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I Should Think That Many Of Our Poets, The Honest Ones, Will Confess To Having No Manifesto. It Is A Painful Confession But The Art Of Poetry Carries Its Own Powers Without Having To Break Them Down Into Critical Listings. I Do Not Mean That Poetry Should Be Raffish And Irresponsible Clown Tossing Off Words Into The Void. But The Very Feeling Of A Good Poem Carries Its Own Reason For Being... 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.

-Charles Bukowski

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I Should Think That

Charles Bukowski

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I Should Think That Many Of Our Poets, The Honest Ones, Will Confess To Having No Manifesto. It Is A Painful Confession But The Art Of Poetry Carries Its Own Powers Without Having To Break Them Down Into Critical Listings. I Do Not Mean That Poetry Should Be Raffish And Irresponsible Clown Tossing Off Words Into The Void. But The Very Feeling Of A Good Poem Carries Its Own Reason For Being... 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.

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

… And We Are In Bed Together Laughing And We Don’t Care About Anything.

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We're All Going To Die, All Of Us, What A Circus!

An Intellectual Says A Simple Thing In A Hard Way. An Artist Says A Hard Thing In A Simple Way.

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

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

We Are Like Roses That Have Never Bothered To Bloom When We Should Have Bloomed And It Is As If The Sun Has Become Disgusted With Waiting

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

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.

I Broke That Town In Half Like A Wooden Match.

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.

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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.

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.

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.

I Was A Bore And Didn't Know When To Smile Or Fake It. Or Rather Worse, I Did But Didn't.

I Am A Series Of Small Victories And Large Defeats.

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Don’t Do It. Don’t Love Me.

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.

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.

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.

When You Play The Field Selfishly Everything Works Against You: One Can’t Insist On Love Or Demand Affection. You’re Finally Left With Whatever You Have Been Willing To Give Which Often Is: Nothing.

From The Beginning, Through The Middle Years And Up To The End: Too Bad, Too Bad, Too Bad.

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

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Each Person Is Only Given So Many Evenings And Each Wasted Evening Is A Gross Violation Against The Natural Course Of Your Only Life.

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.

The Human Body Is Mostly Blood And Mystery And Sadness.

There Are Policemen In The Street And Angels In The Clouds

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

There Are Times When Those Eyes Inside Your Brain Stare Back At You.

I Tell You Such Fine Music Waits In The Shadows Of Hell.

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

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

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

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Where Some God Pissed A Rain Of Reason To Make Things Grow Only To Die.

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The Night Kept Coming On In And There Was Nothing I Could Do.

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Maybe When I Get In The Grave, Things Will Be Beautiful.

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

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

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I'm Too Careless. I Don't Put Out Enough Effort. I'm Tired.

Love Is A Form Of Prejudice. I Have Too Many Other Prejudices.

We’ve Died So Many Times Now That We Can Only Wonder Why We Still Care.

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

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

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

They Never Pay The Slaves Enough So They Can Get Free, Just Enough So They Can Stay Alive And Come Back To Work.

I Often Stood In Front Of The Mirror Alone, Wondering How Ugly A Person Could Get.

I Am Going To Start Selling Air In Dark Orange Bags Marked: Moon-blooms

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

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

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

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

I Have Been Treated Better Than I Should Have Been---not By Life In General Nor By The Machinery Of Things But By Women.

Drink From The Well Of Yourself And Begin Again.

But Isn't There Always One Good Thing To Look Back On? Think Of How Many Cups Of Coffee We Drank Together.

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I Remember Awakening One Morning And Finding Everything Smeared With The Color Of Forgotten Love.

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

Sometimes I Get Too Exhausted To Even Feel Bad

The Laughing Heart Your Life Is Your Life Don’t Let It Be Clubbed Into Dank Submission. Be On The Watch. There Are Ways Out. There Is A Light Somewhere. It May Not Be Much Light But It Beats The Darkness. Be On The Watch. The Gods Will Offer You Chances. Know Them. Take Them. You Can’t Beat Death But You Can Beat Death In Life, Sometimes. And The More Often You Learn To Do It, The More Light There Will Be. Your Life Is Your Life. Know It While You Have It. You Are Marvelous The Gods Wait To Delight In 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

A Day Of Minor Profit Or Prophet Led To A Night Of Drunkenness.

I Can Almost Understand Why People Leap From Bridges.

In This Room The Hours Of Love Still Make Shadows.

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.

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.

Dog Is Much Admired By Man Because He Believes In The Hand Which Feeds Him. A Perfect Set-up. For 13 Cents A Day You've Got A Hired Killer Who Thinks You Are God. A Dog Can't Tell A Nazi From A Republican From A Commie From A Democrat And, Many Times, Neither Can I.

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.

