Home ⇒ 📌Charles Bukowski ⇒ Luck
Luck
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 word
Drill
Into the
Paper
Clear
Fast
Hard
Feeding a
Closing
Space.
(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)
Related poetry:
- The Ballad Of Hard-Luck Henry Now wouldn’t you expect to find a man an awful crank That’s staked out nigh three hundred claims, and every one a blank; That’s followed every fool stampede, and seen the rise and fall Of camps where men got gold in chunks and he got none at all; That’s prospected a bit of ground and […]...
- Hard Luck Ain’t no use as I can see In sittin’ underneath a tree An’ growlin’ that your luck is bad, An’ that your life is extry sad; Your life ain’t sadder than your neighbor’s Nor any harder are your labors; It rains on him the same as you, An’ he has work he hates to do; […]...
- Hard Luck I left the course, and by my side There walked a ruined tout A hungry creature, evil-eyed, Who poured this story out. “You see,” he said, “there came a swell To Kensington today, And, if I picked the winners well, A crown at least he’s pay. “I picked three winners straight, I did; I filled […]...
- THE COMING OF GOOD LUCK So Good-Luck came, and on my roof did light, Like noiseless snow, or as the dew of night; Not all at once, but gently, as the trees Are by the sun-beams, tickled by degrees....
- Try To Remember Some Details Try to remember some details. Remember the clothing Of the one you love So that on the day of loss you’ll be able to say: last seen Wearing such-and-such, brown jacket, white hat. Try to remember some details. For they have no face And their soul is hidden and their crying Is the same as […]...
- A Scrap of Paper “Will you go to war just for a scrap of paper?” Question Of the German Chancellor to the British Ambassador, August 5, 1914. A mocking question! Britain’s answer came Swift as the light and searching as the flame. “Yes, for a scrap of paper we will fight Till our last breath, and God defend the […]...
- It's Ours there is always that space there Just before they get to us That space That fine relaxer The breather While say Flopping on a bed Thinking of nothing Or say Pouring a glass of water from the Spigot While entranced by Nothing That Gentle pure Space It’s worth Centuries of Existence Say Just to scratch […]...
- 16-bit Intel 8088 chip with an Apple Macintosh You can’t run Radio Shack programs In its disc drive. Nor can a Commodore 64 Drive read a file You have created on an IBM Personal Computer. Both Kaypro and Osborne computers use The CP/M operating system But can’t read each other’s Handwriting For they format (write On) discs in different […]...
- The Owners Of The Little Box Line the inside of the little box With your precious skin And make yourself cozy Just as you would in your own home Make space voyages inside her Gather stars make time squirt its milk And sleep in the clouds Just don’t go around pretending You’re more important than her length And wiser than her […]...
- Sonnet 28 – My letters! all dead paper, mute and white! My letters! all dead paper, mute and white! And yet they seem alive and quivering Against my tremulous hands which loose the string And let them drop down on my knee to-night. This said,-he wished to have me in his sight Once, as a friend: this fixed a day in spring To come and touch […]...
- The Sky is an Immortal Tent Built by the Sons of Los (from The sky is an immortal tent built by the Sons of Los: And every space that a man views around his dwelling-place Standing on his own roof or in his garden on a mount Of twenty-five cubits in height, such space is his universe: And on its verge the sun rises and sets, the clouds […]...
- At Cheyenne Young Lochinvar came in from the West, With fringe on his trousers and fur on his vest; The width of his hat-brim could nowhere be beat, His No. Brogans were chuck full of feet, His girdle was horrent with pistols and things, And he flourished a handful of aces on kings. The fair Mariana sate […]...
- The Road That Runs Beside The River follows the river as it bends Along the valley floor, Going the way it must. Where water goes, so goes the road, If there’s room (not in a ravine, Gorge), the river On your right or left. Left is better: when you’re driving, It’s over your elbow across The road. You see the current, which […]...
