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Christmas Poem To A Man In Jail Hello Bill Abbott: I Appreciate Your Passing Around My Books In Jail There, My Poems And Stories. If I Can Lighten The Load For Some Of Those Guys With My Books, Fine. But Literature, You Know, Is Difficult For The Average Man To Assimilate (and For The Unaverage Man Too); I Don't Like Most Poetry, For Example, So I Write Mine The Way I Like To Read It.

-Charles Bukowski

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Christmas Poem To A

Charles Bukowski

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Christmas Poem To A Man In Jail Hello Bill Abbott: I Appreciate Your Passing Around My Books In Jail There, My Poems And Stories. If I Can Lighten The Load For Some Of Those Guys With My Books, Fine. But Literature, You Know, Is Difficult For The Average Man To Assimilate (and For The Unaverage Man Too); I Don't Like Most Poetry, For Example, So I Write Mine The Way I Like To Read It.

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A Spark Can Set A Whole Forest On Fire. Just A Spark. Save It.

Your Letters Got Sadder. Your Lovers Betrayed You. Kid, I Wrote Back, All Lovers Betray. It Didn't Help. You Said You Had A Crying Bench And It Was By A Bridge And The Bridge Was Over The River And You Sat On The Crying Bench Every Night And Wept For The Lovers Who Had Hurt And Forgotten You.

People Were Interesting At First. Then Later, Slowly But Surely, All The Flaws And Madness Would Manifest Themselves. I Would Become Less And Less To Them; They Would Mean Less And Less To Me.

The Trouble With A Mask Is It Never Changes

The Problem Was You Had To Keep Choosing Between One Evil Or Another, And No Matter What You Chose, They Sliced A Little Bit More Off You, Until There Was Nothing Left.

I Carry Death In My Left Pocket. Sometimes I Take It Out And Talk To It: "hello, Baby, How You Doing? When You Coming For Me? I'll Be Ready.

I Went To The Worst Of Bars Hoping To Get Killed But All I Could Do Was To Get Drunk Again.

Cautiously, I Allowed Myself To Feel Good At Times. I Found Moments Of Peace In Cheap Rooms Just Staring At The Knobs Of Some Dresser Or Listening To The Rain In The Dark. The Less I Needed The Better I Felt.

I Got Up And Walked Back To My Roominghouse. The Moonlight Was Bright. My Footsteps Echoed In The Empty Street And It Sounded As If Somebody Was Following Me, I Looked Around. I Was Mistaken. I Was Quite Alone.

I Will Remember The Kisses, Our Lips Raw With Love, And How You Gave Me Everything You Had And How I Offered You What Was Left Of Me.

You Have My Soul And I Have Your Money

There Will Always Be Something To Ruin Our Lives, It All Depends On What Or Which Finds Us First. We Are Always Ripe And Ready To Be Taken.

You Boys Can Keep Your Virgins Give Me Hot Old Women In High Heels With Asses That Forgot To Get Old.

I Think That Everything Should Be Made Available To Everybody, And I Mean Lsd, Cocaine, Codeine, Grass, Opium, The Works. Nothing On Earth Available To Any Man Should Be Confiscated And Made Unlawful By Other Men In More Seemingly Powerful And Advantageous Positions.

Dear Child, I Only Did To You What The Sparrow Did To You; I Am Old When It Is Fashionable To Be Young; I Cry When It Is Fashionable To Laugh. I Hated You When It Would Have Taken Less Courage To Love.

I Am A Dolt Of A Man, Easily Made Happy Or Even Stupidly Happy Almost Without Cause And Left Alone I Am Mostly Content.

It Was Better For Me When I Could Imagine Greatness In Others, Even If It Wasn't Always There.

My Heart Is A Thousand Years Old. I Am Not Like Other People.

There's A Bluebird In My Heart That Wants To Get Out But I Pour Whiskey On Him And Inhale Cigarette Smoke And The Whores And The Bartenders And The Grocery Clerks Never Know That He's In There.

Cigarette Smoke

To Be Young Is The Only Religion.

I Have Two Rules. One Is, Never Trust A Man Who Smokes A Pipe. The Other Is, Never Trust A Man With Shiny Shoes.

When You Drank The World Was Still Out There, But For The Moment It Didn’t Have You By The Throat.

