Bukowski poems
"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."
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Something's knocking at the door
a great white light dawns across the continent as we fawn over our failed traditions, often kill to preserve them or sometimes kill just to kill. it doesn't seem to matter: the answers dangle just out of reach, out of hand, out of mind. The leaders of the past were insufficient, the leaders of the present are unprepared. we curl up tightly in our beds at night and wait. it is a waiting without hope, more like a prayer for unmerited grace.
it all looks more and more like the same old movie. the actors are different but the plot's the same: senseless. we should have known, watching our fathers. we should have knwon, watching our mothers. they did not know, they too were not prepared to teach. we were too naive to ignore their counsel and now we have embraced their ignorance as our own. we are them, multiplied. we are their unpaid debts. we are bankrupt in money and in spirit
there are few exceptions, of course, but these teeter on the edge and will at any moment tumble down to join the rest of us, the raving, the battered, the blind and the sadly corrupt.
a great white light dawns across the continent, the flowers open blindly in the stinking wind, as grotesque and ultimately unlivable our 21st century struggles to be born.
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A Future Congressman
in the men's room at the track this boy of about 7 or 8 years old came out of a stall and the man waiting for him (probably his father) asked, "what did you do with the racing program? I gave it to you to keep." "no," said the boy, "I ain't seen it! I don't have it!"
they walked off and I went into the stall because it was the only one available and there in the toilet was the program.
I tried to flush the program away but it just swam sluggishly about and remained.
I got out of there and found another empty stall.
that boy was ready for his life to come. he would undoubtedly be highly successful, the lying little prick.
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The Harder You Try
the waste of words continues with a stunning persistence as the waiter runs by carrying the loaded tray for all the wise white boys who laugh at us.
no matter. no matter, as long as your shoes are tied and nobody is walking too close behind. just being able to scratch yourself and be nonchalant is victory enough.
those constipated minds that seek larger meaning will be dispatched with the other garbage.
back off. if there is light it will find you
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My Telephone
the telephone has not been kind of late, of late there have been more and more calls
from people who want to come over and talk
from people who are depressed
from people who are lonely
from people who just don’t know what to do
with their time;
I’m no snob, I try to help, try to suggest something that might be of assistance but there have been more calls
more and more calls
and what the callers don’t realize is that I too have problems and even when I don’t it’s necessary for me sometimes just to be alone and quiet and doing nothing.
so the other day after many days of listening to depressed and lonely people wanting me to assuage their grief, I was lying there enjoying looking at the ceiling when the phone rang and I picked it up and said, “listen, what ever your problem is or what ever it is you want, I can’t help you.”
after a moment of silence whoever it was hung up and I felt like a man who had escaped.
I napped then, perhaps an hour, when the phone rang again and I picked it up: “what ever your problem is I can’t help you!”
“is this Mr. Chinaski?”
“yes.”
“this is Helen at your dentist’s office to remind you that you have an appointment at 3:30 tomorrow afternoon.”
I told her I’d be there for her.
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Putrefaction
of late I've had this thought that this country has gone backwards 4 or five decades and that all the advancement
the good feeling of person toward person
has been washed away and replaced by the same old bigotries
we have more than ever the selfish wants of power
the disregard for the weak
the old
the impoverished
the helpless.
we are replacing want with war
salvation with slavery.
we have wasted the gains
we have become rapidly less.
we have our Bomb
it is our fear our damnation and our shame.
now something so sad has hold of us that the breath leaves and we can't even cry.
_____
Millionaires
you
no faces
no faces at all
laughing at nothing -
let me tell you I have drunk in skidrow rooms with imbecile winos whose cause was better
whose eyes still held some light
whose voices retained some sensibility,
and when the morning came we were sick but not ill, poor but not deluded, and we stretched in our beds and rose in the late afternoons like millionaires.
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No Leaders Please
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.
_____
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.
_____
Democracy
The problem, of course, isn’t the Democratic System it’s the living parts which make up the Democratic System. The next person you pass on the street, multiply him or her by 3 or 4 or 30 or 40 million and you will know immediately why things remain non-functional for most of us.
I wish I had a cure for the chess pieces We call Humanity… we’ve undergone any number of political cures and we all remain foolish enough to hope that the one on the way NOW will cure almost everything.
Fellow citizens, the problem never was the Democratic System, the problem is You.
_____
The Great Escape
listen, he said, you ever seen a bunch of crabs in a bucket?
no, I told him.
well, what happens is that now and then one crab will climb up on top of the others and begin to climb toward the top of the bucket, then, just as he's about to escape another crab grabs him and pulls him back down.
really? I asked.
really, he said, and this job is just like that, none of the others want anybody to get out of here. that's just the way it is in the postal service!
