Charles Bukowski

I’ve come by, she says, to tell you That this is it. I’m not kidding, it’s Over. this is it. I sit on the couch watching her arrange Her long red hair before my

when I look back now At the abuse I took from Her I feel shame that I was so Innocent, But I must say She did match me drink for Drink, And I realized

waiting for death Like a cat That will jump on the Bed I am so very sorry for My wife She will see this Stiff White Body Shake it once, then Maybe Again “Hank!”

drunk again at 3 a. m. at the end of my 2nd bottle Of wine, I have typed from a dozen to 15 pages of Poesy An old man Maddened for the flesh of

one of Lorca’s best lines Is, “agony, always Agony…” Think of this when you Kill a Cockroach or Pick up a razor to Shave Or awaken in the morning To Face the Sun.

ah, christ, what a CREW: More Poetry, always more P O E T R Y. If it doesn’t come, coax it out with a Laxative. get your name in LIGHTS, Get it up there

she’s young, she said, But look at me, I have pretty ankles, And look at my wrists, I have pretty Wrists O my god, I thought it was all working, And now it’s her

To give life you must take life, And as our grief falls flat and hollow Upon the billion-blooded sea I pass upon serious inward-breaking shoals rimmed With white-legged, white-bellied rotting creatures Lengthily dead and

self-congratulatory nonsense as the Famous gather to applaud their seeming Greatness You Wonder where The real ones are What Giant cave Hides them As The deathly talentless Bow to Accolades As The fools are

here I am in the ground my mouth open and I can’t even say mama, and The dogs run by and stop and piss On my stone; I get it all Except the sun

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

at their best, there is gentleness in Humanity. Some understanding and, at times, acts of Courage But all in all it is a mass, a glob that doesn’t Have too much. It is like

this time has finished me. I feel like the German troops Whipped by snow and the communists Walking bent With newspapers stuffed into Worn boots. My plight is just as terrible. Maybe more so.

I reached up into the top of the closet And took out a pair of blue panties And showed them to her and Asked “are these yours?” And she looked and said, “no, those

little dark girl with Kind eyes When it comes time to Use the knife I won’t flinch and I won’t blame You, As I drive along the shorealone As the palms wave, The ugly

when God created love he didn’t help most When God created dogs He didn’t help dogs When God created plants that was average When God created hate we had a standard utility When God

from my bed I watch 3 birds On a telephone Wire. One flies Off. Then Another. One is left, Then It too Is gone. My typewriter is Tombstone Still. And I am Reduced to

the night I was going to die I was sweating on the bed And I could hear the crickets And there was a cat fight outside And I could feel my soul dropping down

They are building a house Half a block down And I sit up here With the shades down Listening to the sounds, The hammers pounding in nails, Thack thack thack thack, And then I

I was shacked with a 24 year old girl from New York City for Two weeks – about The time of the garbage Strike out there, and One night my 34 year Old woman

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 girlfriend came in Built me a bed Scrubbed and waxed the kitchen floor Scrubbed the walls Vacuumed Cleaned the toilet The bathtub Scrubbed the bathroom floor And cut my toenails and My hair.

by God, I don’t know what to Do. They’re so nice to have around. They have a way of playing with The balls And looking at the cock very Seriously Turning it Tweeking it

Sunday, I am eating a Grapefruit, church is over at the Russian Orthadox to the West. She is dark Of Eastern descent, Large brown eyes look up from the Bible Then down. a small

we like to shower afterwards (I like the water hotter than she) And her face is always soft and peaceful And she’ll watch me first Spread the soap over my balls Lift the balls

don’t undress my love You might find a mannequin: Don’t undress the mannequin You might find My love. She’s long ago Forgotten me. She’s trying on a new Hat And looks more the Coquette

To end up alone In a tomb of a room Without cigarettes Or wine Just a lightbulb And a potbelly, Grayhaired, And glad to have The room. …in the morning They’re out there Making

there’s a bluebird in my heart that Wants to get out But I’m too tough for him, I say, stay in there, I’m not going To let anybody see You. There’s a bluebird in

I met a genius on the train Today About 6 years old, He sat beside me And as the train Ran down along the coast We came to the ocean And then he looked

what i liked about e. e. cummings Was that he cut away from The holiness of the Word And with charm And gamble Gave us lines That sliced through the Dung. How it was