..few Writers Like Other Writers' Works. The Only Time They Like Them Is When They Are Dead Or If They Have Been For A Long Time. Writers Only Like To Sniff Their Own Turds. I Am One Of Those. I Don't Even Like To Talk To Writers, Look At Them Or Worse, Listen To Them. And The Worst Is To Drink With Them, They Slobber All Over Themselves, Really Look Piteous, Look Like They Are Searching For The Wing Of The Mother. I'd Rather Think About Death Than About Other Writers. Far More Pleasant.

Don't Wait For The Good Woman. She Doesn't Exist. There Are Women Who Can Make You Feel More With Their Bodies And Their Souls But These Are The Exact Women Who Will Turn The Knife Into You Right In Front Of The Crowd.

I Enjoy The Bad Things That Are Said About Me. It Enhances Sales And Makes Me Feel Evil. I Don't Like To Feel Good 'cause I Am Good. But Evil? Yes. It Gives Me Another Dimension.

Early Evening Traffic Was Beginning To Clog The Avenue With Cars. The Sun Slanted Down Behind Him. Harry Glanced At The Drivers Of The Cars. They Seemed Unhappy. The World Was Unhappy. People Were In The Dark. People Were Terrified And Disappointed. People Were Caught In Traps. People Were Defensive And Frantic. They Felt As If Their Lives Were Being Wasted. And They Were Right.

The Masses Are Everywhere They Know How To Do Things: They Have Sane And Deadly Angers For Sane And Deadly Things.

I Was Born To Hustle Roses Down The Avenue Of The Dead.

‎"she’ Mad But She’ Magic. There’ No Lie In Her Fire.

The Secret Is Writing Down One Simple Line After Another.

You Fall Into The Mirror, Come Through The Other Side Staring At A Lightbulb.

To Me Art (poetry) Is A Continuous And Continuing Process And That When A Man Fails To Write Good Poetry He Fails To Live Fully Or Well.

Do You Hate People? I Don't Hate Them...i Just Feel Better When They're Not Around.

I Heard An Airplane Passing Overhead. I Wished I Was On It.

I Had No Freedom. I Had Nothing.

The Shortest Distance Between Two Points Is Often Unbearable.

I Knew It Would Be You

Anybody Can Be A Non-drunk. It Takes A Special Talent To Be A Drunk. It Takes Endurance. Endurance Is More Important Than Truth.

The Problem Was You Had To Keep Choosing Between One Evil Or Another, And No Matter What You Chose, They Sliced A Little More Off You, Until There Was Nothing Left. At The Age Of 25 Most People Were Finished. A Whole Goddamned Nation Of Assholes Driving Automobiles, Eating, Having Babies, Doing Everything In The Worst Way Possible, Like Voting For The Presidential Candidate Who Reminded Them Most Of Themselves.

Humanity, You Never Had It To Begin With.

One Can Never Be Sure Whether It's Good Poetry Or Bad Acid

People Do Too Much. They Say Too Much.

Trouble And Pain Were What Kept A Man Alive. Or Trying To Avoid Trouble And Pain. It Was A Full Time Job.

As We Go On With Our Lives We Tend To Forget That The Jails And The Hospitals And The Madhouses And The Graveyards Are Packed.

I Couldn't Get Myself To Read The Want Ads. The Thought Of Sitting In Front Of A Man Behind A Desk And Telling Him That I Wanted A Job, That I Was Qualified For A Job, Was Too Much For Me. Frankly, I Was Horrified By Life, At What A Man Had To Do Simply In Order To Eat, Sleep, And Keep Himself Clothed. So I Stayed In Bed And Drank. When You Drank The World Was Still Out There, But For The Moment It Didn't Have You By The Throat.

Capitalism Has Survived Communism. Now, It Eats Away At Itself.

There's A Bluebird In My Heart That Wants To Get Out.

Insanity Is Relative. Who Sets The Norm?

When I Was A Boy I Used To Dream Of Becoming The Village Idiot. I Used To Lie In Bed And Imagine Myself The Happy Idiot Able To Get Food Easily ...and Easy Sympathy, A Planned Confusion Of Not Too Much Love Or Effort. Some Would Claim That I Have Succeeded.

I Have One Problem, I Don’t Hate People. They Disgust Me And I Want To Get Away From Them. I Do Not Have Hatred. I Have An Escape Mechanism.

…he Was Always High On Drugs. I Was Not A Drug Man, But In Case I Wanted To Hide From Myself For A Few Days, I Knew I Could Get Anything I Wanted From Him.

