Dedicated to Henry Charles Bukowski
Bukowski quotes on life, death, love, writing....
some people
grind away
making their
unhappiness
the ultimate
factor
of their
existence
until
finally
they are
just
automatically
unhappy,
their
suspicious
upset
snarling
selves
grinding
on
and
at
and
for
and
through
their only
relief
being
to meet
another
unhappy
person
or
to
create
one
washed-up, on shore, the old yellow notebook
out again
I write from the bed
as I did last
year.
will see the doctor,
Monday.
“yes, doctor, weak legs, vertigo, head-
aches and my back
hurts.”
“are you drinking?” he will ask.
“are you getting your
exercise, your
vitamins?”
I think that I am just ill
with life, the same stale yet
fluctuating
factors.
even at the track
I watch the horses run by
and it seems
meaningless.
I leave early after buying tickets on the
remaining races.
“taking off?” asks the motel
clerk.
“yes, it’s boring,”
I tell him.
“If you think it’s boring
out there,” he tells me, “you oughta be
back here.”
so here I am
propped up against my pillows
again
just an old guy
just an old writer
with a yellow
notebook.
something is
walking across the
floor
toward
me.
oh, it’s just
my cat
this
time.
The Last Night of The Earth Poems - Charles Bukowski
(Source: poemhunter.com)
The Last Night Of The Earth Poems - Charles Bukowski
An early christmas gift, teehee
I always resented all the years, the hours, the
minutes I gave them as a working stiff, it
actually hurt my head, my insides, it made me
dizzy and a bit crazy - I couldn’t understand the
murdering of my years
yet my fellow workers gave no signs of
agony, many of them even seemed satisfied, and
seeing them that way drove me almost as crazy as
the dull and senseless work.
the workers submitted.
the work pounded them to nothingness, they were
scooped-out and thrown away.I resented each minute, every minute as it was
mutilated
and nothing relieved the monotony.I considered suicide.
I drank away my few leisure hours.
I worked for decades.
I lived with the worst kind of women, they killed what
the job failed to kill.I knew that I was dying.
something in me said, go ahead, die, sleep, become as
them, accept.then something else in me said, no, save the tiniest
bit.
it needn’t be much, just a spark.
a spark can set a whole forest on
fire.
just a spark.
save it.
I think I did.
I’m glad I did.
what a lucky god damned
thing.
- Charles Bukowski, The Last Night of the Earth Poems
(Source: metaphors-are-lies)
striving,
they hide in common
habits.
their concerns are herd
concerns."
(Source: henrycharlesbukowski)
it would be good to get
out of here,
just go,
pop off, get away from
memories of this
and all
that,
but staying has its
flavor too:
all those babes who
thought they were
hot numbers
now living in dirty
flats
while looking forward
to the next
episode on
some Soap Opera,
and all those guys,
those who really
thought
they were going to
make it,
grinning in the
Year Book with their
tight-skinned
mugs,
now they are
cops,
clerk typists,
operators of
sandwich stands,
horse grooms,
plops
in the dust.
(Source: henrycharlesbukowski)
I knew that I was dying.
something in me said, go ahead, die, sleep, become as
them, accept.
then something else in me said, no, save the tiniest
bit.
it needn’t be much, just a spark.
a spark can set a whole forest on
fire.
just a spark.
save it.
Jack London drinking his life away while
writing of strange and heroic men.
Eugene O’Neill drinking himself oblivious
while writing his dark and poetic
works.
now our moderns
lecture at universities
in tie and suit,
the little boys soberly studious,
the little girls with glazed eyes
looking
up,
the lawns so green, the books so dull,
the life so dying of
thirst.
A. Huxley died at 69,
much too early for such a
fierce talent,
and I read all his
works
but actually
Point Counter Point
did help a bit
in carrying me through
the factories and the
drunk tanks and the
unsavory
ladies.
that
book
along with Hamsun’s
Hunger
they helped a
bit.
great books are
the ones we
need.
like most of you, I’ve had so many jobs that
I feel as if I were gutted and my insides
thrown to the winds.
I’ve met some good people along the
way and also the
other kind.
yet when I think of all those
I have worked with
even though decades have passed
Karl
comes to mind
first.
I remember Karl: our jobs required we
both wear aprons
tied from behind and around
the neck with string.
I was Karl’s underling.
“we got an easy job,” he
told me.
each day as one by one our superiors arrived
Karl would make a slight bend at the waist,
smile, and with a nod of the head
greet each: “good morning Dr. Stein,”
or, “good morning Mr. Day” or
Mrs. Knight or if the lady was unattached
“good morning, Lilly” or Betty or Fran.
I never
spoke.
Karl seemed concerned at this and
one day he took me aside: “hey,
where the fuck else you going to get a
two hour lunch like we
do?”
“nowhere, I guess …”
“well, o.k., look, for guys like you and me,
this is as good as it can get, this is all
there is.”
I waited.
“so look, it’s hard to suck up to them at first, it
didn’t come easy for me
but after a while I realized that it
didn’t matter.
I just grew a shell.
now I’ve got my shell, got
it?”
I looked at him and sure enough he did look like he had
a shell, there was a mask-like look to his
face and the eyes were null, void and
undisturbed; I was looking at a weathered and
beaten conch.
some weeks went by.
nothing changed: Karl bowed and scraped and smiled
undaunted, perfect in his
role.
that we were perishable, perhaps didn’t occur to
him
or
that greater gods might be
watching.
I did my
work.
then, one day, Karl took me
aside again.
“listen, Dr. Morely spoke to me
about you.”
“yes?”
“he asked me what was wrong with
you.”
“what did you tell
him?”
“I told him that you were
young.”
“thanks.”
upon receiving my next check, I
quit
but
still
had to
eventually settle for another similar
job
and
viewing the
new Karls
I finally forgave them all
but not myself:
being perishable sometimes makes a
man
strange
almost
unemployable
most
obnoxious
no servant of
free
enterprise.
striving,
they hide in common
habits.
their concerns are herd
concerns."
