Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski Poems

we had goldfish and they circled around and around
in the bowl on the table near the heavy drapes
covering the picture window and
my mother, always smiling, wanting us all
...

the flesh covers the bone
and they put a mind
in there and
sometimes a soul,
...

Long walks at night--
that's what good for the soul:
peeking into windows
watching tired housewives
...

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
...

I see you drinking at a fountain with tiny
blue hands, no, your hands are not tiny
they are small, and the fountain is in France
where you wrote me that last letter and
...

Either peace or happiness,
let it enfold you
...

we are always asked
to understand the other person's
viewpoint
no matter how
...

shot in the eye
shot in the brain
shot in the ****
shot like a flower in the dance
...

To give life you must take life,
and as our grief falls flat and hollow
upon the billion-blooded sea
I pass upon serious inward-breaking shoals rimmed
...

washed-up, on shore, the old yellow notebook
out again
I write from the bed
as I did last
...

the best often die by their own hand
just to get away,
and those left behind
can never quite understand
...

it was on the 2nd floor on Coronado Street
I used to get drunk
and throw the radio through the window
while it was playing, and, of course,
...

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
...

waiting for death
like a cat
that will jump on the
bed
...

As the poems go into the thousands you
realize that you've created very
little.
...

she died of alcoholism
wrapped in a blanket
on a deck chair
on an ocean
...

I awaken about noon and go out to get the mail
in my old torn bathrobe.
I'm hung over
hair down in my eyes
...

I even hear the mountains
the way they laugh
up and down their blue sides
and down in the water
...

19.

at the track today,
Father's Day,
each paid admission was
entitled to a wallet
...

Charles Bukowski Biography

Charles Bukowski was an American writer and poet, born on August 16, 1920, in Andernach, Germany. He is known for his gritty, uncompromising style and his portrayal of the harsh realities of life for working-class Americans. Bukowski's family immigrated to the United States when he was a child, and he grew up in poverty in Los Angeles. He dropped out of high school and worked a variety of jobs, including as a dishwasher, factory worker, and post office clerk. He began writing poetry in his early twenties and eventually gained a following in the underground literary scene. Bukowski's work is characterized by its raw, honest portrayal of sex, alcohol, and other vices, as well as its vivid depictions of the seedy side of urban life. He published numerous collections of poetry and prose throughout his career, including "Love Is a Dog From Hell," "Women," and "Post Office," which drew on his own experiences working for the U.S. Postal Service. Bukowski's work was often controversial and divisive, with some critics dismissing it as crude and vulgar while others praised its honesty and authenticity. He also attracted a cult following of fans who admired his outsider persona and rebellious spirit. Bukowski struggled with alcoholism and other health problems throughout his life, and his personal relationships were often turbulent. However, he continued to write and publish until his death on March 9, 1994, at the age of 73. Despite his controversial reputation, Bukowski is now widely regarded as one of the most important writers of the 20th century. His work continues to be celebrated for its honesty, its willingness to confront difficult subjects, and its vivid, visceral style. Early Writing When Bukowski was 24, his short story, "Aftermath of a Lengthy Rejection Slip", was published in Story magazine. Two years later, another short story, "20 Tanks from Kasseldown", was published by the Black Sun Press in Issue III of Portfolio: An Intercontinental Quarterly, a limited-run, loose-leaf broadside collection printed in 1946 and edited by Caresse Crosby. Failing to break into the literary world, Bukowski grew disillusioned with the publication process and quit writing for almost a decade, a time that he referred to as a "ten-year drunk." These "lost years" formed the basis for his later semi-autobiographical chronicles, although they are fictionalized versions of Bukowski's life through his highly stylized alter-ego, Henry Chinaski. During part of this period he continued living in Los Angeles, working at a pickle factory for a short time but also spending some time roaming about the United States, working sporadically and staying in cheap rooming houses. In the early 1950s, Bukowski took a job as a fill-in letter carrier with the U.S. Postal Service in Los Angeles but resigned just before he reached three years' service. In 1955 he was treated for a near-fatal bleeding ulcer. After leaving the hospital he began to write poetry. In 1957 he agreed to marry small-town Texas poet Barbara Frye, sight unseen, but they divorced in 1959. According to Howard Sounes's Charles Bukowski: Locked in the Arms of a Crazy Life, she later died under mysterious circumstances in India. Following his divorce, Bukowski resumed drinking and continued writing poetry. 1960s By 1960, Bukowski had returned to the post office in Los Angeles where he began work as a letter filing clerk, a position he held for more than a decade. In 1962, he was traumatized by the death of Jane Cooney Baker, the object of his first serious romantic attachment. Bukowski turned his inner devastation into a series of poems and stories lamenting her death. Jane is considered to be the greatest love of his life and was the most important in a long series of muses who inspired his writing, according to biographer Jory Sherman. In 1964 a daughter, Marina Louise Bukowski, was born to Bukowski and his live-in girlfriend Frances Smith, whom he referred to as a "white-haired hippie," "shack-job," and "old snaggle-tooth.". Jon and Louise Webb, now recognized as giants of the post-war 'small-press movement', published The Outsider literary magazine and featured some of Bukowski's poetry. Under the Loujon Press imprint, they published Bukowski's It Catches My Heart in Its Hands in 1963 and Crucifix in a Deathhand in 1965. Beginning in 1967, Bukowski wrote the column "Notes of a Dirty Old Man" for Los Angeles' Open City, an underground newspaper. When Open City was shut down in 1969, the column was picked up by the Los Angeles Free Press as well as the hippie underground paper NOLA Express in New Orleans. In 1969 Bukowski and Neeli Cherkovski launched their own short-lived mimeographed literary magazine, Laugh Literary and Man the Humping Guns. They produced three issues over the next two years.

