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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.

-Charles Bukowski

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Escape From The Black

Charles Bukowski

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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.

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I Never Write In The Daytime. It's Like Running Through The Shopping Mall With Your Clothes Off. Everybody Can See You. At Night ... That's When You Pull The Tricks ... Magic.

The Impossibility Of Being Human All Too Human This Breathing In And Out Out And In These Punks These Cowards These Champions These Mad Dogs Of Glory Moving This Little Bit Of Light Toward Us Impossibly.

And I Said To Myself That He Was The First Thing That I Had Ever Missed In My Life.

Simplicity Is Always The Secret, To A Profound Truth, To Doing Things, To Writing, To Painting. Life Is Profound In Its Simplicity

The Last Cigarettes Are Smoked, The Loaves Are Sliced, And Lest This Be Taken For Wry Sorrow, Drown The Spider In Wine. You Are Much More Than Simply Dead: I Am A Dish For Your Ashes, I Am A Fist For Your Vanished Air. The Most Terrible Thing About Life Is Finding It Gone.

Never Get Out Of Bed Before Noon.

Fay Had A Spot Of Blood On The Left Side Of Her Mouth And I Took A Wet Cloth And Wiped It Off. Women Were Meant To Suffer; No Wonder They Asked For Constant Declarations Of Love.

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.

What Matters Most Is How Well You Walk Through The Fire

Sex Is Interesting, But It's Not Totally Important. I Mean It's Not Even As Important (physically) As Excretion. A Man Can Go Seventy Years Without A Piece Of Ass, But He Can Die In A Week Without A Bowel Movement.

Young Or Old, Good Or Bad, I Don't Think Anything Dies As Slow And As Hard As A Writer.

Even The Stove And The Refrigerator Looked Human, I Mean Good Human - They Seemed To Have Arms And Voices And They Said, Hang Around, Kid, It's Good Here, It Can Be Very Good Here.

They Thought I Had Guts They Were Wrong I Was Only Frightened Of More Important Things

Too Often, The Only Escape Is Sleep

There's Nothing Else As Pleasant As Being Unpleasant When There's Nothing Else To Do, And There's Usually Nothing Else To Do.

There Is Enough Treachery, Hatred Violence Absurdity In The Average Human Being To Supply Any Given Army On Any Given Day And The Best At Murder Are Those Who Preach Against It And The Best At Hate Are Those Who Preach Love And The Best At War Finally Are Those Who Preach Peace

Human Relationships Didn't Work Anyhow. Only The First Two Weeks Had Any Zing, Then The Participants Lost Their Interest. Masks Dropped Away And Real People Began To Appear: Cranks, Imbeciles, The Demented, The Vengeful, Sadists, Killers. Modern Society Had Created Its Own Kind And They Feasted On Each Other. It Was A Duel To The Death--in A Cesspool.

Finally There Is Nothing Here For Death To Take Away.

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

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.

We Had Such Tremendous Fun And Much Agony Together For Some Years

It's Not The Large Things That Send A Man To The Madhouse... No, It's The Continuing Series Of Small Tragedies... Not The Death Of His Love But The Shoelace That Snaps With No Time Left.

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.

But Then If You Lied To A Man About His Talent Just Because He Was Sitting Across From You, That Was The Most Unforgivable Lie Of Them All, Because That Was Telling Him To Go On, To Continue Which Was The Worst Way For A Man Without Real Talent To Waste His Life, Finally. But Many People Did Just That, Friends And Relatives Mostly.

To Not To Have Entirely Wasted One’s Life Seems To Be A Worthy Accomplishment, If Only For Myself.

Art Is Its Own Excuse, And It's Either Art Or It's Something Else. It's Either A Poem Or A Piece Of Cheese.

I Went Over To See Marina Two Or Three Or Four Times A Week. I Knew As Long As I Could See The Girl I Would Be All Right…. Soon After, I Got A Letter From Fay. She And The Child Were Living In A Hippie Commune In New Mexico. It Was A Nice Place, She Said. Marina Would Be Able To Breathe There. She Enclosed A Little Drawing The Girl Had Made For Me.

There Is Nothing That Teaches You More Than Regrouping After Failure And Moving On. Yet Most People Are Stricken With Fear. They Fear Failure So Much That They Fail. They Are Too Conditioned, Too Used To Being Told What To Do. It Begins With The Family, Runs Through School And Goes Into The Business World.