- CAT-PIE WHILE he is mark’d by vision clear Who fathoms Nature’s treasures, The man may follow, void of fear, Who her proportions measures. Though for one mortal, it is true, These trades may both be fitted, Yet, that the things themselves are two Must always be admitted. Once on a time there lived a cook Whose […]...
- The Masked Face I found me in a great surging space, At either end a door, And I said: “What is this giddying place, With no firm-fixéd floor, That I knew not of before?” “It is Life,” said a mask-clad face. I asked: “But how do I come here, Who never wished to come; Can the light and […]...
- With Penne, Inke, And Paper To A Distressed Friend Here is paper, pen, and inke, That your heart and seale may sinke Into such markes as may expresse A Soule much blest in heavinesse. May your paper seeme as fayre As yourselfe when you appeare: May the Letters which you write Looke like black eye-lids on white. May your penne such fancies bring As […]...
- Unlyric Love Song It is time to give that-of-myself which I could not at first: To offer you now at last my least and my worst: Minor, absurd preserves, The shell’s end-curves, A document kept at the back of a drawer, A tin hidden under the floor, Recalcitrant prides and hesitations: To pile them carefully in a desparate […]...
- What Birds Plunge Through Is Not The Intimate Space What birds plunge through is not the intimate space, In which you see all Forms intensified. (In the Open, denied, you would lose yourself, Would disappear into that vastness.) Space reaches from us and translates Things: To become the very essence of a tree, Throw inner space around it, from that space That lives in […]...
- Affinity YOU and I have found the secret way, None can bar our love or say us nay: All the world may stare and never know You and I are twined together so. You and I for all his vaunted width Know the giant Space is but a myth; Over miles and miles of pure deceit […]...
- Epitaph for Maria Wentworth And here the precious dust is laid; Whose purely-temper’d clay was made So fine that it the guest betray’d. Else the soul grew so fast within, It broke the outward shell of sin, And so was hatch’d a cherubin. In height, it soar’d to God above; In depth, it did to knowledge move, And spread […]...
- The Bombay Train Song He hangs on dangling handholds As the train sways and careens Endless nondescript buildings unfold Their secrets as the tired warrior returns. The day is over the night falls Thickly through the barricaded windows The man’s sleepy head lolls On his shoulder in a dream disturbed. The days are a hard white collar brawl The […]...
- Ninon De Lenclos, On Her Last Birthday So let me have the rouge again, And comb my hair the curly way. The poor young men, the dear young men They’ll all be here by noon today. And I shall wear the blue, I think- They beg to touch its rippled lace; Or do they love me best in pink, So sweetly flattering […]...
- The Red Blaze is the Morning The Red Blaze is the Morning The Violet is Noon The Yellow Day is falling And after that is none But Miles of Sparks at Evening Reveal the Width that burned The Territory Argent that Never yet consumed...
- At leisure is the Soul At leisure is the Soul That gets a Staggering Blow The Width of Life before it spreads Without a thing to do It begs you give it Work But just the placing Pins Or humblest Patchwork Children do To Help its Vacant Hands...
- January 31 (The sky is crumbling…) The sky is crumbling into millions of paper dots The wind blows in my face So I duck into my favorite barber shop And listen to Vivaldi and look in the mirror Reflecting the shopfront windows, Broadway And 104th, and watch the dots blown by the wind Blow into the faces of the walkers outside […]...
- See they come, post haste from Thanet See they come, post haste from Thanet, Lovely couple, side by side; They’ve left behind them Richard Kennet With the Parents of the Bride! Canterbury they have passed through; Next succeeded Stamford-bridge; Chilham village they came fast through; Now they’ve mounted yonder ridge. Down the hill they’re swift proceeding, Now they skirt the Park around; […]...
