sometimes you climb out of bed in the morning and you think,
I’m not going to make it, but you laugh inside
remembering all the times you’ve felt that way, and
you walk to the bathroom, do your toilet, see that face
in the mirror, oh my oh my oh my, but you comb your hair anyway,
get into your street clothes, feed the cats, fetch the
newspaper of horror, place it on the coffee table, kiss your
wife goodbye, and then you are backing the car out into life itself,
like millions of others you enter the arena once more.
you are on the freeway threading through traffic now,
moving both towards something and towards nothing at all as you
punch
the radio on and get Mozart, which is something, and you will
somehow
get through the slow days and the busy days and the dull
days and the hateful days and the rare days, all both so delightful
and so disappointing because
we are all so alike and all so different.
you find the turn-off, drive through the most dangerous
part of town, feel momentarily wonderful as Mozart works
his way into your brain and slides down along your bones and
out through your shoes.
it’s been a tough fight worth fighting
as we all drive along
betting on another day.
the bad days and the bad nights now come too
often,
the old dream of having a few easy
years before death—
that dream vanished as the other dreams
have.
too bad, too bad, too bad.
from the beginning, through the
middle years and up to the
end:
too bad, too bad, too bad.
there were moments,
sparkles of hope
but they quickly dissolved
back into the same old
formula:
the stink of reality.
even when luck was
there and life danced in the
flesh,
we knew the stay
would be short.
too bad, too bad, too bad.
we wanted more than
there could ever be:
women of love and
laughter,
nights wild enough for the
tiger,
we wanted days that
strolled through
life
with some grace,
a bit of
meaning,
a plausible use,
not something
just to
waste,
but something to
remember,
something with which to
poke death
in the gut.
too bad, too bad, too bad.
in the totality of
all things, of course,
our petty agony is
stupid
and vain
but I feel that our
dreams were
not.
and we are not alone.
the relentless factors are
not a personal
vendetta against a single self.
others feel the same
searing
disorder,
go mad, suicide, go
dull, run stricken to
imaginary
gods,
or go drunk, go drugged,
go naturally
silly,
disappear into the mass of
nothingness
we call families,
cities,
countries
but fate is not entirely
to blame.
we have wasted
our chances,
we have strangled
our own hearts.
too bad, too bad, too bad.
now we are the citizens of
nothing.
the sun
itself
knows
the sad truth of
how we surrendered
our lives
and deaths
to simple
ritual,
useless
craven
ritual,
and then
slinking away
from the face of
glory,
turning our dreams into
dung,
how we said
no, no, no, no,
to the most beautiful
YES
ever uttered:
life
itself.
is the light bill
paid?
and the landlord?
they say gasoline
is going to go up
20 cents a gallon
every month
from now on.
soon it will
take a
month’s salary
to get a blow job
from an Imperial Highway
hooker.
time to crank grandma’s
ass out of the rocker
and put her back to work.
all facial tissue and toilet paper
must be used again and again if
possible.
even the birds on the window
sill
must no longer be allowed to
sit there
for free.
this future rolling toward us
paralyzes the wallet and the
brain.
spoiled woman
washing your panties
in suds and cold water
your eyes are angry
as they watch me
and the world
you feel that you’ve wasted
your years
and yourself
it didn’t work
for me
either
but isn’t there always
one good thing
to look back on?
think of
how many cups of coffee we
drank together.
Charles Bukowski
Sifting Through the Madness for the Word, the Line, the Way
(via om-mani-padme-amidala)
the freeways are a psychological
entanglement of
warped souls,
dying flowers in the dying hour
of the dying day.
old cars, young drivers,
new models driven by
aged men, driven by
drivers without licenses, by drunk
drivers, by drugged drivers,
by suicidal drivers, by super-cautious
drivers (the worst).
drivers with minds like camels,
drivers who piss in their seats,
drivers who yearn to kill,
drivers who love to gamble,
drivers who blame everybody else,
drivers who hate everybody,
drivers who carry guns.
drivers who don’t now what
rearview
mirrors are for,
what the turn signals are for,
drivers who drive without brakes,
drivers who drive on bald tires.
drivers who drive slowly in the fast lane,
drivers who hate their wives or their husbands,
and want to make you pay for that.
unemployed drivers, pissed.
all these represent
humanity in general, totally enraged, demented,
vengeful, spiteful, cheap denizens of our culture, vultures,
jackals, sharks, suckerfish, stingrays, lice…
all on the freeway along with you
tailgating,
cutting in and out,
cheating themselves,
leering,
their radios blaring the worst music ever written,
their gas tanks nearly empty,
engines overheating,
minds over the next hill,
they don’t know how to drive
or live,
they know less than a snail crawling home.
they are what you see every day
going from nowhere to nowhere,
they elect presidents, procreate, decorate their
Christmas trees.
what you see on the freeway is just what there is,
a funeral procession of the dead,
the greatest horror of our time in motion.
I’ll see you there tomorrow!
(Charles Bukowski)
