no help for that

 

.

there is a place in the heart that
will never be filled
a space
and even during the
best moments
and
the greatest
times
we will know it
we will know it
more than
ever
there is a place in the heart that
will never be filled
and
we will wait
and
wait
in that
space.

—Charles Bukowski 

.

considering ...

 

.

 

We’re all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn’t. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities, we are eaten up by nothing.
 

—Charles Bukowski

.

you are marvelous

 

 




 .
 

your life is your life

don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.

be on the watch.

there are ways out.

there is a light somewhere.
it may not be much light but
it beats the darkness.

be on the watch.

the gods will offer you chances.
know them.
take them.

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.

your life is your life.
know it while you have it.

you are marvelous.

the gods wait to delight

in you.


—Charles Bukowski
the laughing heart

.

a 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

.

confession

.

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!"
Hank won't
answer.

it's not my death that
worries me, it's my wife
left with this
pile of
nothing.

I want to
let her know
though
that all the nights
sleeping
beside her
even the useless
arguments
were things
ever splendid

and the hard
words
I ever feared to
say
can now be
said:

I love
you.


—Charles Bukowski
confession

. . .

now, listen, when I die I don't want any crying, just get the
disposal under way, I've had a full some life, and
if anybody has had an edge, I've
had it, I've lived 7 or 8 lives in one, enough for
anybody.
we are all, finally, the same, so no speeches, please,
unless you want to say he played the horses and was very
good at that. 

you're next and I already know something you don't,
maybe.


—Charles Bukowski

forget it

.

you are marvelous

.

your life is your life
don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.
 

be on the watch.
there are ways out.
 

there is a light somewhere.
it may not be much light but
it beats the darkness.
 

be on the watch.
the gods will offer you chances.
know them.
take them.
 

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.
your life is your life.
 

know it while you have it.
 

you are marvelous
 

the gods wait to delight
in you.

–Charles Bukowski

read by Tom Waits

.

splash

.

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.

–Charles Bukowski

 

.

forget it

.

forget it

now, listen, when I die I don't want any crying, just get the
disposal under way, I've had a full some life, and
if anybody has had an edge, I've
had it, I've lived 7 or 8 lives in one, enough for
anybody.
we are all, finally, the same, so no speeches, please,
unless you want to say he played the horses and was very

good at that. you're next and I already know something you don't,
maybe.



confession


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!"
Hank won't
answer.

it's not my death that
worries me, it's my wife
left with this
pile of
nothing.

I want to
let her know
though
that all the nights
sleeping
beside her
even the useless
arguments
were things
ever splendid

and the hard
words
I ever feared to
say
can now be
said:

I love
you.


–Charles Bukowski

.

if i never see you again

.

if i never see you again

i will always carry you

inside

outside

on my fingertips

and at brain edges

and in centers

centers

of what i am of

what remains

–Charles Bukowski

.

For Jane: With All the Love I Had, Which Was Not Enough:

 .

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 knew
my name
could never die
in the common verity of dying,
and I pick
up her lovely
dress,
all her loveliness gone,
and I speak to all the gods,
Jewish gods, Christ-gods,
chips of blinking things,
idols, pills, bread,
fathoms, risks,
knowledgeable surrender,
rats in the gravy of two gone quite mad
without a chance,
hummingbird knowledge, hummingbird chance,
I lean upon this,
I lean on all of this
and I know
her dress upon my arm
but
they will not
give her back to me.


–Charles Bukowski

.

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

.