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

There Is Only One Place To Write And That Is Alone At A Typewriter. The Writer Who Has To Go Into The Streets Is A Writer Who Does Not Know The Streets. . . When You Leave Your Typewriter You Leave Your Machine Gun And The Rats Come Pouring Through.

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.

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.

I Write As A Function. Without It I Would Fall Ill And Die. It's As Much A Part Of One As The Liver Or Intestine, And Just About As Glamorous.

I've Never Met Another Man I'd Rather Be.

I Had No Freedom. I Had Nothing.

An Early Taste Of Death Is Not Necessarily A Bad Thing.

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.

Don't Fight Your Demons. Your Demons Are Here To Teach You Lessons. Sit Down With Your Demons And Have A Drink And A Chat And Learn Their Names And Talk About The Burns On Their Fingers And Scratches On Their Ankles. Some Of Them Are Very Nice.

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.

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

My Beerdrunk Soul Is Sadder Than All The Dead Christmas Trees Of The World.

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

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

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

Bad Taste Creates Many More Millionaires Than Good Taste.

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

The Difference Between A Democracy And A Dictatorship Is That In A Democracy You Vote First And Take Orders Later; In A Dictatorship You Don't Have To Waste Your Time Voting.

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

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

I Should Think That Many Of Our Poets, The Honest Ones, Will Confess To Having No Manifesto. It Is A Painful Confession But The Art Of Poetry Carries Its Own Powers Without Having To Break Them Down Into Critical Listings. I Do Not Mean That Poetry Should Be Raffish And Irresponsible Clown Tossing Off Words Into The Void. But The Very Feeling Of A Good Poem Carries Its Own Reason For Being... 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 Have Gotten So Used To Melancholia That I Greet It Like An Old Friend.

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

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

Beauty Is Nothing, Beauty Won’t Stay. You Don’t Know How Lucky You Are To Be Ugly, Because If People Like You, You Know It’s For Something Else.

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.

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

I Take Much Pleasure In Being Alone But There Is Also A Strange Warm Grace In Not Being Alone.

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

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 Needed A Vacation. I Needed 5 Women. I Needed To Get The Wax Out Of My Ears. My Car Needed An Oil Change. I'd Failed To File My Damned Income Tax. One Of The Stems Had Broken Off Of My Reading Glasses. There Were Ants In My Apartment. I Needed To Get My Teeth Cleaned. My Shoes Were Run Down At The Heels. I Had Insomnia. My Auto Insurance Had Expired. I Cut Myself Every Time I Shaved. I Hadn't Laughed In 6 Years. I Tended To Worry When There Was Nothing To Worry About. And When There Was Something To Worry About, I Got Drunk.

If I'm An Ass, I Should Say So. If I Don't, Somebody Else Will. If I Say It First, That Disarms Them.

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

I Wasn't A Misanthrope And I Wasn't A Misogynist But I Liked Being Alone. It Felt Good To Sit Alone In A Small Space And Smoke And Drink. I Had Always Been Good Company For Myself.

I Was In Love Again. I Was In Trouble

I Knew I Was Strong, And Maybe Like They Said, "crazy." But I Had This Feeling Inside Of Me That Something Real Was There.

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.

The Crazy Ones Only Laugh When There Is No Reason To Laugh.

Nobody Ever Finds The One

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.

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

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

For Each Joan Of Arc There Is A Hitler Perched At The Other End Of The Teeter-totter.

The Streets Were Full Of Insane & Dull People. Most Of Them Lived In Nice Houses And Didn't Seem To Work, And You Wondered How They Did It.

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

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

A Dry Period For Me Means Perhaps Going Two Or Three Nights Without Writing. I Probably Have Dry Periods But I'm Not Aware Of Them And I Go On Writing, Only The Writing Probably Isn't Much Good.

My Dear, Find What You Love And Let It Kill You. Let It Drain You Of Your All. Let It Cling Onto Your Back And Weigh You Down Into Eventual Nothingness. Let It Kill You And Let It Devour Your Remains. For All Things Will Kill You, Both Slowly And Fastly, But It’s Much Better To Be Killed By A Lover. ~ Falsely Yours

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

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.

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.

…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.

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.

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

Never Trust A Man In A Jumpsuit

Never Trust A Man

People With No Morals Often Considered Themselves More Free, But Mostly They Lacked The Ability To Feel Or Love.

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

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

With Me, My Main Vision For Life Was To Avoid As Many People As Possible. The Less People I Saw The Better I Felt.

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

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

That's The Way It Ends. The Thin Edge Of The Wedge.

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.

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.

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

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.

Sometimes You Just Have To Pee In The Sink.

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

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

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

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

Humanity, You Never Had It From The Beginning." That Was My Motto.

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.

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.

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William Henry Ashley

Trevor Phillips

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