This Is Very Important -- To Take Leisure Time. Pace Is The Essence. Without Stopping Entirely And Doing Nothing At All For Great Periods, You're Gonna Lose Everything...just To Do Nothing At All, Very, Very Important. And How Many People Do This In Modern Society? Very Few. That's Why They're All Totally Mad, Frustrated, Angry And Hateful.

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.

And Our Few Good Times Will Be Rare Because We Have The Critical Sense And Are Not Easy To Fool With Laughter

Insanity Is Relative. Who Sets The Norm?

If There Are Junk Yards In Hell, Love Is The Dog That Guards The Gates.

We Sat There Smoking Cigarettes At 5 In The Morning.

Angels, We Have Grown Apart.

Invent Yourself And Then Reinvent Yourself.

Reinventing Yourself

Bad Luck For The Young Poet Would Be A Rich Father, An Early Marriage, An Early Success Or The Ability To Do Anything Well.

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

I'm Going To Open Another Vottle. Not A Vottle, But A Bottle. You Open It And I'll Drink It. And You Try To Write As Much As I Did Without Falling Off Of Your Chair.

As The Spirit Wanes The Form Appears

Sexual Intercourse Is Kicking Death In The Ass While Singing.

The Years Have Gone By Quickly. Death Sits In The Seat Next To Me. We Make A Lovely Couple.

I Like The Way Mahler Wandered About In His Music And Still Retained His Passion. He Must Have Looked Like An Earthquake Walking Down The Street.

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

I Was Fighting A Small Fight Of My Own Which Wasn't Leading Anywhere-but Like A Man With A Bent Spoon Trying To Dig Through A Cement Wall I Knew That A Small Fight Was Better Than Quitting: It Kept The Heart Alive.

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

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.

Don't Be Ashamed Of Anything; I Guess God Meant It All Like Locks On Doors.

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

If Something Burns Your Soul With Purpose And Desire, It’s Your Duty To Be Reduced To Ashes By It. Any Other Form Of Existence Will Be Yet Another Dull Book In The Library Of Life.

Are You Becoming What You've Always Hated?

Was I The Only Person Who Was Distracted By This Future Without A Chance?

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

The Best Often Die By Their Own Hand Just To Get Away, And Those Left Behind Can Never Quite Understand Why Anybody Would Ever Want To Get Away From Them

Writing About A Writer's Block Is Better Than Not Writing At All

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

Experience Can Dull. With Most Men Experience Is A Series Of Mistakes; The More Experience You Have The Less You Know.

The History Of Melancholia Includes All Of Us.

It Was Like Any Other Relationship, There Was Jealousy On Both Sides, There Were Split-ups And Reconciliations. There Were Also Fragmented Moments Of Great Peace And Beauty. I Often Tried To Get Away From Her And She Tried To Get Away From Me But It Was Difficult: Cupid, In His Strange Way, Was Really There.

And When Love Came To Us Twice And Lied To Us Twice We Decided To Never Love Again That Was Fair Fair To Us And Fair To Love Itself. We Ask For No Mercy Or No Miracles; We Are Strong Enough To Live And To Die And To Kill Flies, Attend The Boxing Matches, Go To The Racetrack, Live On Luck And Skill, Get Alone, Get Alone Often, And If You Can't Sleep Alone Be Careful Of The Words You Speak In Your Sleep; And Ask For No Mercy No Miracles; And Don't Forget: Time Is Meant To Be Wasted, Love Fails And Death Is Useless.

Sundays Kill More People Than Bombs.

Some People Like What You Do, Some People Hate What You Do, But Most People Simply Don't Give A Damn.

There Would Never Be A Way For Me To Live Comfortably With People. Maybe I'd Become A Monk. I'd Pretend To Believe In God And Live In A Cubicle, Play An Organ And Stay Drunk On Wine.

Some Lose All Mind And Become Soul,insane. Some Lose All Soul And Become Mind, Intellectual. Some Lose Both And Become Accepted

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

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.

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.

If You Let Them Kill You, They Will

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

Sometimes I Hate You," She Said.

The Artist," An Ancient Sage Had Once Said, "is Always Sitting On The Doorsteps Of The Rich.

The Less I Needed, The Better I Felt.

