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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.

-Charles Bukowski

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I Couldn't Get Myself

Charles Bukowski

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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.

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

...in That Drunken Place You Would Like To Hand Your Heart To Her And Say Touch It But Then Give It Back.

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

When You Leave Your Typewriter You Leave Your Machine Gun And The Rats Come Pouring Through.

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.

I Didn't Feel That Way About It. I Had Been Playing With Death For Some Time. I Can't Say We Were The Best Of Friends But We Were Well Acquainted.

There Is Something About Writing Poetry That Brings A Man Close To The Cliff's Edge.

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

Joan Of Arc Had Style. Jesus Had Style.

I Don't Carry Notebooks And I Don't Consciously Store Ideas. I Try Not To Think That I Am A Writer And I Am Pretty Good At Doing That. I Don't Like Writers, But Then I Don't Like Insurance Salesmen Either.

Keep Your Money In Your Pocket. Or Bet It On A Good Horse.

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.

It’s Nice Enough To Make A Man Weep, But I Don’t Weep, Do You?

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.

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

Almost Everybody Is Born A Genius And Buried An Idiot.

Thought Provoking

I Knew It Would Be You

My Greatest Problem Was Stamps, Envelopes, Paper And Wine, With The World On The Edge Of World War Ii.

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

Do Some Living And Get Yourself A Typewriter.

If You're Going To Try, Go All The Way. There Is No Other Feeling Like That. You Will Be Alone With The Gods, And The Nights Will Flame With Fire. You Will Ride Life Straight To Perfect Laughter. It's The Only Good Fight There Is.

The Human Heart, As Of Course We All Know Is Essentially Good

I Can't Blame Her. But Wonder Why She's Here With Me? Where Are The Other Guys? How Can You Be Lucky? Having Someone The Others Have Abandoned?

You Have My Soul And I Have Your Money

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.

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

Those Who Escape Hell However Never Talk About It And Nothing Much Bothers Them After That

This Incompleteness Is All We Have.

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

Sometimes There's Nothing To Say About Death.

...having Nothing To Struggle Against They Have Nothing To Struggle For.

Don't Wait For The Good Woman. She Doesn't Exist.

Belane, Are You Nuts?" Who Knows? Insanity Is Comparative. Who Sets The Norm?

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

Beware Of Those Who Seek Constant Crowds; They Are Nothing Alone.

The Poet, As A Rule, Is A Half-man - A Sissy, Not A Real Person, And He Is In No Shape To Lead Real Men In Matters Of Blood, Or Courage.

I Didn't Like Parties.i Didn't Know How To Dance And People Frightened Me, Especially People At Parties. They Attempted To Be Sexy And Gay And Witty And Although They Hoped They Were Good At It, They Weren 't. They Were Bad At It. Their Trying So Hard Only Made It Worse.

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

It Was Sad, It Was Sad, It Was Sad. When Betty Came Back We Didn't Sing Or Laugh, Or Even Argue. We Sat Drinking In The Dark, Smoking Cigarettes, And When We Went To Sleep, I Didn't Put My Feet On Her Body Or She On Mine Like We Used To. We Slept Without Touching. We Had Both Been Robbed.

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.

Why Don't We Go Back Out There And Tell Them What Happened? Because Nothing Happened Except That Everybody Has Been Driven Insane And Stupid By Life. In This Society There Are Only Two Things That Count: Don't Be Caught Without Money And Don't Get Caught High On Any Kind Of High. (night Streets Of Madness)

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

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 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.

What's Wrong With Assholes, Baby?

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.

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.

I Hid In Bars, Because I Didn't Want To Hide In Factories.

Parties Sickened Me. I Hated The Game-playing, The Dirty Play, The Flirting, The Amateurs Drunks, The Bores.

The People Are The Biggest Horror Show On Earth, Have Been For Centuries.

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.

Gradually I Came To Realize That My Understanding Of Women Goes Only As Far As The Pleasure Is Concerned.

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.

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.

Sometimes You Just Have To Pee In The Sink.

Hate Contains Truth. Beauty Is A Facade.

And Now Sometimes I'm Interviewed, They Want To Hear About Life And Literature And I Get Drunk And Hold Up My Cross-eyed, Shot, Runover De-tailed Cat And I Say,"look, Look At This!" But They Don't Understand, They Say Something Like,"you Say You've Been Influenced By Celine?" No," I Hold The Cat Up,"by What Happens, By Things Like This, By This, By This!

