.
I splash myself with oil and wonder,
how many years do you want?
how many days?
my blood is soiled and a dark
angel sits in my brain.
things are made of something and
go to nothing.
I understand the fall of cities, of
nations.
a small plane passes overhead.
I look upward as if it made sense to
look upward.
it’s true, the sky has rotted:
it won’t be long for any of
us.
(Source: poemhunter.com)
a very miraculous thing just happened:
my beerbottle flipped over backwards
and landed on its bottom on the floor,
and I have set it upon the table to foam down,
but the photos were not so lucky today
and there is a small slit along the leather
of my left shoe, but it’s all very simple:
we cannot acquire too much: there are laws
we know nothing of, all manner of nudges
set us to burning or freezing; what sets
the blackbird in the cat’s mouth
is not for us to say, or why some men
are jailed like pet squirrels
while others nuzzle in enormous breasts
through endless nights—this is the
task and the terror, and we are not
taught why. still, it’s lucky the bottle
landed straightside up, and although
I have one of wine and one of whiskey,
this foretells, somehow, a good night,
and perhaps tomorrow my nose will be longer:
new shoes, less rain, more poems.
Are You Drinking? - Bukowski Reading
(Source: ubu.com)
exposed to grief too long
I become in time
surfeited with suffering,
decide that I owe myself
survival; this is not easy:
telling yourself that you deserve better days
after the history of your past;
but I have seen complete fools
go on (of course)
without ever
considering their shortcomings;
then too turtles crawl the
land, dirty words scratched
on their backs…
but they hardly
improve the horizon.
-Charles Bukowski, “The Roominghouse Madrigals” Early selected poems, 1946-1966
(Source: maniae)
invent yourself and then reinvent yourself,
don’t swim in the same slough.
invent yourself and then reinvent yourself
and
stay out of the clutches of mediocrity.
invent yourself and then reinvent yourself,
change your tone and shape so often that
they can
never
categorize you.
reinvigorate yourself and
accept what is
but only on the terms that you have
invented
and reinvented.
be self-taught.
and reinvent your life because you must;
it is your life and
its history
and the present
belong only to
you.
the wind blows hard to night
and it’s a cold wind
and I think about
the boys on the row.
I hope some of them have a bottle
of red.
it’s when you’re on the row
that you notice that
everything
is owned
and that there are locks on
everything.
this is the way a democracy
works:
you get what you can,
try to keep that
and add to it
if possible.
this is the way a dictatorship
works too
only they either enslave or
destroy their
derelicts.
we just forget
ours.
in either case
it’s a hard
cold
wind.
The Pleasures of the Damned - Charles Bukowski
(Source: plagiarist.com)