I believe you, I said.
just then the supervisor walked up and said, you fellows were talking. there is no talking allowed on this job.
I had been there for eleven and one-half years. I got up off my stool and climbed right up the supervisor and then I reached up and pulled myself right out of there.
it was so easy it was unbelievable. but none of the others followed me. and after that, whenever I had crab legs I thought about that place. I must have thought about that place maybe 5 or 6 times before I switched to lobster.
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Riots
I've watched this city burn twice In my lifetime And the most notable thing Was the arrival of the Politicians in the Aftermath Proclaiming the wrongs of The system And demanding new Policies toward and for the Poor
Nothing was corrected last Time
Nothing will be corrected this Time
The poor will remain poor
The unemployed will remain So
The homeless will remain Homeless
And the politicians Fat upon the land, will live Very well
_____
The Area of Pause
you have to have it or the walls will close in. you have to give everything up, throw it away, everything away. you have to look at what you look at or think what you think or do what you do or don't do without considering personal advantage without accepting guidance.
people are worn away with striving, they hide in common habits. their concerns are herd concerns. few have the ability to stare at an old shoe for ten minutes or to think of odd things like who invented the doorknob? they become unalive because they are unable to pause
undo themselves
unkink
unsee
unlearn
roll clear.
listen to their untrue laughter, then walk away.
_____
White Dog
I went for a walk on Hollywood Boulevard. I looked down and there was a large white dog walking beside me. his pace was exactly the same as mine, we stopped at traffic signals together. a woman smiled at us.
he must have walked 8 blocks with me. then I went into a grocery store and when I came out he was gone. or she was gone. the wonderful white dog with a trace of yellow in its fur. the large blue eyes were gone. the grinning mouth was gone. the lolling tongue was gone. things are so easily lost. things just can’t be kept forever.
I got the blues. I got the blues. that dog loved and trusted me and I let it walk away.
_____
Dinosauria, We
Born like this Into this
As the chalk faces smile
As Mrs. Death laughs
As the elevators break
As political landscapes dissolve
As the supermarket bag boy holds a college degree
As the oily fish spit out their oily prey
As the sun is masked
We are Born like this Into this
Into these carefully mad wars
Into the sight of broken factory windows of emptiness
Into bars where people no longer speak to each other
Into fist fights that end as shootings and knifings
Born into this
Into hospitals which are so expensive that it's cheaper to die
Into lawyers who charge so much it's cheaper to plead guilty
Into a country where the jails are full and the madhouses closed
Into a place where the masses elevate fools into rich heroes
Born into this
Walking and living through this
Dying because of this
Muted because of this
Castrated
Debauched
Disinherited
Because of this
Fooled by this
Used by this
Pissed on by this
Made crazy and sick by this
Made violent
Made inhuman By this
The heart is blackened
The fingers reach for the throat
The gun
The knife
The bomb
The fingers reach toward an unresponsive god
The fingers reach for the bottle
The pill
The powder
We are born into this sorrowful deadliness
We are born into a government 60 years in debt That soon will be unable to even pay the interest on that debt
And the banks will burn
Money will be useless
There will be open and unpunished murder in the streets
It will be guns and roving mobs
Land will be useless
Food will become a diminishing return
Nuclear power will be taken over by the many
Explosions will continually shake the earth
Radiated robot men will stalk each other
The rich and the chosen will watch from space platforms
Dante's Inferno will be made to look like a children's playground
The sun will not be seen and it will always be night
Trees will die
All vegetation will die
Radiated men will eat the flesh of radiated men
The sea will be poisoned
The lakes and rivers will vanish
Rain will be the new gold
The rotting bodies of men and animals will stink in the dark wind
The last few survivors will be overtaken by new and hideous diseases
And the space platforms will be destroyed by attrition
The petering out of supplies
The natural effect of general decay
And there will be the most beautiful silence never heard Born out of that. The sun still hidden there Awaiting the next chapter.
_____
Mind and Heart
unaccountably we are alone
forever alone
and it was meant to be that way, it was never meant to be any other way– and when the death struggle begins the last thing I wish to see is a ring of human faces hovering over me– better just my old friends, the walls of my self, let only them be there.
I have been alone but seldom lonely. I have satisfied my thirst at the well of my self and that wine was good, the best I ever had, and tonight sitting staring into the dark I now finally understand the dark and the light and everything in between.
peace of mind and heart arrives when we accept what is: having been born into this strange life we must accept the wasted gamble of our days and take some satisfaction in the pleasure of leaving it all behind.
cry not for me. grieve not for me. read what I’ve written then forget it all. drink from the well of your self and begin again.
