Home ⇒ 📌Charles Bukowski ⇒ On Going Back To The Street After Viewing An Art Show
On Going Back To The Street After Viewing An Art Show
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 than delude the knowing:
A damn good show,
But hardly enough for a horse to eat,
And out on the sunshine street where
Eyes are dabbled in metazoan faces
I decide again
That in theses centuries
They have done very well
Considering the nature of their
Brothers:
It’s more than good
That some of them,
(closer really to the field-mouse than
Falcon)
Have been bold enough to try.
(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)
Related poetry:
- Halsted Street Car COME you, cartoonists, Hang on a strap with me here At seven o’clock in the morning On a Halsted street car. Take your pencils And draw these faces. Try with your pencils for these crooked faces, That pig-sticker in one corner his mouth That overall factory girl her loose cheeks. Find for your pencils A […]...
- Good-Children Street There’s a dear little home in Good-Children street – My heart turneth fondly to-day Where tinkle of tongues and patter of feet Make sweetest of music at play; Where the sunshine of love illumines each face And warms every heart in that old-fashioned place. For dear little children go romping about With dollies and tin […]...
- Faces In The Street They lie, the men who tell us for reasons of their own That want is here a stranger, and that misery’s unknown; For where the nearest suburb and the city proper meet My window-sill is level with the faces in the street Drifting past, drifting past, To the beat of weary feet While I sorrow […]...
- In the Street Where the needle-woman toils Through the night with hand and brain, Till the sickly daylight shudders like a spectre at the pain – Till her eyes seem to crawl, And her brain seems to creep – And her limbs are all a-tremble for the want of rest and sleep! It is there the fire-brand blazes […]...
- Main Street (For S. M. L.) I like to look at the blossomy track of the moon upon the sea, But it isn’t half so fine a sight as Main Street used to be When it all was covered over with a couple of feet of snow, And over the crisp and radiant road the ringing sleighs […]...
- Straw in the Street Straw in the street where I pass to-day Dulls the sound of the wheels and feet. ‘Tis for a failing life they lay Straw in the street. Here, where the pulses of London beat, Someone strives with the Presence grey; Ah, is it victory or defeat? The hurrying people go their way, Pause and jostle […]...
- On Rabbi Kook's Street On Rabbi Kook’s Street I walk without this good man A streiml he wore for prayer A silk top hat he wore to govern, Fly in the wind of the dead Above me, float on the water Of my dreams. I come to the Street of Prophets there are none. And the Street of Ethiopians […]...
- 45 Mercy Street In my dream, Drilling into the marrow Of my entire bone, My real dream, I’m walking up and down Beacon Hill Searching for a street sign Namely MERCY STREET. Not there. I try the Back Bay. Not there. Not there. And yet I know the number. 45 Mercy Street. I know the stained-glass window Of […]...
- Street Cries WHEN dawn’s first cymbals beat upon the sky, Rousing the world to labour’s various cry, To tend the flock, to bind the mellowing grain, From ardent toil to forge a little gain, And fasting men go forth on hurrying feet, Buy bread, buy bread, rings down the eager street. When the earth falters and the […]...
- Picture-Show And still they come and go: and this is all I know – That from the gloom I watch an endless picture-show, Where wild or listless faces flicker on their way, With glad or grievous hearts I’ll never understand Because Time spins so fast, and they’ve no time to stay Beyond the moment’s gesture of […]...
- Afternoon Rain in State Street Cross-hatchings of rain against grey walls, Slant lines of black rain In front of the up and down, wet stone sides of buildings. Below, Greasy, shiny, black, horizontal, The street. And over it, umbrellas, Black polished dots Struck to white An instant, Stream in two flat lines Slipping past each other with the smoothness of […]...
- MacDougal Street AS I went walking up and down to take the evening air, (Sweet to meet upon the street, why must I be so shy?) I saw him lay his hand upon her torn black hair; (“Little dirty Latin child, let the lady by!”) The women squatting on the stoops were slovenly and fat, (Lay me […]...
- Rain After a Vaudeville Show The last pose flickered, failed. The screen’s dead white Glared in a sudden flooding of harsh light Stabbing the eyes; and as I stumbled out The curtain rose. A fat girl with a pout And legs like hams, began to sing “His Mother”. Gusts of bad air rose in a choking smother; Smoke, the wet […]...