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.

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

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.

We Don’t Even Ask Happiness, Just A Little Less Pain.

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.

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

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The Beautiful Are Found In The Edge Of A Room Crumpled Into Spiders And Needles And Silence And We Can Never Understand Why They Left,they Were So Beautiful. They Dont Make It, The Beautiful Die Young And Leave The Ugly To Their Ugly Lives.

Now Something So Sad Has Hold Of Us That The Breath Leaves And We Can't Even Cry.

Your Parents Don't Give You Much Love, Do They?' 'i Don't Need That Stuff,' I Told Her. 'henry, Everybody Needs Love.' 'i Don't Need Anything.' 'you Poor Boy.

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

There Are Policemen In The Street And Angels In The Clouds

God Is A Lonely Place Without Steak.

The Human Race Had Always Disgusted Me. Essentially, What Made Them Disgusting Was The Family-relationship Illness, Which Included Marriage, Exchange Of Power And Aid, Which Neighborhood, Your District, Your City, Your County, Your State, Your Nation-everybody Grabbing Each Other's Assholes In The Honeycomb Of Survival Out Of A Fear-animalistic Stupidity.

They Say That Nothing Is Wasted: Either That Or It Al Is

I Never Pump Up My Vulgarity. I Wait For It To Arrive In Its Own Terms.

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Writers Are Desperate People And When They Stop Being Desperate They Stop Being Writers.

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

Eleven Months. Now She's Gone Gone As They Go.

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

Many A Good Man Has Been Put Under The Bridge By A Woman.

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.

What Good Are You? What Can You Do? It Has Cost Me A Thousands Of Dollars To Raise You, Feed You, Clothe You! Suppose I Left You Here On The Street? Then What Would You Do?" "catch Butterflies

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

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

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

Of Course, There Would Always Be Arguments. That Is The Nature Of Woman. They Like The Mutual Exchange Of Dirty Laundry, A Bit Of Screaming, A Bit Of Dramatics. Then An Exchange Of Vows.

The Crowd Is The Gathering Place Of The Weakest; True Creation Is A Solitary Act.

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Censorship Is The Tool Of Those Who Have The Need To Hide Actualities From Themselves And From Others.

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

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

Something That Never Happens Anywhere At Any Time.

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

The Writing Of Some Men Is Like A Vast Bridge That Carries You Over The Many Things That Claw And Tear. The Wine Of Forever

Never Get Out Of Bed Before Noon.

Style Is The Answer To Everything. A Fresh Way To Approach A Dull Or Dangerous Thing. To Do A Dull Thing With Style Is Preferable To Doing A Dangerous Thing Without It. To Do A Dangerous Thing With Style Is What I Call Art.

You Are Yesterday's Bouquet So Sadly Raided

It Seemed To Me That I Had Never Met Another Person On Earth As Discouraging To My Happiness As My Father. And It Appeared That I Had The Same Effect Upon Him.

Pull A String, A Puppet Moves ... Each Man Must Realize That It Can All Disappear Very Quickly: The Cat, The Woman, The Job, The Front Tire, The Bed, The Walls, The Room; All Our Necessities Including Love, Rest On Foundations Of Sand - And Any Given Cause, No Matter How Unrelated: The Death Of A Boy In Hong Kong Or A Blizzard In Omaha ... Can Serve As Your Undoing. All Your Chinaware Crashing To The Kitchen Floor, Your Girl Will Enter And You'll Be Standing, Drunk, In The Center Of It And She'll Ask: My God, What's The Matter? And You'll Answer: I Don't Know, I Don't Know.

Humanity, You Never Had It To Begin With.

If You Have The Ability To Love, Love Yourself First.

Ability To Love

You've Got To Know When To Let A Woman Go If You Want To Keep Her,and If You Don't Want To Keep Her You Let Her Go Anyhow So It's Always A Process Of Letting Go, One Way Or The Other.

Love Breaks My Bones And I Laugh

Not Everybody Thought They Could Be A Dentist Or An Automobile Mechanic But Everybody Knew They Could Be A Writer.

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.

Intellectuals Say Simple Things In Difficult Ways. Artists Say Difficult Things In Simple Ways.