If You Want To Know Where God Is, Ask A Drunk.

My Hands Dead My Heart Dead Silence Adagio Of Rocks The World Ablaze That's The Best For Me.

Never Get Out Of Bed Before Noon.

I Pretend To Understand Because I Don't Want Anybody To Be Hurt

Of One Hundred Movies There's One That Is Fair, One That's Good And Ninety Eight That Are Very Bad. Most Movies Start Badly And Steadily Get Worse

I Want So Much That Is Not Here And Do Not Know Where To Go.

I'm Not The Cruel Type, But They Are, And That's The Secret.

I Drive Around The Streets An Inch Away From Weeping, Ashamed Of My Sentimentality And Possible Love.

Each Man's Hell Is In A Different Place: Mine Is Just Up And Behind My Ruined Face.

But She Projected Vitality - You Knew That She Was There.

But My Whole Life Has Been A Matter Of Fighting For One Simple Hour To Do What I Want To Do. There Was Always Something Getting In The Way Of My Getting To Myself.

I'm Very Clever At Hiding Poems Perhaps More Clever Than I Am At Writing Them.

Alcohol Is Probably One Of The Greatest Things To Arrive Upon The Earth - Alongside Of Me.

The Human Body Is Mostly Blood And Mystery And Sadness.

The Masses Are Always Wrong...wisdom Is Doing Everything The Crowd Does Not Do. All You Do Is Reverse The Totality Of Their Learning And You Have The Heaven They're Looking For.

The Ladies Usually Go For The Biggest Damn Fool They Can Find; That Is Why The Human Race Stands Where It Does Today: We Have Bred The Clever And Lasting Casanovas, All Hollow Inside, Like The Chocolate Easter Bunnies We Foster Upon Our Poor Children.

Your Writing", She Said To Me, "it's So Raw. It's Like A Sledgehammer, And Yet It Has Humor And Tenderness. . . .

When The Phone Rings I Too Would Like To Hear Words That Might Ease Some Of This.

Those Who Preach God, Need God Those Who Preach Peace Do Not Have Peace Those Who Preach Love Do Not Have Love

I Was A Man Who Thrived On Solitude; Without It I Was Like Another Man Without Food Or Water. Each Day Without Solitude Weakened Me. I Took No Pride In My Solitude; But I Was Dependent On It. The Darkness Of The Room Was Like Sunlight To Me.

Find What You Love And Let It Kill You. For All Things Will Kill You, Both Slowly And Fastly, But It’s Much Better To Be Killed By A Lover.

Take A Writer Away From His Typewriter And All You Have Left Is The Sickness Which Started Him Typing In The Beginning

They Have No Idea That It Can Be Done By A Bus Driver, A Field Hand, Or A Fry Cook. They Have No Idea Where It Comes From. It Comes From Pain, Damnation And Impossibility. The Blow To The Soul Of The Gut. It Comes From Getting Burned And Seared And Slugged. It Comes From...new And Awful Places And The Same Old Places.

Love Be Damned Now As Love Was Damned When It First Arrived.

Angels, We Have Grown Apart.

I Have Gotten So Used To Melancholia That I Greet It Like An Old Friend.

Animals Never Worry About Heaven Or Hell. Neither Do I. Maybe That's Why We Get Along.

What? You’d Dare Drink Right After Getting Out Of Jail For Intoxication?” That’s When You Need A Drink The Most.

When Ginsburg Is At The Top Of His Game You Might As Well Put Down Your Toys And Listen.

A Woman Must Be Nursed Into Subsistence By Love, Where A Man Can Become Stronger By Being Hated." - From 'cows In Art Class

I Don't Think I'll Travel Anymore. Travel Is Nothing But An Inconvenience. There Is Always Enough Trouble Where You Are.

I Wasn’t Going Anywhere And Neither Was The Rest Of The World. We Were All Just Hanging Around Waiting To Die And Meanwhile Doing Little Things To Fill The Space. Some Of Use Weren’t Even Doing Little Things. We Were Vegetables.

They Looked As If Nothing Had Ever Touched Them--all Well-mothered, Protected, With A Soft Sheen Of Contentment. None Of Them Had Ever Been In Jail, Or Worked Hard With Their Hands, Or Even Gotten A Traffic Ticket. Skimmed-milk Jollies, The Whole Bunch.

