Strange wonderful people

“now, I’m not saying that I’ve conquered
the world but I’ve avoided
numberless early traffic jams, bypassed some
common pitfalls
and have met some strange, wonderful
people

one of whom
was
myself—someone my father
never
knew.”

An excerpt from “Throwing Away the Alarm Clock” by Charles Bukowski

Alive

Song with no end

when Whitman wrote, "I sing the body electric"

I know what he
meant
I know what he
wanted:

to be completely alive every moment
in spite of the inevitable.

we can't cheat death but we can make it
work so hard
that when it does take
us

it will have known a victory just as
perfect as
ours.

Charles Bukowski

Being the music, roaring

Splash
Charles Bukowski

the illusion is that you are simply
reading this poem.
the reality is that this is
more than a
poem.
this is a beggar's knife.
this is a tulip.
this is a soldier marching
through Madrid.
this is you on your
death bed.
this is Li Po laughing
underground.
this is not a god-damned
poem.
this is a horse asleep.
a butterfly in
your brain.
this is the devil's
circus.
you are not reading this
on a page.
the page is reading
you.
feel it?
it's like a cobra.
it's a hungry eagle circling the room.

this is not a poem. poems are dull,
they make you sleep.

these words force you
to a new
madness.

you have been blessed, you have been pushed into a
blinding area of
light.

the elephant dreams
with you
now.
the curve of space
bends and
laughs.

you can die now.
you can die now as
people were meant to
die:
great,
victorious,
hearing the music,
being the music,
roaring,
roaring,
roaring.

No longer

I no longer know where you are,
and I walk on and wonder where
the living goes
when it stops.

Charles Bukowski

Return

“Drinking is an emotional thing. It joggles you out of the standardism of everyday life, out of everything being the same. It yanks you out of your body and your mind and throws you against the wall. I have the feeling that drinking is a form of suicide where you’re allowed to return to life and begin all over the next day. It’s like killing yourself, and then you’re reborn. I guess I’ve lived about ten or fifteen thousand lives now.”

Charles Bukowski, An interview with London Magazine,
Dec 1974 – Jan 1975

And wished to drown

I suppose like others
I have come through fire and sword,
love gone wrong,
head-on crashes, drunk at sea,
and I have listened to the simple sound of water running
in tubs
and wished to drown.

Charles Bukowski, The People Look Like Flowers at Last

Consummation Of Grief

I even hear the mountains
the way they laugh
up and down their blue sides
and down in the water
the fish cry
and the water
is their tears.

I listen to the water
on nights I drink away
and the sadness becomes so great
I hear it in my clock
it becomes knobs upon my dresser
it becomes paper on the floor
it becomes a shoehorn
a laundry ticket
it becomes
cigarette smoke
climbing a chapel of dark vines. . .

it matters little
very little love is not so bad
or very little life
what counts
is waiting on walls
I was born for this
I was born to hustle roses down the avenues of the dead.

Charles Bukowski

Companion

I am not alone.
he’s here now.
sometimes I think
he’s gone
then he
flies back
in the morning or at
noon or in the
night.
a bird no one wants.
he’s mine.
my bird of pain.
he doesn’t sing.
that bird
swaying on the
bough.

Charles Bukowski

Too often

“I felt like crying but nothing came out. It was just a sort of sad sickness, sick sad, when you can’t feel any worse. I think you know it. I think everybody knows it now and then. But I think I have known it pretty often, too often.”

Charles Bukowski, 'Tales of Ordinary Madness'

The terror

Our educational system tell us
that we can all be
big-ass winners.

it hasn't told us
about the gutters
or the suicides.

or the terror of one person
aching in one place
alone

untouched
unspoken to

watering a plant.

Charles Bukowski, 'The Crunch'

Running along the egde of madness

You’ve got to burn
straight up and down
and then maybe sideways
for a while
and have your guts
scrambled by a
bully
and the demonic
ladies,
you’ve got to run
along the edge of
madness,
teetering,
you’ve got to drink a
river of booze,
you’ve got to starve
like a winter
alleycat,
you’ve got to live
with the imbecility
of at least a dozen
cities,
then maybe
maybe
maybe
you might know
where you are
for a tiny
blinking
moment.

Charles Bukowski, 'Bone Palace Ballet'

cats and you and me

the Egyptians loved the cat
were often entombed with it
instead of with the child
and never with the dog.

and now
here
good people with
the souls of cats
are very few

yet here and now many
fine cats
with great style
lounge about
in the alleys of
the universe.

about
our argument tonight
whatever it was
about
and
no matter
how unhappy
it made us
feel

remember that
there is a
cat
somewhere
adjusting to the
space of itself
with a calm
and delightful
ease.

in other words
magic persists with
or without us
no matter how
we may try to
destroy it
and I would
destroy the last chance for
myself
that this might always
continue.

