It's Bukowski's birthday today

[Angeline]

Read him. Seriously!

some people tell me that I'm
famous.

what am I doing alone
drunk and writing poems at
3:18 a.m.?

I'm as crazy as I ever was
they don't understand
that I haven't stopped hanging out of 4th floor
windows by my heels-
I still do
right now
sitting here

That's from Love is a Dog From Hell. eagleyez says it's "bleak," and it is but wow, you see? Just wow.

NIGHT SCHOOL
from Dangling In the Tournefortia

in the drunk driver's class
assigned there by division 63
we are given tiny yellow pencils
to take a test
to see if we have been listening
to the instructor.
questions like: the minimum sentence for a
2nd drunk driving conviction is:
a) 48 days
b) 6 months
c) 90 days
there are 9 others questions.
after the instructor leaves the room
the students begin asking the questions:
"hey, how about question 5? that's a
tough one!"
"did he talk about that?"
"I think its 48 days."
"are you sure?"
"no, but that's what I'm putting
down."
one women circles all 3 answers
on all questions
even though we've been told to
select only one.

on our break I go down and
drink a can of beer
outside a liquor store.
I watch a black hooker
on her evening stroll.
a car pulls up.
she walks over and they
talk.
the door opens.
she gets in and
they drive off.

back in class
the students have gotten
to know each other.
they are a not-very-interesting
bunch of drunks.
I visualize them sitting in a
bar
and i remember why
I started drinking
alone.

the class begins again.
it is discovered that I am
the only one to have gotten
100 percent on the test.

I slouch back in my chair
with my dark shades on.
I am the class
intellectual.

 

[jmarx20102012]

Thanks for that. A huge fan of his novels. Maybe I will go re-read some Ham On Rye.

 

[tekgirl]

Post Office. Great collection.

 

[ILmonamour]

Angeline....THANK YOU FOR THIS

I love everything he wrote and took a whole class about him at university. It's a shame whenever you meet someone who has no clue of his offerings.

 

[Angeline]

Glad you folks like the thread: please post any of his writing here that you like. Or write a poem about him if the mood strikes. He is far from my favorite poet, too depressing for me to want ro read his poems over and over. And yet when I do read him it's a big reality check. He is so honest.

Consummation Of Grief
Charles Bukowski

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.