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

I Can Almost Understand Why People Leap From Bridges.

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

We Sat There Smoking Cigarettes At 5 In The Morning.

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.

Disneyland Remains The Central Attraction Of Southern California, But The Graveyard Remains Our Reality.

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

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.

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.

There's A Bluebird In My Heart That Wants To Get Out But I'm Too Clever, I Only Let Him Out At Night Sometimes When Everybody's Asleep. I Say, I Know That You're There, So Don't Be Sad. Then I Put Him Back, But He's Singing A Little In There, I Haven't Quite Let Him Die And We Sleep Together Like That With Our Secret Pact And It's Nice Enough To Make A Man Weep, But I Don't Weep, Do You?

Nobody Can Save You But Yourself And You’re Worth Saving. It’s A War Not Easily Won But If Anything Is Worth Winning Then This Is It.

It Is Possible To Be Truly Mad And To Still Exist Upon Scraps Of Life.

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

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.

All Our Days Are Marked With/ Unexpected/ Affronts--some/ Disastrous, Others/ Less So/ But The Process Is/ Wearing And/ Continuous./ Attrition Rules./ Most Give/ Way/ Leaving/ Empty Spaces/ Where People Should/ Be.

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.

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

I Think I Need A Drink.' 'almost Everybody Does Only They Don't Know It.

I Was Young I Was So Young It Hurt Like A Knife Inside Because There Was No Alternative Except To Hide As Long As Possible--- Not In Self-pity But With Dismay At My Limited Chance: Trying To Connect.

Her One Drink Had Cecelia Giggling And Talking And She Was Explaining That Animals Had Souls Too. Nobody Challenged Her Opinion. It Was Possible, We Knew. What We Weren't Sure Of Was If We Had Any.

Censorship Is The Tool Of Those Who Have The Need To Hide Actualities From Themselves And From Others. Their Fear Is Only Their Inability To Face What Is Real, And I Can't Vent Any Anger Against Them. I Only Feel This Appalling Sadness. Somewhere, In Their Upbringing, They Were Shielded Against The Total Facts Of Our Existence. They Were Only Taught To Look One Way When Many Ways Exist.

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

There Is A Place In The Heart That Will Never Be Filled A Space And Even During The Best Moments And The Greatest Times 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.

Lsd, Yeah, The Big Parade – Everybody's Doin' It Now. Take Lsd, Then You Are A Poet, An Intellectual. What A Sick Mob. I Am Building A Machine Gun In My Closet Now To Take Out As Many Of Them As I Can Before They Get Me.

The Dog Approached Again, Cautiously. I Found The Bologna Sandwich, Ripped Off A Chunk, Wiped The Cheap Watery Mustard Off, Then Placed It On The Sidewalk. The Dog Walked Up To The Bit Of Sandwich, Put His Nose To It, Sniffed, Then Turned And Walked Off. This Time He Didn't Look Back. He Accelerated Down The Street. No Wonder I Had Been Depressed All My Life. I Wasn't Getting Proper Nourishment.

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

We Use Such Big Words To Move Nowhere.

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.

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

There's Nothing Like Privacy. You Know, I Like People. It's Nice That They Might Like My Books And All That...but I'm Not The Book, See? I'm The Guy Who Wrote It, But I Don't Want Them To Come Up And Throw Roses On Me Or Anything. I Want Them To Let Me Breathe.

You've Got To Rise From The Floor Alone Or Fall Back Alone.

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.

I Was Their Bar Freak, They Needed Me To Make Themselves Feel Better. Just Like, At Times, I Needed That Graveyard.

…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.

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

If You Want To Know Who Your Friends Are, Get Yourself A Jail Sentence.

She’s Mad, But She’s Magic.

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.

I Would Be Married, But I'd Have No Wife, I Would Be Married To A Single Life.

Some Nights I Knew That If I Slept I Would Die.

As We Live We All Get Caught And Torn By Various Traps. Nobody Escapes Them. Some Even Live With Them. The Idea Is To Realize That A Trap Is A Trap. If You Are In One And You Don't Realize It, Then You're Finished.

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.

The Wisest Thing To Do If You’re Living In Hell Is To Make Yourself Comfortable.

I Write Right Off The Typer. I Call It My "machinegun." I Hit It Hard, Usually Late At Night While Drinking Wine And Listening To Classical Music On The Radio And Smoking Mangalore Ganesh Beedies.