Black Sparrow Years of Charles Bukowski

In 1969 Bukowski accepted an offer from Black Sparrow Press publisher John Martin and quit his post office job to dedicate himself to full-time writing. He was then 49 years old. As he explained in a letter at the time, "I have one of two choices – stay in the post office and go crazy ... or stay out here and play at writer and starve. I have decided to starve." Less than one month after leaving the postal service he finished his first novel, Post Office. As a measure of respect for Martin's financial support and faith in a relatively unknown writer, Bukowski published almost all of his subsequent major works with Black Sparrow Press. An avid supporter of small independent presses, he continued to submit poems and short stories to innumerable small publications throughout his career. Bukowski embarked on a series of love affairs and one-night trysts. One of these relationships was with Linda King, a poet and sculptress. Critic Robert Peters viewed the debut of Linda King’s play The Tenant in which she and Bukowski starred back in the 1970s in Los Angeles. This play was a one-off performance. His other affairs were with a recording executive and a 23-year-old redhead; he wrote a book of poetry as a tribute of his love for the latter, titled, "Scarlet" (Black Sparrow Press, 1976). His various affairs and relationships provided material for his stories and poems. Another important relationship was with "Tanya", pseudonym of "Amber O'Neil" (also a pseudonym), described in Bukowski's "Women" as a pen-pal that evolved into a weekend tryst at Bukowski's residence in Los Angeles in the 1970s. "Amber O'Neil" later self-published a chapbook about the affair entitled "Blowing My Hero." In 1976, Bukowski met Linda Lee Beighle, a health food restaurant owner, aspiring actress and devotee of Meher Baba, leader of an Indian religious society. Two years later Bukowski moved from the East Hollywood area, where he had lived for most of his life, to the harborside community of San Pedro, the southernmost district of the City of Los Angeles. Beighle followed him and they lived together intermittently over the next two years. They were eventually married by Manly Palmer Hall, a Canadian-born author and mystic, in 1985. Beighle is referred to as "Sara" in Bukowski's novels Women and Hollywood.

How did Bukowski died?