Nobody Ever Finds The One

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

For Those Who Believe In God, Most Of The Big Questions Are Answered. But For Those Of Us Who Can't Readily Accept The God Formula, The Big Answers Don't Remain Stonewritten. We Adjust To New Conditions And Discoveries. We Are Pliable. Love Need Not Be A Command Nor Faith A Dictum. I Am My Own God. We Are Here To Unlearn The Teachings Of The Church, State And Our Educational System. We Are Here To Drink Beer. We Are Here To Kill War. We Are Here To Laugh At The Odds And Live Our Lives So Well That Death Will Tremble To Take Us.

Joan Of Arc Had Style. Jesus Had Style.

Most People Are Much Better At Saying Things In Letters Than In Conversation, And Some People Can Write Artistic, Inventive Letters, But When They Try A Poem Or Story Or Novel They Become Pretentious.

If I Bet On Humanity, I'd Never Cash A Ticket.

People Are Not Good To Each Other. Perhaps If They Were Our Deaths Would Not Be So Sad.

I Stopped Looking For A Dream Girl, I Just Wanted One That Wasn't A Nightmare.

Find What You Love And Let It Kill You.

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

Knowledge Without Follow-through Is Worse Than No Knowledge.

Pain Is Strange. A Cat Killing A Bird, A Car Accident, A Fire.... Pain Arrives, Bang, And There It Is, It Sits On You. It's Real. And To Anybody Watching, You Look Foolish. Like You've Suddenly Become An Idiot. There's No Cure For It Unless You Know Somebody Who Understands How You Feel, And Knows How To Help.

There Is Nothing As Boring As The Truth.

There's No Chance At All: We Are All Trapped By A Singular Fate.

Most Of The World Was Mad. And The Part That Wasn't Mad Was Angry. And The Part That Wasn't Mad Or Angry Was Just Stupid. I Had No Chance. I Had No Choice. Just Hang On And Wait For The End. It Was Hard Work. It Was The Hardest Work Imaginable.

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

The Wisdom To Quit Is All We Have Left.

The Hangover Was Brutal But He Didn't Mind. It Told Him He Had Been Somewhere Else, Someplace Good.

God Knows I Am Not Too Hippy. Perhaps Because I Am Too Much Around The Hip And I Fear Fads For, Like Anybody Else, I Like Something That Tends To Last.

It Was Hard For Me To Believe. When Recess Was Over I Sat In Class And Thought About It. My Mother Had A Hole And My Father Had A Dong That Shot Juice. How Could They Have Things Like That And Walk Around As If Everything Was Normal, And Talk About Things, And Then Do It And Not Tell Anybody?

I Am Not A Man Who Looks For Solutions In God Or Politics. If Somebody Else Wants To Do The Dirty Work And Create A Better World For Us And He Can Do It, I Will Accept It.

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

There Is Always One Woman To Save You From Another And As That Woman Saves You She Makes Ready To Destroy

Figuring The Average Poet Starts At 16, I Am 23.

Style Is The Answer To Everything. A Fresh Way To Approach A Dull Or Dangerous Thing

Everything Is Beautiful. We Have All This Beauty In The World And All We Have To Do Is Reach Out And Touch It, It Is All There And All Ours For The Taking." -- Cecilia To Henry Chinaski, Liberty Taken Changing Past Tense To Present Tense (173)

You Have To Lay Down In The Center Of The Action Lay Down And Wait Until It Charges Then You Must Get Up Face It Get It Before It Gets You The Whole Process Is More Shy Than Vulnerable So Lay Down And Wait Sometimes It's Ten Minutes Sometimes It's Years Sometimes It Never Arrives But You Can't Rush It Push It There's No Way To Cheat Or Get A Jump On It You Have To Lay Down Lay Down And Wait Like An Animal .

You Were Destroyed By What You Befriended.

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

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.

I Remember When Each 4th Lot Was Vacant And Overgrown, And The Landlord Only Go This Rent When You Had It, And Each Day Was Clear And Good And Each Moment Was Full Of Promise.

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 Grow Tired Of 18th Century Moralities In A 20th Century Space-atomic Age

If I Hadn't Been A Drunkard, I Probably Would Have Committed Suicide Long Ago.

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.

Slavery Was Never Abolished, It Was Only Extended To Include All The Colors.