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

I Would Say That Mickey Mouse Has A Greater Influence On The American Public Than Shakespeare, Milton, Dante, Rabelais, Shostakovitch, Lenin, And/or Van Gogh. Which Says 'what?' About The American Public. Disneyland Remains The Central Attraction Of Southern California, But The Graveyard Remains Our Reality.

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.

Life Itself Is Not The Miracle. That Pain Should Be So Constant, That's The Miracle -

..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.

Genius Might Be The Ability To Say A Profound Thing In A Simple Way.

We Are Hardly Ever As Strong As That Which We Create.

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.

I Hope That Death Contains Less Than This.

There's A Bluebird In My Heart That Wants To Get Out But I'm Too Tough For Him, I Say, Stay In There, I'm Not Going To Let Anybody See You.

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

I Was Drawn To All The Wrong Things: I Liked To Drink, I Was Lazy, I Didn't Have A God, Politics, Ideas, Ideals.

Look, Let Me Put It This Way: With Me, You’re Number One And There Isn’t Even A Number Two.

You Just Rebel Against Everything. How Are You Going To Survive? I Don't Know. I'm Already Tired.

That's The Problem With Drinking, I Thought, As I Poured Myself A Drink. If Something Bad Happens You Drink In An Attempt To Forget; If Something Good Happens You Drink In Order To Celebrate; And If Nothing Happens You Drink To Make Something Happen.

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

She Is No Longer The Beautiful Woman She Was. She Sends Photos Of Herself Sitting Upon A Rock By The Ocean Alone And Damned. I Could Have Had Her Once. I Wonder If She Thinks I Could Have Saved Her?

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.

Meanwhile The 3 A.m. Drunks Of The World Would Lay In Their Beds, Trying In Vain To Sleep, And Deserving That Rest, If They Could Find It.

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.

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

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

I've Never Been Lonely. I've Been In A Room... I've Felt Suicidal, I've Been Depressed. I've Felt Awful ... Awful Beyond All , But I Never Felt That One Other Person Could Enter That Room And Cure What Was Bothering Me...or That Any Number Of People Could Enter That Room. In Other Words, Loneliness Is Something I've Never Been Bothered With Because I've Always Had This Terrible Itch For Solitude.

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.

Oh, I Don’t Mean You’re Handsome, Not The Way People Think Of Handsome. Your Face Seems Kind. But Your Eyes - They’re Beautiful. They’re Wild, Crazy, Like Some Animal Peering Out Of A Forest On Fire.

You Were Destroyed By What You Befriended.

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.

A Man Who Can Beat The Horses Can Do Anything He Makes Up His Mind To Do.

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

We Only Asked For Leopards To Guard Our Thinning Dreams.

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

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

How Can You Be True And Kind At The Same Time? How?

It Was Like A Church In There As Only The Truly Lost Sit In Bars On Tuesday Mornings At 8:00 A.m.

If You're Losing Your Soul And You Know It, Then You've Still Got A Soul Left To Lose.

Thought Provoking

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.

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

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

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.

I Often Carry Things To Read So That I Will Not Have To Look At The People.

I Didn't Have Any Friends At School, Didn't Want Any. I Felt Better Being Alone. I Sat On A Bench And Watched The Others Play And They Looked Foolish To Me.

There May Not Be A Hell, But Those Who Judge May Create One. I Think People Are Over-taught. They Are Over-taught Everything. You Have To Find Out By What Happens To You, How You Will React. I'll Have To Use A Strange Term Here... "good." I Don't Know Where It Comes From, But I Feel That There's An Ultimate Strain Of Goodness Born In Each Of Us. I Don't Believe In God, But I Believe In This "goodness" Like A Tube Running Through Our Bodies. It Can Be Nurtured. It's Always Magic, When On A Freeway Packed With Traffic, A Stranger Makes Room For You To Change Lanes... It Gives You Hope.

The Blankets Had Fallen Off And I Stared Down At Her White Back, The Shoulder Blades Sticking Out As If They Wanted To Grow Into Wings, Poke Through That Skin. Little Blades. She Was Helpless.

I Guess The Only Time Most People Think About Injustice Is When It Happens To Them.

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

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Nelson Rockefeller

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