Bukowski died of leukemia on March 9, 1994, in San Pedro, California, aged 73, shortly after completing his last novel, Pulp. The funeral rites, orchestrated by his widow, were conducted by Buddhist monks. An account of the proceedings can be found in Gerald Locklin's book Charles Bukowski: A Sure Bet. His gravestone reads: "Don't Try", a phrase which Bukowski uses in one of his poems, advising aspiring writers and poets about inspiration and creativity. Bukowski explained the phrase in a 1963 letter to John William Corrington: "Somebody at one of these places [...] asked me: 'What do you do? How do you write, create?' You don't, I told them. You don't try. That's very important: 'not' to try, either for Cadillacs, creation or immortality. You wait, and if nothing happens, you wait some more. It's like a bug high on the wall. You wait for it to come to you. When it gets close enough you reach out, slap out and kill it. Or if you like its looks you make a pet out of it." In 2007 and 2008 there was a movement to save Bukowski's bungalow at 5124 De Longpre Ave. from destruction. The campaign was spearheaded by preservationist Lauren Everett. The cause was covered extensively in the local and international press, including a feature in David S. Wills's Beatdom magazine, and was ultimately successful. The bungalow subsequently was listed as a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument called Bukowski Court. The cause was criticized by some as cheapening Bukowski's "outsider" reputation. Work Bukowski published extensively in small literary magazines and with small presses beginning in the early 1940s and continuing on through the early 1990s. These poems and stories were later republished by Black Sparrow Press (now HarperCollins/ECCO) as collected volumes of his work. In the 1980s he collaborated with illustrator Robert Crumb on a series of comic books, with Bukowski supplying the writing and Crumb providing the artwork. Bukowski also performed live readings of his works, beginning in 1962 on radio station KPFK in Los Angeles and increasing in frequency through the 1970s. Drinking was often a featured part of the readings, along with a combative banter with the audience. By the late 1970s Bukowski's income was sufficient to give up live readings. His last international performance was in October 1979 in Vancouver, British Columbia. It was released on DVD as There's Gonna Be a God Damn Riot in Here. In March 1980 he gave his very last reading at the Sweetwater club in Redondo Beach, which was released as Hostage on audio CD and The Last Straw on DVD. Bukowski often spoke of Los Angeles as his favorite subject. In a 1974 interview he said, "You live in a town all your life, and you get to know every bitch on the street corner and half of them you have already messed around with. You've got the layout of the whole land. You have a picture of where you are.... Since I was raised in L.A., I've always had the geographical and spiritual feeling of being here. I've had time to learn this city. I can't see any other place than L.A." One critic has described Bukowski's fiction as a "detailed depiction of a certain taboo male fantasy: the uninhibited bachelor, slobby, anti-social, and utterly free", an image he tried to live up to with sometimes riotous public poetry readings and boorish party behaviour. Since his death in 1994 Bukowski has been the subject of a number of critical articles and books about both his life and writings. His work has received relatively little attention from academic critics. ECCO continues to release new collections of his poetry, culled from the thousands of works published in small literary magazines. According to ECCO, the 2007 release The People Look Like Flowers At Last will be his final posthumous release as now all his once-unpublished work has been published. In June 2006 Bukowski's literary archive was donated by his widow to the Huntington Library in San Marino, California. Copies of all editions of his work published by the Black Sparrow Press are held at Western Michigan University which purchased the archive of the publishing house after its closure in 2003. Film Depictions Bukowski: Born Into This, a film documenting the author's life, was released in 2003. It features contributions from Sean Penn, Tom Waits, Harry Dean Stanton and Bono (U2's song "Dirty Day" was dedicated to Bukowski when released in 1993). In 1981, the Italian director Marco Ferreri made a film, Storie di ordinaria follia aka Tales of Ordinary Madness, loosely based on the short stories of Bukowski; Ben Gazzara played the role of Bukowski's character. Barfly, released in 1987, is a semi-autobiographical film written by Bukowski and starring Mickey Rourke as Henry Chinaski, who represents Bukowski, and Faye Dunaway as his lover Wanda Wilcox. Sean Penn had offered to play the part of Chinaski for as little as a dollar as long as his friend Dennis Hopper would provide direction, but the European director Barbet Schroeder had invested many years and thousands of dollars in the project and Bukowski felt Schroeder deserved to make it. Bukowski wrote the screenplay for the film and appears as a bar patron in a brief cameo. Also in 1987 a small Belgian film called Crazy Love came out, with script co-written by Bukowski himself. The film was loosely based upon 3 frequently-told episodes from his life. A film adaptation of Factotum, starring Matt Dillon, Lili Taylor, and Marisa Tomei, was released in 2005. In 2011, the actor James Franco publicly stated that he is in the process of making a film adaptation of Bukowski's novel Ham on Rye. He is currently writing the script with his brother David Franco and explained that his reason for wanting to make the film is because "Ham on Rye is one of my favorite books of all time.")