_____
Crime Does Pay
the rooms at the hospital went for $550 a day. that was for the room alone. the amazing thing, though, was that in some of the rooms prisoners were lodged. I saw them chained to their beds, usually by an ankle.
$550 a day, plus meals, now that’s luxury living - plus first-rate medical attention and two guards on watch. and here I was with my cancer, walking down the halls in my robe thinking, if I live through this it will take me years to pay off the hospital while the prisoners won’t owe a damned thing.
not that I didn’t have some sympathy for those fellows but when you consider that when something like a bullet in one of your buttocks gets you all that free attention, medical and otherwise, plus no billing later from the hospital business office, maybe I had chosen the wrong occupation?
_____
The Wrong Way
Luxury ocean liners crossing the water full of the indolent and rich passing from this place to that with their hearts gone and their guts empty like Xmas turkeys
the great blue sky above wasted
all that water wasted
all those fingers, heads, toes, buttocks, eyes, ears, legs, feet asleep in the American Express Card staterooms.
it’s like a floating tomb going nowhere
these are the floating dead yet the dead are not ugly but the near-dead surely are
most surely are.
when do they laugh? What do they think about love? what are they doing midst all that water? And where do they seek to go?
_____
Advice for some young man in the year 2064 A.D.
let me speak as a friend although the centuries hang between us and neither you nor I can see the moon. be careful less the onion blind the eye or the snake sting or the beetle possess the house or the lover your wife or the government your child or the wine your will or the doctor your heart or the butcher your belly or the cat your chair or the lawyer your ignorance of law or the law dressed as a uniformed man and killing you.
dismiss perfection as an ache of the greedy but do not give in to the mass modesty of easy imperfection. and remember the belly of the whale is laden with great men.
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A Great Writer
a great writer remains in bed
shades down
doesn’t want to see anyone
doesn’t want to write anymore
doesn’t want to try anymore;
the editors and publishers wonder: some say he’s insane some say he’s dead:
his wife now answers all the mail: “…he does not wish to…”
and some others even walk up and down outside his house, look at the pulled-down shades; some even go up and ring the bell. nobody answers. the great writer does not want to be disturbed. perhaps the great writer is not in? perhaps the great writer has gone away? but they all want to know the truth, to hear his voice, to be told some good reason for it all.
if he has a reason he does not reveal it
perhaps there isn’t any reason?
strange and disturbing arrangements are made; his books and paintings are quietly auctioned off; no new work has appeared now for years. yet his public wont accept his silence- if he is dead they want to know; if he has a reason, please tell us! they walk past his house
write letters
ring the bell
they cannot understand and will not accept the way things are. I rather like it.
_____
Again
now the territory is taken, the sacrificial lambs have been slain, as history is scratched again on the sallow walls, as the bankers scurry to survive, as the young girls paint their hungry lips, as the dogs sleep in temporary peace, as the shadow gets ready to fall, as the oceans gobble the poisons of man, as heaven and hell dance in the anteroom,
it’s begin again and go again, it’s bake the apple, buy the car, mow the lawn, pay the tax, hang the toilet paper, clip the nails, listen to crickets, blow up the balloons, drink the orange juice, forget the past, pass the mustard, pull down the shades, take the pills, check the air in the tires, lace on the gloves, the bell is ringing, the pearl is in the oyster, the rain falls as the shadow gets ready to fall again.
_____
Upon reading an interview with a best-selling novelist in our metropolitan daily newspaper
he talks like he writes and he has a face like a dove, untouched by externals. a little shiver of horror runs through me as I read about his comfortable assured success.
“I am going to write an important novel next year,” he says.
next year? I skip some paragraphs But the interview goes on for two and one-half pages more. it's like milk spilled on a tablecloth, it’s as soothing as talcum powder, it’s the bones of an eaten fish, it’s a damp stain on a faded necktie, it’s a gathering hum.
this man is very fortunate that he is not standing in line at a soup kitchen. this man has no concept of failure because he is paid so well for it. I am lying on the bed, reading. I drop the paper to the floor. then I hear a sound. it is a small fly buzzing. I watch it flying, circling the room in an irregular pattern.
life at last.
_____
The Big One
he buys 5 cars a month, details them, waxes and buffs them out, then resells them at a profit of one or two grand.
he has a nice Jewish wife and he tells me that he bangs her until the walls shake.
he wears a red cap, squints in the light, has a regular job besides the car gig.
I have no idea of what he is trying to accomplish and maybe he doesn’t either.
he's a nicer fellow than most, always good to see him, we laugh, say a few bright lines. but each time after I see him I get the blues for him, for me, for all of us:
for want of something to do we keep slaying our small dragons as the big one waits.