Charles Bukowski

Only the Truly Lost

it was like a church in there
anyhow
only the truly lost
sat in bars
on tuesday mornings
at 8:30 am.......

...blue beads and bones
the universe in bent.
a cop rides his bike behind me,
the day has truly begun.

Only the Truly Lost
Charles Bukowski

http://bukowski.net/forum/threads/blue-beads-and-bones-or-only-the-truly-lost.2065/

Charles Bukowski, Poems and Letter Manuscripts: http://authenticbukowski.com/manuscripts/

Nirvana

Video: http://vimeo.com/54754006

not much chance,
completely cut loose from
purpose,
he was a young man
riding a bus
through North Carolina
on the way to somewhere
and it began to snow
and the bus stopped
at a little cafe
in the hills
and the passengers
entered.
he sat at the counter
with the others,
he ordered and the
food arived.
the meal was
particularly
good
and the
coffee.
the waitress was
unlike the women
he had
known.
she was unaffected,
there was a natural
humor which came
from her.
the fry cook said
crazy things.
the dishwasher.
in back,
laughed, a good
clean
pleasant
laugh.
the young man watched
the snow through the
windows.
he wanted to stay
in that cafe
forever.
the curious feeling
swam through him
that everything
was
beautiful
there,
that it would always
stay beautiful
there.
then the bus driver
told the passengers
that it was time
to board.
the young man
thought, I'll just sit
here, I'll just stay
here.
but then
he rose and followed
the others into the
bus.
he found his seat
and looked at the cafe
through the bus
window.
then the bus moved
off, down a curve,
downward, out of
the hills.
the young man
looked straight
foreward.
he heard the other
passengers
speaking
of other things,
or they were
reading
or
attempting to
sleep.
they had not
noticed
the
magic.
the young man
put his head to
one side,
closed his
eyes,
pretended to
sleep.
there was nothing
else to do-
just to listen to the
sound of the
engine,
the sound of the
tires
in the
snow.

Charles Bukowski

You can beat death in life

you can’t beat death but
you can beat death in life, sometimes.
and the more often you learn to do it,
the more light there will be.

'The Laughing Heart', Charles Bukowski

The only good fight

"If you're going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don't even start.

This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives and maybe even your mind. It could mean not eating for three or four days. It could mean freezing on a park bench. It could mean jail. It could mean derision. It could mean mockery--isolation.

Isolation is the gift. All the others are a test of your endurance, of how much you really want to do it. And, you'll do it, despite rejection and the worst odds. And it will be better than anything else you can imagine.

If you're going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It's the only good fight there is."

Charles Bukowski, 'Factotum'

Just If...

Just if you could be alone for one minute with the toaster and the music from the hall and be aware of the sun and the clouds and the mouse in the cellar by the wine and the creaking of the floorboards above you and the breeze that lifts the fluff from the dandelions and sets it free and just if you could be alone for one minute with the faucet and the laughter from the garden if you could.

Just if you could be with me for one afternoon with your wineglass and the summer breeze and be aware of the scent of flowers by the well and of the laughter in your heart and just if you could be with me for one evening with your feet up and with the music and the candles and the flicker of the fire. Just if we could talk for hours and hours and be aware of ourselves and the spirits in the air and history of our words and just if we could simply be.

Raymond J Wright

* * * * * * * * *

In a very ordinary world
A most extraordinary pain mingles with the small routines,
The loss seems huge and yet
Nothing can be pinned down or fully explained.


* * * * * * * * *

some people never go crazy.
me, sometimes I'll lie down behind the couch
for 3 or 4 days.

Charles Bukowski

Unblinking Grief

the last cigarettes are smoked, the loaves are sliced,
and lest this be taken for wry sorrow,
drown the spider in wine.

you are much more than simply dead:
I am a dish for your ashes,
I am a fist for your vanished air.

the most terrible thing about life
is finding it gone.

Charles Bukowski, 'Sifting through the Madness For The Word, The Line, The Way'

Bukowski

Cause And Effect

the best often die by their own hand
just to get away,
and those left behind
can never quite understand
why anybody
would ever want to
get away
from
them

..............................

Nirvana

not much chance.

............................

Rain

a symphony orchestra.

.................................................................

Some people never go crazy.
me, sometimes I'll lie down behind the couch
for 3 or 4 days.
they'll find me there.
it's Cherub, they'll say, and
they pour wine down my throat
rub my chest
sprinkle me with oils.

.........................................................
oh, yes

there are worse things than
being alone
but it often takes decades
to realize this
and most often
when you do
it's too late
and there's nothing worse
than
too late.

Charles Bukowski

oh, yes

there are worse things than
being alone
but it often takes decades
to realize this
and most often
when you do
it's too late
and there's nothing worse
than
too late.

a Charles Bukowski poem