(Source: henrycharlesbukowski)
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)
nobody can save you but
yourself.
you will be put again and again
into nearly impossible
situations.
they will attempt again and again
through subterfuge, guise and
force
to make you submit, quit and/or die quietly
inside.
nobody can save you but
yourself
and it will be easy enough to fail
so very easily
but don’t, don’t, don’t.
just watch them.
listen to them.
do you want to be like that?
a faceless, mindless, heartless
being?
do you want to experience
death before death?
nobody can save you but
yourself
and you’re worth saving.
it’s a war not easily won
but if anything is worth winning then
this is it.
think about it.
think about saving your self.
Despite his convincing tales of traveling the country, Bukowski spent almost all of his life in a very small section of Los Angeles. This map shows all of his known Los Angeles addresses and jobs. You can see that he favored Northeast Los Angeles, an area that has been low income and more or less run down for the better part of 75 years. You have to zoom out on the map to see his first home - in Pasadena with relatives, where he lived briefly as an infant - and his last home, all the way down in San Pedro (which is still part of the city of Los Angeles).
it was another 3:45 a.m. in
east Hollywood
and the black sky came in like a
knife
and if you were alive you were
lucky
and if you were dead
you never knew
it.
Charles Bukowski