I can’t have it And you can’t have it And we won’t Get it So don’t bet on it Or even think about It Just get out of bed Each morning Wash Shave Clothe

I pick up the skirt, I pick up the sparkling beads In black, This thing that moved once Around flesh, And I call God a liar, I say anything that moved Like that Or

out of the arm of one love And into the arms of another I have been saved from dying on the cross By a lady who smokes pot Writes songs and stories And is

you haven’t lived Until you’ve been in a Flophouse With nothing but one Light bulb And 56 men Squeezed together On cots With everybody Snoring At once And some of those Snores So Deep

having the low down blues and going Into a restraunt to eat. You sit at a table. The waitress smiles at you. She’s dumpy. her ass is too big. She radiates kindess and symphaty.

don’t feel sorry for me. I am a competent, Satisfied human being. Be sorry for the others Who Fidget Complain Who Constantly Rearrange their Lives Like Furniture. Juggling mates And Attitudes Their Confusion is

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

lonely as a dry and used orchard Spread over the earth For use and surrender. Shot down like an ex-pug selling Dailies on the corner. Taken by tears like An aging chorus girl Who

Making love in the sun, in the morning sun In a hotel room Above the alley Where poor men poke for bottles; Making love in the sun Making love by a carpet redder than

once We were young At this Machine. . . Drinking Smoking Typing It was a most Splendid Miraculous Time Still Is Only now Instead of Moving toward Time It Moves toward Us Makes each

she was hot, she was so hot I didn’t want anybody else to have her, And if I didn’t get home on time She’d be gone, and I couldn’t bear that- I’d go mad.

Cass was the youngest and most beautiful of 5 sisters. Cass was the most beautiful girl In town. 1/2 Indian with a supple and strange body, a snake-like and fiery body with eyes To

Long walks at night That’s what good for the soul: Peeking into windows Watching tired housewives Trying to fight off Their beer-maddened husbands.

the final curtain on one of the longest running Musicals ever, some people claim to have Seen it over one hundred times. I saw it on the tv news, that final curtain: Flowers, cheers,

it was on the 2nd floor on Coronado Street I used to get drunk And throw the radio through the window While it was playing, and, of course, It would break the glass in

George was lying in his trailer, flat on his back, watching a small portable T. V. His Dinner dishes were undone, his breakfast dishes were undone, he needed a shave, and ash From his

shot in the eye Shot in the brain Shot in the ass Shot like a flower in the dance Amazing how death wins hands down Amazing how much credence is given to idiot forms

I say to my woman, “Jeffers was A great poet. think of a title Like Be Angry At The Sun. don’t you Realize how great that is? “you like that negative stuff.” she Says

either peace or happiness, Let it enfold you When i was a young man I felt these things were Dumb, unsophisticated. I had bad blood, a twisted Mind, a pecarious Upbringing. I was hard

I see you drinking at a fountain with tiny Blue hands, no, your hands are not tiny They are small, and the fountain is in France Where you wrote me that last letter and

I was fairly drunk when it Began and I took out my bottle and used it Along the way. I was reading a week or two after Kandel and I did not look quite

first time my father overheard me listening to This bit of music he asked me, “what is it?” “it’s called Love For Three Oranges,” I informed him. “boy,” he said, “that’s getting it Cheap.”

drunk on the dark streets of some city, It’s night, you’re lost, where’s your Room? You enter a bar to find yourself, Order scotch and water. Damned bar’s sloppy wet, it soaks Part of

they talk down through The centuries to us, And this we need more and more, The statues and paintings In midnight age As we go along Holding dead hands. And we would say Rather

some say we should keep personal remorse from the Poem, Stay abstract, and there is some reason in this, But jezus; Twelve poems gone and I don’t keep carbons and you have My Paintings

if I suffer at this Typewriter Think how I’d feel Among the lettuce- Pickers of Salinas? I think of the men I’ve known in Factories With no way to Get out- Choking while living

each man must realize That it can all disappear very Quickly: The cat, the woman, the job, The front tire, The bed, the walls, the Room; all our necessities Including love, Rest on foundations

you may not believe it But there are people Who go through life with Very little Friction or Distress. They dress well, eat Well, sleep well. They are contented with Their family Life. They

we have everything and we have nothing And some men do it in churches And some men do it by tearing butterflies In half And some men do it in Palm Springs Laying it