- Dream Song 102: The sunburnt terraces which swans make home The sunburnt terraces which swans make home With water purling, Macchu Pichu died Like Delphi long ago— A message to Justinian closing it out, The thousand years’ authority, although Tho’ never found exactly wrong Political patterns did indeed emerge; The Oracle was conservative, like Lippmann, Roared the winds on the height, The Shining Ones behind […]...
- How many schemes may die How many schemes may die In one short Afternoon Entirely unknown To those they most concern The man that was not lost Because by accident He varied by a Ribbon’s width From his accustomed route The Love that would not try Because beside the Door It must be competitions Some unsuspecting Horse was tied Surveying […]...
- Christopher Found I. At last; so this is you, my dear! How should I guess to find you here? So long, so long, I sought in vain In many cities, many lands, With straining eyes and groping hands; The people marvelled at my pain. They said: “But sure, the woman’s mad; What ails her, we should like […]...
- I Remember Galileo I remember Galileo describing the mind As a piece of paper blown around by the wind, And I loved the sight of it sticking to a tree, Or jumping into the backseat of a car, And for years I watched paper leap through my cities; But yesterday I saw the mind was a squirrel caught […]...
- Historion No man hath dared to write this thing as yet, And yet I know, how that the souls of all men great At times pass athrough us, And we are melted into them, and are not Save reflexions of their souls. Thus am I Dante for a space and am One Francois Villon, ballad-lord and […]...
- Somewhere upon the general Earth Somewhere upon the general Earth Itself exist Today The Magic passive but extant That consecrated me Indifferent Seasons doubtless play Where I for right to be Would pay each Atom that I am But Immortality Reserving that but just to prove Another Date of Thee Oh God of Width, do not for us Curtail Eternity!...
- May 24, 1980 I have braved, for want of wild beasts, steel cages, Carved my term and nickname on bunks and rafters, Lived by the sea, flashed aces in an oasis, Dined with the-devil-knows-whom, in tails, on truffles. From the height of a glacier I beheld half a world, the earthly width. Twice have drowned, thrice let knives […]...
- Some time Last night, my darling, as you slept, I thought I heard you sigh, And to your little crib I crept, And watched a space thereby; And then I stooped and kissed your brow, For oh! I love you so You are too young to know it now, But some time you shall know! Some time […]...
- Paper Boats Day by day I float my paper boats one by one down the running Stream. In bid black letters I write my name on them and the name of The village where I live. I hope that someone in some strange land will find them and Know who I am. I load my little boats […]...
- No Man can compass a Despair No Man can compass a Despair As round a Goalless Road No faster than a Mile at once The Traveller proceed Unconscious of the Width Unconscious that the Sun Be setting on His progress So accurate the One At estimating Pain Whose own has just begun His ignorance the Angel That pilot Him along...
- The Sonnets To Orpheus: Book 2: I Breathing: you invisible poem! Complete Interchange of our own Essence with world-space. You counterweight In which I rythmically happen. Single wave-motion whose Gradual sea I am: You, most inclusive of all our possible seas- Space has grown warm. How many regions in space have already been Inside me. There are winds that seem like My […]...
- The Man Who Could Write Boanerges Blitzen, servant of the Queen, Is a dismal failure is a Might-have-been. In a luckless moment he discovered men Rise to high position through a ready pen. Boanerges Blitzen argued therefore “I, With the selfsame weapon, can attain as high.” Only he did not possess when he made the trial, Wicked wit of C-lv-n, […]...
- Know You The River NEar To Grez KNOW you the river near to Grez, A river deep and clear? Among the lilies all the way, That ancient river runs to-day From snowy weir to weir. Old as the Rhine of great renown, She hurries clear and fast, She runs amain by field and town From south to north, from up to down, […]...
- The Sleeper As Ann came in one summer’s day, She felt that she must creep, So silent was the clear cool house, It seemed a house of sleep. And sure, when she pushed open the door, Rapt in the stillness there, Her mother sat, with stooping head, Asleep upon a chair; Fast fast asleep; her two hands […]...