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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.

-Charles Bukowski

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I Once Lay In

Charles Bukowski

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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.

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Why Do You Insist Upon Destroying Yourself?

Destroying Yourself

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You Were Destroyed By What You Befriended.

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

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

The Writing's Easy, It's The Living That Is Sometimes Difficult.

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

Dying In A A War Never Stopped Wars From Happening.

It’s When You Hide Things That You Choke On Them.

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

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.

My Ambition Is Handicapped By Laziness

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

I Wasn't Sleeping On The Streets At Night. Of Course, There Were A Lot Of Good People Sleeping In The Streets. They Weren't Fools, They Just Didn't Fit Into The Needed Machinery Of The Moment. And Those Needs Kept Altering.

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

That's How It Is With Books, Isn't It: They're Not In A Hurry. They'll Wait For You Till You're Ready. People Empty Me. I Have To Go Away To Refill.

There Was Something About That City, Though It Didn't Let Me Feel Guilty That I Had No Feeling For The Things So Many Others Needed. It Let Me Alone.

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

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

I Don't Know About Other People, But When I Wake Up In The Morning And Put My Shoes On, I Think, Jesus Christ, Now What?

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

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.

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 .

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It’s The Order Of Things: Each One Gets A Taste Of Honey Then The Knife.

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

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.

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

I Felt Like Crying But Nothing Came Out. It Was Just A Sort Of Sad Sickness, Sick Sad, When You Can't Feel Any Worse. I Think You Know It. I Think Everybody Knows It Now And Then. But I Think I Have Known It Pretty Often, Too Often.

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

Existence Was Not Only Absurd, It Was Plain Hard Work. Think Of How Many Times You Put On Your Underwear In A Lifetime. It Was Appalling, It Was Disgusting, It Was Stupid.

As A Child I Suppose I Was Not Quite Normal. My Happiest Times Were When I Was Left Alone In The House On A Saturday.

The Trouble With These People Is That Their Cities Have Never Been Bombed And Their Mothers Have Never Been Told To Shut Up.

Sometimes I Hate You," She Said.

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Be It Peace Or Happiness Let It Enfold You

Love Iz A Big Fat Turkey And Every Day Iz Thanksgiving

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.

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

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

I Do Not Like To Work And Have No Trade But I Do Like To Eat, So This Is Basic, The Basic Training Of Slaves To Fear.

I Was Laying In Bed One Night And I Thought 'i'll Just Quit - To Hell With It.' And Another Little Voice Inside Me Said 'don't Quit - Save That Tiny Little Ember Of Spark.' And Never Give Them That Spark Because As Long As You Have That Spark, You Can Start The Greatest Fire Again.

Women: I Liked The Colors Of Their Clothing; The Way They Walked; The Cruelty In Some Faces; Now And Then The Almost Pure Beauty In Another Face, Totally And Enchantingly Female. They Had It Over Us: They Planned Much Better And Were Better Organized. While Men Were Watching Professional Football Or Drinking Beer Or Bowling, They, The Women, Were Thinking About Us, Concentrating, Studying, Deciding - Whether To Accept Us, Discard Us, Exchange Us, Kill Us Or Whether Simply To Leave Us. In The End It Hardly Mattered; No Matter What They Did, We Ended Up Lonely And Insane.

The Tired Sunsets And The Tired People - It Takes A Lifetime To Die And No Time At All.

Drinking Is An Emotional Thing. It Joggles You Out Of The Standardism Of Everyday Life, Out Of Everything Being The Same. It Yanks You Out Of Your Body And Your Mind And Throws You Against The Wall. I Have The Feeling That Drinking Is A Form Of Suicide Where You're Allowed To Return To Life And Begin All Over The Next Day. It's Like Killing Yourself, And Then You're Reborn. I Guess I've Lived About Ten Or Fifteen Thousand Lives Now.

There Is Nothing As Boring As The Truth.

Pain Is Absurd Because It Exists, Nothing More.

Morals Were Restrictive, But They Were Grounded On Human Experience.

Human Experience

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

Dogs And Angels Are Not Very Far Apart

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

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.

It Is All Ash And Dry Leaves And Grief Gone Like An Ocean Liner.

Four Days Alone With Nothing. Emerge Empowered. The First Human Face You See Will Knock You Back 50%.

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.

Lawyers, Doctors, Plumbers, They All Made The Money. Writers? Writers Starved. Writers Suicided. Writers Went Mad.

Too Often, The Only Escape Is Sleep

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.

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

... To Die On A Kitchen Floor At 7 O'clock In The Morning While Other People Are Frying Eggs Is Not So Rough Unless It Happens To You.

Angels, We Have Grown Apart.

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.

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.

You Are Yesterday's Bouquet So Sadly Raided

"baby," I Said. "i'm A Genius But Nobody Knows It But Me."

My Body Gnaws At Me From One Side And My Spirit Gnaws At Me From The Other.

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

Loneliness And Solitude

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?

For A Man Of 55 Who Didn't Get Laid Until He Was 23 And Not Very Often Until He Was 50 I Think That I Should Stay Listed Via Pacific Telephone Until I Get As Much As The Average Man Has Had

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

People Were Usually Much Better In Their Letters Than In Reality. They Were Much Like Poets In This Way.

Poetry Is What Happens When Nothing Else Can.

I Feel Strangely Normal.

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.

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

That Your Power Of Command With Simple Language Was One Of The Magnificent Things Of Our Century. (from The Poem: Result)

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.

It Doesn't Matter If Prince Charles Falls Off His Horse Or That The Hummingbird Is So Seldom Seen Or That We Are Too Senseless To Go Insane. Coffee. Give Us More Of That Nothing Coffee.

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.

How Are His Poems?" "he's Not As Good As He Thinks He Is, But Then Most Of Us Feel That Way.

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

We Sat There Smoking Cigarettes At 5 In The Morning.

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

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.

I Can See Where Creation Often Stops While The Body Still Lives And Often Does Not Care To. The Death Of Life Before Life Dies.

It's 4:30 In The Morning, It's Always 4:30 In The Morning.

Pretty Words, As Pretty Women, Wrinkle Up And Die.

Long Before I Became 'rich And Famous' I Just Sat Round Drinking Wine And Staring At The Walls.

Death Meant Little To Me. It Was The Last Joke In A Series Of Bad Jokes.

Dying Should Come Easy: Like A Freight Train You Don't Hear When Your Back Is Turned.

There Is A Loneliness In This World So Great That You Can See It In The Slow Movement Of The Hands Of A Clock

A Man Needed Somebody. There Wasn't Anybody Around, So You Had To Make Up Somebody, Make Him Up To Be Like A Man Should Be. It Wasn't Make-believe Or Cheating. The Other Way Was Make-believe And Cheating: Living Your Life Without A Man Like Him Around.

I Don't Know If This Is True To You But For Me Sometimes It Gets So Bad That Anything Else Say Like Looking At A Bird On An Overhead Power Line Seems As Great As A Beethoven Symphony. Then You Forget It And You're Back Again.

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