The Best Poem Of Charles Bukowski

A Smile To Remember

we had goldfish and they circled around and around
in the bowl on the table near the heavy drapes
covering the picture window and
my mother, always smiling, wanting us all
to be happy, told me, 'be happy Henry! '
and she was right: it's better to be happy if you
can
but my father continued to beat her and me several times a week while
raging inside his 6-foot-two frame because he couldn't
understand what was attacking him from within.

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

one day the goldfish died, all five of them,
they floated on the water, on their sides, their
eyes still open,
and when my father got home he threw them to the cat
there on the kitchen floor and we watched as my mother
smiled

Charles Bukowski Comments

Georgios Venetopoulos 13 July 2016

Bukowski is not a poet. He composes under the influence (intoxicated actually) and his writes are illogical and hellish, byproducts of his besotted thinking. Then, his devotees spend millions of minutes to exalt and explain his grandness in arbitrary compositions of ideas which follow the philosophy of whatever. Bukowski does not comprehend what 'verse means', his knowledge of the English language is elementary, his grammar is faulty but overall he manages to create an army of admirers who drink like him, compose like him and spit at the world like him.

19 232 Reply
Fynch Pisle 01 February 2022

Actually Georgios, Bukowski is a poet and just because you can't comprehend what he is writing about, does not mean that it is ok to bash him and his admirers. Thanks.

6 0
Vineet Chhikara 27 May 2013

Have a look at my poems... and rate them... i am sure you will like them.... :)

19 130 Reply
John Hardesty 06 July 2013

He's the type of man, after the meal's ate, the children are to bed, you bring out a gallon of whiskey, and drink till sun-up, and hope to God, you've absorbed enough of that night from him to last a lifetime! !

82 37 Reply
Swagger Mcjagger 09 January 2013

His writting has such a swagger to it. p.s. meatspin.com

29 78 Reply
shlomo zalman 12 December 2020

This is perhaps how I prefer to be accidentally meeting people while traversing towns and cities, parks and nature trails, Colorado, New Mexico and Canada. Maybe LA and San Francisco. Writing, reading, maybe performing a few poetry readings. Getting laid periodically. Which may not be too hard when women I meet find out I write poetry. Just sort of hanging out on the inside and fringes of life, materializing sometimes into something significant,

2 0 Reply
E. McKenzie 08 October 2020

Low opinion of women. His behaviour is deflected to the female

1 2 Reply
Rabithen 28 July 2020

I discovered this video a couple years ago and have watched it at least 10 times. It never fails to tickle my funny bone. Every time I see that female cockatoo and the fear in her eyes putting up her foot as if to say ” no closer buddy” I burst out laughing, along with the sheer groov’n of the male- wow what a dancer! > > > > > > > > > topbestjob

1 2 Reply
Soran M. H 07 February 2020

gambling, drinking, women, homelessness are the main cause and dynamo of his brilliant poetry inspirations, thankfully his works has translated into so many different languages..

19 0 Reply
M Asim Nehal 14 January 2019

His poems are delight to read.

4 2 Reply

Charles Bukowski Quotes

If you want to know who your friends are, get yourself a jail sentence.

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.

You begin saving the world by saving one man at a time; all else is grandiose romanticism or politics.

Show me a man who lives alone and has a perpetually clean kitchen, and 8 times out of 9 I'll show you a man with detestable spiritual qualities.

“Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must lead.”

“Do you hate people?” “I dont hate them...I just feel better when theyre not around.”

“For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who cant readily accept the God formula, the big answers dont remain stone-written. 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.”

“Sometimes you climb out of bed in the morning and you think, Im not going to make it, but you laugh inside — remembering all the times youve felt that way.”

“what matters most is how well you walk through the fire”

“Were all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesnt. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities, we are eaten up by nothing.”

“If youre going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, dont even start. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives and maybe even your mind. It could mean not eating for three or four days. It could mean freezing on a park bench. It could mean jail. It could mean derision. It could mean mockery--isolation. Isolation is the gift. All the others are a test of your endurance, of how much you really want to do it. And, youll do it, despite rejection and the worst odds. And it will be better than anything else you can imagine. If youre 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. Its the only good fight there is.”

