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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.

-Charles Bukowski

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Pull A String, A

Charles Bukowski

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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.

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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.

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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.

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.

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Mercy, I Think, Doesn't The Human Race Know Anything About Mercy?

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

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

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It's Just That The Grape Has Me Down.

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

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

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Without Literature, Life Is Hell.

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

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

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

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

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It’s Never Quite Right, All The Things We Are Taught, All The Loves We Chase, All The Deaths We Die, All The Lives We Live.

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 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.

Do Some Living And Get Yourself A Typewriter.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

The Street To My Left Was Backed Up With Traffic And I Watched The People Waiting Patiently In The Cars. There Was Almost Always A Man And A Women, Staring Straight Ahead, Not Talking. It Was, Finally, For Everyone, A Matter Of Waiting. You Waited And You Waited- For The Hospital, The Doctor, The Plumber, The Madhouse, The Jail, Papa Death Himself. First The Signal Red, Then The Signal Was Green. The Citizens Of The World Ate Food And Watched T.v. And Worried About Their Jobs Or Lack Of The Same, While They Waited.

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

This Is A World Where Everybody’s Gotta Do Something. Ya Know, Somebody Laid Down This Rule That Everybody’s Gotta Do Something, They Gotta Be Something. You Know, A Dentist, A Glider Pilot, A Narc, A Janitor, A Preacher, All That . . . Sometimes I Just Get Tired Of Thinking Of All The Things That I Don’t Wanna Do. All The Things That I Don’t Wanna Be. Places I Don’t Wanna Go, Like India, Like Getting My Teeth Cleaned. Save The Whale, All That, I Don’t Understand That . . .

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

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

We Are Here To Laugh At The Odds.

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

If You Can Hit A Guy Once, You Can Hit Him Twice.

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.

The Way To Create Art Is To Burn And Destroy Ordinary Concepts And To Substitute Them With New Truths That Run Down From The Top Of The Head And Out Of The Heart

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.

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.

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 Want To Let Her Know Though That All The Nights Sleeping Beside Her Even The Useless Arguments Were Things Ever Splendid And The Hard Words I Ever Feared To Say Can Now Be Said: I Love You.

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

A Woman Is A Full Time Job. You Have To Choose Your Profession.

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.

There's No Clarity. There Was Never Meant To Be Clarity.

Writing Is Something That You Don't Know How To Do. You Sit Down And It's Something That Happens, Or It May Not Happen. So, How Can You Teach Anybody How To Write? It's Beyond Me, Because You Yourself Don't Even Know If You're Going To Be Able To. I'm Always Worried, Well, You Know, Every Time I Go Upstairs With My Wine Bottle. Sometimes I'll Sit At That Typewriter For Fifteen Minutes, You Know. I Don't Go Up There To Write. The Typewriter's Up There. If It Doesn't Start Moving, I Say, Well This Could Be The Night That I Hit The Dust.

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

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

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

You Can Steal My Women But Don't Play With My Whiskey.

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.

You've Got To Burn Straight Up And Down And Then Maybe Sidewise For A While And Have Your Guts Scrambled By A Bully And The Demonic Ladies, You've Got To Run Along The Edge Of Madness Teetering, You've Got To Starve Like A Winter Alleycat, You've Go To Live With The Imbecility Of At Least A Dozen Cities, Then Maybe Maybe Maybe You Might Know Where You Are For A Tiny Blinking Moment.

Sometimes I Get Too Exhausted To Even Feel Bad

The Shortest Distance Between Two Points Is Often Unbearable.

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

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.

You Don't Go On "probably" When Love And Guns Are In Hand.

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.

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?

I Would Certainly End Up Forever Crying The Blues Into A Coffee Cup In A Park For Old Men Playing Chess Or Silly Games Of Some Sort.

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

I Went To The Bathroom And Threw Some Water On My Face, Combed My Hair. If I Could Only Comb That Face, I Thought, But I Can't.

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

There Is Light Somewhere.

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

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

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.

Knowledge Without Follow-through Is Worse Than No Knowledge.

We Are Born Like This Into This Into These Carefully Mad Wars Into The Sight Of Broken Factory Windows Of Emptiness Into Bars Where People No Longer Speak To Each Other Into Fist Fights That End As Shootings And Knifings Born Into This Into Hospitals Which Are So Expensive That It’s Cheaper To Die Into Lawyers Who Charge So Much It’s Cheaper To Plead Guilty Into A Country Where The Jails Are Full And The Madhouses Closed Into A Place Where The Masses Elevate Fools Into Rich Heroes

I Always Started A Job With The Feeling That I'd Soon Quit Or Be Fired, And This Gave Ma A Relaxex Manner That Was Mistaken For Intelligence Or Some Secret Power.

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

Human Experience

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.

She Was Consumed By 3 Simple Things: Drink, Despair, Loneliness; And 2 More: Youth And Beauty

You Have My Soul And I Have Your Money

The Difference Between A Brave Man And A Coward Is A Coward Thinks Twice Before Jumping In The Cage With A Lion. The Brave Man Doesn't Know What A Lion Is. He Just Thinks He Does.

The Pest, In A Sense, Is A Very Superior Being To Us: He Knows Where To Find Us And How--usually In The Bath Or In Sexual Intercourse Or Asleep.

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

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.

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.

I Just Want A Hot Cup Of Coffee,black,and I Don’t Want To Hear About Your Troubles.

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

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?

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

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.

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

And Love Was Lightning And Remembrance

I Was An Agnostic. Agnostics Didn't Have Much To Argue About.

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)

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

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.

My Ambition Is Handicapped By Laziness

Sexual Intercourse Is Kicking Death In The Ass While Singing.

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.

They Simply Never Understand, Do They, That Sometimes Solitude Is One Of The Most Beautiful Things On Earth?

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

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.

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

People Who Believe In Politics Are Like People Who Believe In God: They Are Sucking Wind Through Bent Straws.

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 .

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

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.

It Began As A Mistake.

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

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.

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.

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

There Still Might Be A Place For Us Somewhere.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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George Santayana

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