I Held Her Wrists And Then I Got It Through The Eyes: Hatred, Centuries Deep And True. I Was Wrong And Graceless And Sick. All The Things I Had Learned Had Been Wasted. There Was No Creature Living As Foul As I And All My Poems Were False.

The Problem With The World Is That The Intelligent People Are Full Of Doubts, While The Stupid Ones Are Full Of Confidence.

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 At Me And Said, It’s Not Pretty.

The More Cats You Have, The Longer You Live. If You Have A Hundred Cats, You'll Live Ten Times Longer Than If You Have Ten. Someday This Will Be Discovered, And People Will Have A Thousand Cats And Live Forever.

A Yet Women -good Women- Frightened Me Because They Eventually Wanted Your Soul, And What Was Left Of Mine, I Wanted To Keep. Basically I Craved Prostitutes, Base Women, Because They Were Deadly And Hard And Made No Personal Demands. Nothing Was Lost When They Left. Yet At The Same Time I Yearned For A Gentle, Good Woman, Despite The Overwhelming Price.

It Was Like The Beginning Of Life And Laughter. It Was The Real Meaning Of The Sun

Great Books Are The Ones We Need

They Laughed. Things Were Funny. They Weren't Afraid To Care. There Was No Sense To Life, To The Structure Of Things.

I No Longer Want It All, Just Some Comfort And Some Sex And Some Minor Love.

Boring Damned People. All Over The Earth. Propagating More Boring Damned People. What A Horror Show. The Earth Swarmed With Them.

One More Creature Dizzy With Love

What's Genius? I Don't Know But I Do Know That The Difference Between A Madman And A Professional Is That A Pro Does As Well As He Can Within What He Has Set Out To Do And A Madman Does Exceptionally Well At What He Can't Help Doing.

My Mother, Poor Fish, Wanting To Be Happy, Beaten Two Or Three Times A Week, Telling Me To Be Happy: "henry, Smile! Why Don't You Ever Smile?" And Then She Would Smile, To Show Me How, And It Was The Saddest Smile I Ever Saw

The Park Grass Looked Greener, The Park Benches Looked Better And The Flowers Were Trying Harder.

I Remembered My New Orleans Days, Living On Two Five-cent Candy Bars A Day For Weeks At A Time In Order To Have Leisure To Write. But Starvation, Unfortunately, Didn't Improve Art. It Only Hindered It. A Man's Soul Was Rooted In His Stomach. A Man Could Write Much Better After Eating A Porterhouse Steak And Drinking A Pint Of Whiskey Than He Could Ever Write After Eating A Nickel Candy Bar. The Myth Of The Starving Artist Was A Hoax.

Joan Of Arc Had Style. Jesus Had Style.

Don’t Do It. Don’t Love Me.

I'll Use The Knives For Spreading Jam, And The Gas To Warm My Greying Love.

Something That Never Happens Anywhere At Any Time.

There's No Defense Except All The Errors Made

Why Did I Come Here? I Thought. Why Is It Always Only A Matter Of Choosing Between Something Bad And Something Worse?

Turgenev Was A Very Serious Fellow But He Could Make Me Laugh Because A Truth First Encountered Can Be Very Funny. When Someone Else's Truth Is The Same As Your Truth, And He Seems To Be Saying It Just For You, That's Great.

Human Relationships Are Strange. I Mean, You Are With One Person A While, Eating And Sleeping And Living With Them, Loving Them, Talking To Them, Going Places Together, And Then It Stops.

Sometimes A Man Doesn’t Know What To Do About Things And Sometimes It’s Best To Lie Very Still And Try Not To Think At All About Anything.

Most People Are Not Ready For Death, Theirs Or Anybody Elses.

I Suppose Like Others I Have Come Through Fire And Sword, Love Gone Wrong, Head-on Crashes, Drunk At Sea, And I Have Listened To The Simple Sound Of Water Running In Tubs And Wished To Drown

The Less I Needed, The Better I Felt.

If You're Going To Try, Go All The Way. Otherwise, Don't Even Start.

When I Begin To Doubt My Ability To Work The Word, I Simply Read Another Writer And Know I Have Nothing To Worry About. My Contest Is Only With Myself, To Do It Right, With Power, And Force, And Delight, And Gamble.

We Must.. We Must Bring Our Own Light To The Darkness

Can You Remember Who You Were, Before The World Told You Who You Should Be?