“My ambition is handicapped by laziness”

“You have to die a few times before you can really live.”

“Thats 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 wanted the whole world or nothing.”

“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”

“The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence.”

“there is a loneliness in this world so great that you can see it in the slow movement of the hands of a clock. people so tired mutilated either by love or no love. people just are not good to each other one on one. the rich are not good to the rich the poor are not good to the poor. we are afraid. our educational system tells us that we can all be big-ass winners. it hasnt told us about the gutters or the suicides. or the terror of one person aching in one place alone untouched unspoken to watering a plant.”

“there are worse things than being alone but it often takes decades to realize this and most often when you do its too late and theres nothing worse than too late”

“An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way.”

“If youre losing your soul and you know it, then youve still got a soul left to lose”

“Real loneliness is not necessarily limited to when you are alone.”

“Some lose all mind and become soul,insane. some lose all soul and become mind, intellectual. some lose both and become accepted”

“I loved you like a man loves a woman he never touches, only writes to, keeps little photographs of.”

“being alone never felt right. sometimes it felt good, but it never felt right.”

“I felt like crying but nothing came out. it was just a sort of sad sickness, sick sad, when you cant 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.”

“Boring damned people. All over the earth. Propagating more boring damned people. What a horror show. The earth swarmed with them.”

“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, and I will remember your small room the feel of you the light in the window your records your books our morning coffee our noons our nights our bodies spilled together sleeping the tiny flowing currents immediate and forever your leg my leg your arm my arm your smile and the warmth of you who made me laugh again.”

“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.”

“those who escape hell however never talk about it and nothing much bothers them after that.”

A love like that was a serious illness, an illness from which you never entirely recover.”

“Theres a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out but Im too tough for him, I say, stay in there, Im not going to let anybody see you.”

“Poetry is what happens when nothing else can.”

“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.”

“Of course its possible to love a human being if you dont know them too well.”

“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 youre allowed to return to life and begin all over the next day. Its like killing yourself, and then youre reborn. I guess Ive lived about ten or fifteen thousand lives now.”

“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”

“It was true that I didn’t have much ambition, but there ought to be a place for people without ambition, I mean a better place than the one usually reserved. How in the hell could a man enjoy being awakened at 6:30 a.m. by an alarm clock, leap out of bed, dress, force-feed, shit, piss, brush teeth and hair, and fight traffic to get to a place where essentially you made lots of money for somebody else and were asked to be grateful for the opportunity to do so?”

“I remember awakening one morning and finding everything smeared with the color of forgotten love.”

“People with no morals often considered themselves more free, but mostly they lacked the ability to feel or love.”

“Sometimes you just have to pee in the sink.”

“Nothing was ever in tune. People just blindly grabbed at whatever there was: communism, health foods, zen, surfing, ballet, hypnotism, group encounters, orgies, biking, herbs, Catholicism, weight-lifting, travel, withdrawal, vegetarianism, India, painting, writing, sculpting, composing, conducting, backpacking, yoga, copulating, gambling, drinking, hanging around, frozen yogurt, Beethoven, Back, Buddha, Christ, TM, H, carrot juice, suicide, handmade suits, jet travel, New York City, and then it all evaporated and fell apart. People had to find things to do while waiting to die. I guess it was nice to have a choice.”

“I stopped looking for a Dream Girl, I just wanted one that wasnt a nightmare.”

“Pain is strange. A cat killing a bird, a car accident, a fire.... Pain arrives, BANG, and there it is, it sits on you. Its real. And to anybody watching, you look foolish. Like youve suddenly become an idiot. Theres no cure for it unless you know somebody who understands how you feel, and knows how to help.”

“there is a loneliness in this world so great that you can see it in the slow movement of the hands of a clock”

“Baby," I said, "Im a genius but nobody knows it but me.”

“there is always one woman to save you from another and as that woman saves you she makes ready to destroy”

“The shortest distance between two points is often unbearable.”

“my beerdrunk soul is sadder than all the dead christmas trees of the world.”

“Lifes as kind as you let it be.”

Charles Bukowski Popularity

Charles Bukowski Popularity

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