I Could See The Road Ahead Of Me. I Was Poor And I Was Going To Stay Poor. But I Didn't Particularly Want Money. I Didn't Know What I Wanted. Yes, I Did. I Wanted Someplace To Hide Out, Someplace Where One Didn't Have To Do Anything. The Thought Of Being Something Didn't Only Appall Me, It Sickened Me . . . To Do Things, To Be Part Of Family Picnics, Christmas, The 4th Of July, Labor Day, Mother's Day . . . Was A Man Born Just To Endure Those Things And Then Die? I Would Rather Be A Dishwasher, Return Alone To A Tiny Room And Drink Myself To Sleep.

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.

Once A Woman Turns Against You, Forget It. They Can Love You, Then Something Turns In Them. They Can Watch You Dying In A Gutter, Run Over By A Car, And They'll Spit On You.

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

They, All Of Them, Seemed To Put Literary Form In Front Of The Actuality And Living Of Life Itself.

Don't Ever Write A Novel Unless It Hurts Like A Hot Turd Coming Out.

Great Writers Are Indecent People They Live Unfairly Saving The Best Part For Paper. Good Human Beings Save The World So That Bastards Like Me Can Keep Creating Art, Become Immortal. If You Read This After I Am Dead It Means I Made It.

So, That’s What They Wanted: Lies. Beautiful Lies. That’s What They Needed. People Were Fools. It Was Going To Be Easy For Me.

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

I've Never Been Lonely. I Like Myself. I'm The Best Form Of Entertainment I Have. Let's Drink More Wine!

To Create Art Means To Be Crazy Alone Forever.

I Am With The Roots Of Flowers Entwined, Entombed Sending Up My Passionate Blossoms As A Flight Of Rockets And Argument; Wine Churls My Throat, Above Me Feet Walk Upon My Brain, Monkies Fall From The Sky Clutching Photographs Of The Planets, But I Seek Only Music And The Leisure Of My Pain

Let' Em Learn Or Let' Em Die

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

I Have Loved You Woman As Surely As I Have Named You Rust And Sand And Nylon.

If You're Going To Try, Go All The Way. This Could Mean Losing Girlfriends, Wives, Relatives, Jobs And Maybe Your Mind.

Food Is Good For The Nerves And The Spirit. Courage Comes From The Belly – All Else Is Desperation.

When A Hot Woman Meets A Hermit One Of Them Is Going To Change.

People Run From Rain But Sit In Bathtubs Full Of Water.

I Give You Soul. I Give You Wisdom And Light And Music And A Bit Of Laughter. Also, I Am The World's Greatest Horseplayer.

There Still Might Be A Place For Us Somewhere.

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

Why Do We Embroider Everything We Say With Special Emphasis When All We Really Need To Do Is Simply Say What Needs To He Said? Of Course The Fact Is That There Is Very Little That Needs To Be Said.

It Was Only The Matter Of A New Voice. Nobody Listened To An Old Voice Anymore. Old Voices Became A Part Of One's Self, Like A Fingernail.

T Was Almost Disappointing Because It Seemed When Stress And Madness Were Eliminated From My Daily Life There Wasn't Much Left You Could Depend On.

In New York You've Got To Have All The Luck.

It’s So Easy To Be Easy—if You Let It.

It's Possible To Love A Human Being If You Don't Know Them Too Well.

One More Drink And You're Dead. This Is No Way To Talk To A Suicide Head.

I Sit Here Drunk Now. I Am A Series Of Small Victories And Large Defeats And I Am As Amazed As Any Other That I Have Gotten From There To Here Without Committing Murder Or Being Murdered; Without Having Ended Up In The Madhouse. As I Drink Alone Again Tonight My Soul Despite All The Past Agony Thanks All The Gods Who Were Not There For Me Then.

Beware Those Quick To Praise For They Need Praise In Return Beware Those Who Are Quick To Censor They Are Afraid Of What They Do Not Know Beware Those Who Seek Constant Crowds For They Are Nothing Alone Beware The Average Man The Average Woman Beware Their Love, Their Love Is Average Seeks Average

There's No Light At The End Of The Tunnel, There Isn't Even A Tunnel. The Best Thing I Can Do Is Get Drunk And Listen To Classical Music. Or Sleep And Wait For Death To Get Closer. Leaving This Will Not Be A Horrible Thing. Yet I'm Glad, Somehow, That I Threw My Words In The Air: Confetti, Celebrating Nothing.