I Hated You When It Would Have Taken Less Courage To Love.

Courage To Love

The Difference Between Art And Life Is That Art Is More Bearable

Hey, Hank, I Notice All The Women Around Your Place Lately ... Good Looking Stuff; You're Doing All Right." "sam," I Say, "that's Not True; I Am One Of God's Most Lonely Men.

Magic Persists Without Us No Matter What We May Do To Try To Spoil It

My Flesh Looked Like It Wasn't Trying. It Looked Like It Hated Being Part Of Me.

The Whole World Is Caught In Her Glance And At Last The Universe Is Magnificent.

When I Was Young I Was Depressed All The Time. But Suicide No Longer Seemed A Possibility In My Life. At My Age There Was Very Little Left To Kill. It Was Good To Be Old, No Matter What They Said. It Was Reasonable That A Man Had To Be At Least 50 Years Old Before He Could Write With Anything Like Clarity.

I Was Only Photographing In Words The Reality Of It All.

The Whole Lsd, Stp, Marijuana, Heroin, Hashish, Prescription Cough Medicine Crowd Suffers From The "watchtower" Itch: You Gotta Be With Us, Man, Or You're Out, You're Dead. This Pitch Is A Continual And Seeming Must With Those Who Use The Stuff. It's No Wonder They Keep Getting Busted.

I Still Have A Little Whiskey Left And Therefore A Chance.

I Walked Around The Block Twice, Passed 200 People And Failed To See A Human Being.

Hate Contains Truth. Beauty Is A Facade.

Dogs And Angels Are Not Very Far Apart

This Time Has Finished Me.

And Love Is A Word Used Too Much And Much Too Soon.

It Will Rain All This Night And We Will Sleep Transfixed By The Dark Water As Our Blood Runs Through Our Fragile Life.

2 P.m. Beer Nothing Matters But Flopping On A Mattress With Cheap Dreams And A Beer As The Leaves Die And The Horses Die And The Landladies Stare In The Halls; Brisk The Music Of Pulled Shades, A Last Man's Cave In An Eternity Of Swarm And Explosion; Nothing But The Dripping Sink, The Empty Bottle, Euphoria, Youth Fenced In, Stabbed And Shaven, Taught Words Propped Up To Die.

There Must Be A Way. Surely There Must Be A Way That We Have Not Yet Thought Of. Who Put This Brain Inside Of Me? It Cries It Demands It Says That There Is A Chance. It Will Not Say "no.

I've Learned To Feel Good When I Feel Good. It's Better To Be Driven Around In A Red Porsche Than To Own One. The Luck Of The Fool Is Inviolate.

I Made Practice Runs Down To Skid Row To Get Ready For My Future.

We Are Here To Laugh At The Odds And Live Our Lives So Well That Death Will Tremble To Take Us.

To Me, Nudity Is A Joke. I Don't Think Nude People Are Very Attractive At All. I Like My Women Fully Clothed. I Like To Imagine What Might Be Under There. It Might Not Be The Standard Thing. Imagine, Stripping A Woman Down, And She Has A Body Like A Little Submarine. With Periscope, Propellers, Torpedoes. That Would Be The One For Me. I'd Marry Her Right Off And Be Faithful To The End.

I Could Scream Down 90 Mountains To Less Than Dust If Only One Living Human Had Eyes In The Head And Heart In The Body, But There Is No Chance, My God, No Chance. Rat With Rat Dog With Dog Hog With Hog, Play The Piano Drunk Listen To The Drunk Piano, Realize The Myth Of Mercy Stand Still As Even A Child's Voice Snarls And We Have Not Been Fooled, It Was Only That We Wanted To Believe.

There Is Enough Treachery , Hatred Violence Absurdity In The Average Human Being To Supply Any Given Army On Any Given Day

I Loved You Like A Man Loves A Woman He Never Touches, Only Writes To, Keeps Little Photographs Of.

My Youth, One Time, That Time I Knew Even Through The Nothingness, It Was A Celebration Of Something Not To Do But Only Know.

Find What You Love And Let It Kill You.

Never Envy A Man His Lady. Behind It All Lays A Living Hell.

There Was Nothing Glorious About The Life Of A Drinker Or The Life Of A Writer.

I've Found Out Why Men Sign Their Names To Their Works- Not That They Created Them But More Than The Others Did Not.