- Parable I read how Quixote in his random ride Came to a crossing once, and lest he lose The purity of chance, would not decide Whither to fare, but wished his horse to choose. For glory lay wherever turned the fable. His head was light with pride, his horse’s shoes Were heavy, and he headed for […]...
- The Wizard in the Street [Concerning Edgar Allan Poe] Who now will praise the Wizard in the street With loyal songs, with humors grave and sweet – This Jingle-man, of strolling players born, Whom holy folk have hurried by in scorn, This threadbare jester, neither wise nor good, With melancholy bells upon his hood? The hurrying great ones scorn his […]...
- The Street Sounds to the Soldiers' Tread The street sounds to the soldiers’ tread, And out we troop to see: A single redcoat turns his head, He turns and looks at me. My man, from sky to sky’s so far, We never crossed before; Such leagues apart the world’s ends are, We’re like to meet no more; What thoughts at heart have […]...
- Glass was the Street in tinsel Peril Glass was the Street in tinsel Peril Tree and Traveller stood Filled was the Air with merry venture Hearty with Boys the Road Shot the lithe Sleds like shod vibrations Emphasized and gone It is the Past’s supreme italic Makes this Present mean...
- Harrison Street Court I heard a woman’s lips Speaking to a companion Say these words: “A woman what hustles Never keeps nothin’ For all her hustlin’. Somebody always gets What she goes on the street for. If it ain’t a pimp It’s a bull what gets it. I been hustlin’ now Till I ain’t much good any more. […]...
- A Door just opened on a street A Door just opened on a street I lost was passing by An instant’s Width of Warmth disclosed And Wealth and Company. The Door as instant shut And I I lost was passing by Lost doubly but by contrast most Informing misery...
- Loving In Truth, And Fain In Verse My Love To Show Loving in truth, and fain in verse my love to show, That She, dear She, might take some pleasure of my pain, -Pleasure might cause her read, reading might make her know, Knowledge might pity win, and pity grace obtain – I sought fit words to paint the blackest face of woe, Studying inventions fine, […]...
- The Drunkards in the Street The Drunkards in the street are calling one another, Heeding not the night-wind, great of heart and gay, – Publicans and wantons – Calling, laughing, calling, While the Spirit bloweth Space and Time away. Why should I feel the sobbing, the secrecy, the glory, This comforter, this fitful wind divine? I the cautious Pharisee, the […]...
- Show Biz 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 Yourself And go out into It Because Outside of that All that’s left is Suicide and Madness So you just Can’t […]...
- Devonshire Street W.1 The heavy mahogany door with its wrought-iron screen Shuts. And the sound is rich, sympathetic, discreet. The sun still shines on this eighteenth-century scene With Edwardian faience adornment Devonshire Street. No hope. And the X-ray photographs under his arm Confirm the message. His wife stands timidly by. The opposite brick-built house looks lofty and calm […]...
- The Onondaga Madonna She stands full-throated and with careless pose, This woman of a weird and waning race, The tragic savage lurking in her face, Where all her pagan passion burns and glows; Her blood is mingled with her ancient foes, And thrills with war and wildness in her veins; Her rebel lips are dabbled with the stains […]...
- Memories of West Street and Lepke Only teaching on Tuesdays, book-worming In pajamas fresh from the washer each morning, I hog a whole house on Boston’s “hardly passionate Marlborough Street,” Where even the man Scavenging filth in the back alley trash cans, Has two children, a beach wagon, a helpmate, And is “a young Republican.” I have a nine months’ daughter, […]...
- Bless 'em beggars, buskers, street vendors bless ’em beggars, buskers, street vendors Breastfeeding mothers, fathers weather- Beaten, misplaced babies, outofschoolboys&girls Enduring with furious fidelity Everyday musk of japanese/german carfumery Bless ’em by-products of national antigress Fretful souls on the brims of sanity&civility However they might have depreciated thin Our soles of mercy Each with a pair of nike shoes, before we […]...