People Empty Me. I Have To Get Away To Refill.

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.

Humanity, You Never Had It To Begin With.

Well, The Rain Had Stopped But The Pain Was Still There.

You Know The Typical Crowd, Wow, It’s Friday Night, What Are You Going To Do? Just Sit There? Well, Yeah. Because There’s Nothing Out There. It’s Stupidity. Stupid People Mingling With Stupid People. Let Them Stupidify Themselves. I’ve Never Been Bothered With The Need To Rush Out Into The Night. That’s All. Sorry For All The Millions, But I’ve Never Been Lonely. I Like Myself. I’m The Best Form Of Entertainment I Have.

It's Good To Have Things Done With When They Don't Work It's Also Good Not To Hate Or Even Forget The Person You've Failed With.

Unless It Comes Out Of Your Soul Like A Rocket, Unless Being Still Would Drive You To Madness Or Suicide Or Murder, Don't Do It. Unless The Sun Inside You Is Burning Your Gut, Don't Do It. When It Is Truly Time, And If You Have Been Chosen, It Will Do It By Itself And It Will Keep On Doing It Until You Die Or It Dies In You. There Is No Other Way. And There Never Was.

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

I Once Lay In A White Hospital For The Dying And The Dying Self, Where Some God Pissed A Rain Of Reason To Make Things Grow Only To Die, Where On My Knees I Prayed For Light, I Prayed For L*i*g*h*t, And Praying Crawled Like A Blind Slug Into The Web Where Threads Of Wind Stuck Against My Mind And I Died Of Pity For Man, For Myself, On A Cross Without Nails, Watching In Fear As The Pig Belches In His Sty, Farts, Blinks And Eats.

The Male, For All His Bravado And Exploration, Is The Loyal One, The One Who Generally Feels Love. The Female Is Skilled At Betrayal And Torture And Damnation.

That's What Friendship Means: Sharing The Prejudice Of Experience.

Being Alone Never Felt Right. Sometimes It Felt Good, But It Never Felt Right.

Loneliness And Solitude

There Are Worse Things Than Being Alone But It Often Takes Decades To Realize This And Most Often When You Do It's Too Late And There's Nothing Worse Than Too Late

Some People Never Go Crazy, What Truly Horrible Lives They Must Live.

The Tigers Have Found Me And I Do Not Care.

I Had No Feeling For The Things So Many Others Needed.

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.

Some People Have Written That My Writing Has Helped Them Go On. It Has Helped Me Too. The Writing, The Roses, The 9 Cats.

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.

I Hope That Death Contains Less Than This.

I Am Too Sick To Lay Down The Sidewalks Frighten Me The Whole Damned City Frightens Me, What I Will Become What I Have Become Frightens Me.

She Knew What She Wanted And It Wasn't / Me. / I Know More Women Like That Than Any / Other Kind.

My 6 Foot Goddess Makes Me Laugh The Laughter Of The Mutilated Who Still Need Love... She Has Saved Me From Everything That Is Not Here

That Was The Trouble With Being A Writer, That Was The Main Trouble—leisure Time, Excessive Leisure Time. You Had To Wait Around For The Buildup Until You Could Write And While You Were Waiting You Went Crazy, And While You Were Going Crazy You Drank And The More You Drank The Crazier You Got.

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

We Use Such Big Words To Move Nowhere.

There's A Small Balcony Here, The Door Is Open And I Can See The Lights Of The Cars On The Harbor Freeway South, They Never Stop, That Roll Of Lights, On And On. All Those People. What Are They Doing? What Are They Thinking? We're All Going To Die, All Of Us, What A Circus! That Alone Should Make Us Love Each Other But It Doesn't.

After Dinner Or Lunch Or Whatever It Was -- With My Crazy 12-hour Night I Was No Longer Sure What Was What -- I Said, "look, Baby, I'm Sorry, But Don't You Realize That This Job Is Driving Me Crazy? Look, Let's Give It Up. Let's Just Lay Around And Make Love And Take Walks And Talk A Little. Let's Go To The Zoo. Let's Look At Animals. Let's Drive Down And Look At The Ocean. It's Only 45 Minutes. Let's Play Games In The Arcades. Let's Go To The Races, The Art Museum, The Boxing Matches. Let's Have Friends. Let's Laugh. This Kind Of Life Like Everybody Else's Kind Of Life: It's Killing Us.