Nobody Ever Finds The One

Death Is Not The Problem; Waiting Around For It Is.

Hell, I'd Even Failed With Women. Three Wives. Nothing Really Wrong Each Time. It All Got Destroyed By Petty Bickering. Railing About Nothing. Getting Pissed-off Over Anything And Everything. Day By Day, Year By Year, Grinding. Instead Of Helping Each Other You Just Sliced Away, Picked At This Or That. Goading. Endless Goading. It Became A Cheap Contest. And Once You Got Into It, It Became Habitual. You Couldn't Seem To Get Out. You Almost Didn't Want To Get Out. And Then You Did Get Out. All The Way.

Bad Taste Creates Many More Millionaires Than Good Taste.

Dying In A A War Never Stopped Wars From Happening.

The Courage It Took To Get Out Of Bed Each Morning To Face The Same Things Over And Over Was Enormous.

Never Trust A Man In A Jumpsuit

Never Trust A Man

You Are Yesterday's Bouquet So Sadly Raided

I Hope That Death Contains Less Than This.

Purple Does Something Strange To Me

There's Nothing To Mourn About Death Any More Than There Is To Mourn About The Growing Of A Flower. What Is Terrible Is Not Death But The Lives People Live Or Don't Live Up Until Their Death. They Don't Honor Their Own Lives ... Their Minds Are Full Of Cotton. They Swallow God Without Thinking, They Swallow Country Without Thinking. Soon They Forget How To Think, They Let Others Think For Them.... Most People's Deaths Are A Sham. There's Nothing Left To Die.

When I Get Down To My Last Dime I'll Just Walk Over To Skid Row." "there Are Some Real Weirdos Down There." "they're Everywhere.

When A Writer Is Swayed With His Fame And His Fortune, You Can Float Him Down The River With The Turds.

Why Do You Insist Upon Destroying Yourself?

Destroying Yourself

Real Loneliness Is Not Necessarily Limited To When You Are Alone.

In My Next Life I Want To Be A Cat. To Sleep 20 Hours A Day And Wait To Be Fed. To Sit Around Licking My Ass.

Things Will Be Far Worse Than They Are Now. And Far Better. I Wait.

In The Morning It Was Morning And I Was Still Alive.

In A Capitalistic Society The Losers Slaved For The Winners And You Have To Have More Losers Than Winners.

I See Men Assassinated Around Me Every Day. I Walk Through Rooms Of The Dead, Streets Of The Dead, Cities Of The Dead; Men Without Eyes, Men Without Voices; Men With Manufactured Feelings And Standard Reactions; Men With Newspaper Brains, Television Souls And High School Ideas.

The Free Soul Is Rare, But You Know It When You See It - Basically Because You Feel Good, Very Good, When You Are Near Or With Them.

I Was In Love Again. I Was In Trouble

I Think That The World Should Be Full Of Cats And Full Of Rain, That's All, Just Cats And Rain, Rain And Cats, Very Nice, Good Night.

Some Men Never Die And Some Men Never Live But We're All Alive Tonight.

The Writer Has No Responsibility Other Than To Jack Off In Bed Alone And Write A Good Page.

Modern Women ... They Don't Sew Your Pockets ... Forget That.

I Can Almost Understand Why People Leap From Bridges.

I Don’t Understand People, Never Will. It Looks Like I Got To Travel Pretty Much Alone.

The Role Of The Poet Is Almost Nothing...drearily Nothing. And When He Steps Outside Of His Boots And Tries To Get Tough As Our Dear Ezra [pound] Did, He Will Get His Pink Little Ass Slapped.

To Experience Real Agony Is Something Hard To Write About, Impossible To Understand While It Grips You; You're Frightened Out Of Your Wits, Can’t Sit Still, Move, Or Even Go Decently Insane.

My Part Of The Game Is That I Must Live The Best I Can.

It Was Too Much. The Comfortable People Made Comfortable Jokes About Weather And Things But I Sat Mostly Silent Saying A Word Or So When Necessary A Word Or So Trying To Hide From Them The Fact That I Was A Fool And Feeling Terrible And I Was Numb, Numb Again, Numb Again Again And Again, Numbness And Pain Swelling In Me.

He Asked, "what Makes A Man A Writer?" "well," I Said, "it's Simple. You Either Get It Down On Paper, Or Jump Off A Bridge.