- A Catalpa Tree On West Twelfth Street While the sun stops, or Seems to, to define a term For the indeterminable, The human aspect, here In the West Village, spindles To a mutilated dazzle- Niched shards of solitude Embedded in these brownstone Walkups such that the Hudson At the foot of Twelfth Street Might be a thing that’s Done with mirrors: definition […]...
- Exhortation: Summer 1919 Through the pregnant universe rumbles life’s terrific thunder, And Earth’s bowels quake with terror; strange and terrible storms break, Lightning-torches flame the heavens, kindling souls of men, thereunder: Africa! long ages sleeping, O my motherland, awake! In the East the clouds glow crimson with the new dawn that is breaking, And its golden glory fills […]...
- Boot And Saddle Boot, saddle, to horse, and away! Rescue my Castle, before the hot day Brightens the blue from its silvery grey, (Chorus) “Boot, saddle, to horse, and away!” Ride past the suburbs, asleep as you’d say; Many’s the friend there, will listen and pray “God’s luck to gallants that strike up the lay, (Chorus) “Boot, saddle, […]...
- Cavalier Tunes: Boot and Saddle Boot, saddle, to horse and away! Rescue my Castle, before the hot day Brightens to blue from its silvery gray, (Chorus) Boot, saddle, to horse, and away! Ride past the suburbs, asleep as you’d say; Many’s the friend there, will listen and pray “God’s luck to gallants that strike up the lay (Chorus) Boot, saddle, […]...
- Street Cries Oft seems the Time a market-town Where many merchant-spirits meet Who up and down and up and down Cry out along the street Their needs, as wares; one THUS, one SO: Till all the ways are full of sound: But still come rain, and sun, and snow, And still the world goes round. I. Remonstrance. […]...
- The Show My soul looked down from a vague height with Death, As unremembering how I rose or why, And saw a sad land, weak with sweats of dearth, Gray, cratered like the moon with hollow woe, And fitted with great pocks and scabs of plaques. Across its beard, that horror of harsh wire, There moved thin […]...
- Good Hours I had for my winter evening walk No one at all with whom to talk, But I had the cottages in a row Up to their shining eyes in snow. And I thought I had the folk within: I had the sound of a violin; I had a glimpse through curtain laces Of youthful forms […]...
- Buffalo Bill BOY heart of Johnny Jones-aching to-day? Aching, and Buffalo Bill in town? Buffalo Bill and ponies, cowboys, Indians? Some of us know All about it, Johnny Jones. Buffalo Bill is a slanting look of the eyes, A slanting look under a hat on a horse. He sits on a horse and a passing look is […]...
- The Love a Life can show Below The Love a Life can show Below Is but a filament, I know, Of that diviner thing That faints upon the face of Noon And smites the Tinder in the Sun And hinders Gabriel’s Wing ‘Tis this in Music hints and sways And far abroad on Summer days Distils uncertain pain ‘Tis this enamors in […]...
- You Mustn't Show Weakness You mustn’t show weakness And you’ve got to have a tan. But sometimes I feel like the thin veils Of Jewish women who faint At weddings and on Yom Kippur. You mustn’t show weakness And you’ve got to make a list Of all the things you can load In a baby carriage without a baby. […]...
- Some one prepared this mighty show Some one prepared this mighty show To which without a Ticket go The nations and the Days Displayed before the simplest Door That all may witness it and more, The pomp of summer Days....
- Come show thy Durham Breast Come show thy Durham Breast To her who loves thee best, Delicious Robin And if it be not me At least within my Tree Do the avowing Thy Nuptial so minute Perhaps is more astute Than vaster suing For so to soar away Is our propensity The Day ensuing...
- Wert Thou but ill that I might show thee Wert Thou but ill that I might show thee How long a Day I could endure Though thine attention stop not on me Nor the least signal, Me assure Wert Thou but Stranger in ungracious country And Mine the Door Thou paused at, for a passing bounty No More Accused wert Thou and Myself Tribunal […]...
- Sonnet 77: Thy glass will show thee how thy beauties wear Thy glass will show thee how thy beauties wear, Thy dial how thy precious minutes waste; These vacant leaves thy mind’s imprint will bear, And of this book, this learning mayst thou taste. The wrinkles which thy glass will truly show Of mouthèd graves will give thee memory, Thou by thy dial’s shady stealth mayst […]...