Sweet Christ, You Must Know That A Man Will Go Further For Any Poem Than For Any Woman Ever Born.

Since Some People Had Told Me That I Was Ugly, I Always Preferred Shade To The Sun, Darkness To Light

..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.

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.

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

This Incompleteness Is All We Have.

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.

I'm Going, She Said. I Love You But You're Crazy, You're Doomed.

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.

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

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.

Little Sun Little Moon Little Dog And A Little To Eat And A Little To Love And A Little To Live For In A Little Room Filled With Little Mice Who Gnaw And Dance And Run While I Sleep Waiting For A Little Death In The Middle Of A Little Morning In A Little City In A Little State My Little Mother Dead My Little Father Dead In A Little Cemetery Somewhere. I Have Only A Little Time To Tell You This: Watch Out For Little Death When He Comes Running But Like All The Billions Of Little Deaths It Will Finally Mean Nothing And Everything: All Your Little Tears Burning Like The Dove, Wasted.

Before You Kill Something Make Sure You Have Something Better To Replace It With.

Few Beautiful Women Were Willing To Indicate In Public That They Belonged To Someone. I Had Known Enough Women To Realize This. I Accepted Them For What They Were And Love Came Hard And Very Seldom. When It Did It Was Usually For The Wrong Reasons. One Simply Became Tired Of Holding Back Love And Let It Go Because It Needed Some Place To Go. Then, Usually, There Was Trouble.

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

It Is Good To Be Sitting Some Place In Public At 2:30 In The Afternoon Without Getting The Flesh Ripped From Your Bones.

Daddy,' My Mother Asked, 'aren’t We Going To Run Out Of Gas?' No There’s Plenty Of God-damned Gas.' Where Are We Going?' I’m Going To Get Some God-damed Oranges!

As The Shadows Assume Shapes I Fight The Slow Retreat Now My Once-promise Dwindling Dwindling Now Lighting New Cigarettes Pouring More Drinks It Has Been A Beautiful Fight Still Is.

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

Where Did All The Women Come From? The Supply Was Endless. Each One Of Them Was Individual, Different. Their Pussies Were Different, Their Kisses Were Different, Their Breasts Were Different, But No Man Could Drink Them All, There Were Too Many Of Them, Crossing Their Legs, Driving Men Mad. What A Feast!

All A Guy Needed Was A Chance. Somebody Was Alway Controlling Who Got A Chance And Who Didn't.

Death Is Nothing, Brother, It's Life That's Hard

Whiskey Makes The Heart Beat Faster But It Sure Doesn't Help The Mind And Isn't It Funny How You Can Ache Just From The Deadly Drone Of Existence?

There's Music In Everything, Even Defeat

The Sea Is Made Of Blood

Love Is Kind Of Like When You See A Fog In The Morning, When You Wake Up Before The Sun Comes Out. It's Just A Little While, And Then It Burns Away... Love Is A Fog That Burns With The First Daylight Of Reality.

In The Cupboard Sits My Bottle Like A Dwarf Waiting To Scratch Out My Prayers. I Drink And Cough Like Some Idiot At A Symphony, Sunlight And Maddened Birds Are Everywhere, The Phone Rings Gamboling Its Sound Against The Odds Of The Crooked Sea; I Drink Deeply And Evenly Now, I Drink To Paradise And Death And The Lie Of Love.

I Have No Time For Things That Have No Soul.

The World Had Somehow Gone Too Far, And Spontaneous Kindness Could Never Be So Easy.

If I Stop Writing I Am Dead. And That's The Only Way I'll Stop: Dead.

It's Hot Tonight And Half The Neighborhood Is Drunk. The Other Half Is Dead. If I Have Any Advice About Writing Poetry It's - Don't. I'm Going To Send Out For Some Fried Chicken.

Nothing's News. It's The Same Old Thing In Disguise. Only One Thing Comes Without A Disguise And You Only See It Once, Or Maybe Never. Like Getting Hit By A Freight Train. Makes Us Realize That All Our Moaning About Long Lost Girls In Gingham Dresses Is Not So Important After All.

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