It’s Hard To Drink When You Dance. And It’s Hard To Dance When You Drink.

But As God Said, Crossing His Legs, I See Where I Have Made Plenty Of Poets But Not So Very Much Poetry.

I Was So Thin I Could Slice Bread With My Shoulderblades, Only I Seldom Had Bread.

Sometimes You Just Have To Pee In The Sink.

Escape From The Black Widow Spider Is A Miracle As Great As Art. What A Web She Can Weave Slowly Drawing You To Her She'll Embrace You Then When She's Satisfied She'll Kill You Still In Her Embrace And Suck The Blood From You.

Our Bones Like Stems Into The Sky Will Forever Cry Victory

You Are On The Freeway Threading Through Traffic Now, Moving Both Towards Something And Towards Nothing At All As You Punch The Radio On And Get Mozart, Which Is Something, And You Will Somehow Get Through The Slow Days And The Busy Days And The Dull Days And The Hateful Days And The Rare Days, All Both So Delightful And So Disappointing Because We Are All So Alike And So Different.

I Guess For Me Hemingway Is A Lot Like It Is For Others: He Goes Down Well When We Are Young.

The Free Soul Is Rare, But You Know It When You See It

Agony Sometimes Changes Form But It Never Ceases For Anybody.

There's No Way I Can Stop Writing, It's A Form Of Insanity.

The Psyche Has Been Burned And Left Us Senseless, The World Has Been Darker Than Lights-out In A Closet Full Of Hungry Bats, And The Whiskey And Wine Entered Our Veins When Blood Was Too Weak To Carry On

I Will Remember The Kisses Our Lips Raw With Love And How You Gave Me Everything You Had And How I Offered You What Was Left Of Me, And I Will Remember Your Small Room The Feel Of You The Light In The Window Your Records Your Books Our Morning Coffee Our Noons Our Nights Our Bodies Spilled Together Sleeping The Tiny Flowing Currents Immediate And Forever Your Leg My Leg Your Arm My Arm Your Smile And The Warmth Of You Who Made Me Laugh Again.

Inspirational Love

Style Means No Shield At All. Style Means No Front At All. Style Means Ultimate Naturalness. Style Means One Man Alone With Billions Of Men About.

And Even The Trees We Walked Under Seemed Less Than Trees And More Like Everything Else.

Dont Undress My Love You Might Find A Mannequin Dont Undress The Mannequin You Might Find Love. Shes Long Ago Forgotten Me. Hes Trying On A New Hat And Looks More The Coquette Then Ever. She Is A Child And A Mannequin And Death. I Can't Hate That. She Didnt Do Anything Unusual. I Only Wanted Her To.

True Revolution Comes From True Revulsion; When Things Get Bad Enough The Kitten Will Kill The Lion.

It Was A Joy! Words Weren't Dull, Words Were Things That Could Make Your Mind Hum. If You Read Them And Let Yourself Feel The Magic, You Could Live Without Pain, With Hope, No Matter What Happened To You.

Thanksgiving. It Proved You Had Survived Another Year With Its Wars, Inflation, Unemployment, Smog, Presidents. It Was A Grand Neurotic Gathering Of Clans: Loud Drunks, Grandmothers, Sisters, Aunts, Screaming Children, Would-be Suicides. And Don't Forget Indigestion. I Wasn't Different From Anyone Else: There Sat The 18-pound Bird On My Sink, Dead, Plucked, Totally Disemboweled. Iris Would Roast It For Me.

I Have Seen Too Many Men Wilt And Go Silly Under A Little Light, And Then They Continue To Write And Get Published, Turning Out Pure Crap Under A Name That Has Become A Bad Habit. The Next Poem Is All That Counts. You Can't Stand On Past Poems.

To Do A Dull Thing With Style-now That's What I Call Art.

Thought Provoking

There's Nothing To Stop A Man From Writing Unless That Man Stops Himself. If A Man Truly Desires To Write, Then He Will. Rejection And Ridicule Will Only Strengthen Him. And The Longer He Is Held Back The Stronger He Will Become, Like A Mass Of Rising Water Against A Dam. There Is No Losing In Writing, It Will Make Your Toes Laugh As You Sleep, It Will Make You Stride Like A Tiger, It Will Fire The Eye And Put You Face To Face With Death. You Will Die A Fighter, You Will Be Honored In Hell. The Luck Of The Word. Go With It, Send It.

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