the goldfish sing all night with guitars,
and the whores go down with the stars,
the whores go down with the stars
-Rhyming Poem by Charles Bukowski

when you’re young
a pair of
female
high-heeled shoes
just sitting
alone
in the closet
can fire your
bones;
when you’re old
it’s just
a pair of shoes
without
anybody
in them
and
just as well.
-Charles Bukowski

I took my girlfriend to your last poetry reading,
she said.
yes, yes? I asked.
she’s young and pretty, she said.
and? I asked.
she hated your
guts
-Short Order by Charles Bukowski

I can’t have it
and you can’t have it
and we won’t
get it
so don’t bet on it
or even think about
it
just get out of bed
each morning
wash
shave
clothe yourself
and go out into
it
because
outside of that
all that’s left is
suicide and
madness
so you just
can’t
expect too much
you can’t even
expect
so what you do is
work from a modest
minimal
base
like when you
walk outside
be glad your car
might possibly
be there
and if it is-
that the tires
aren’t flat
then you get
in
and if it
starts-you
start.
and
it’s the damndest
movie
you’ve ever
seen
because
you’re
in it-
low budget
and
4

she was a short one
getting fat and she had once been
beautiful and
she drank the wine
she drank the wine in bed and
talked and screamed and cursed at
me and i told her
-Sleep by Charles Bukowski

he said, “I was working in Hollywood when Faulkner was
working in Hollywood and he was
the worst: he was too drunk to stand up at the
end of the afternoon and so I had to help him
into a taxi
day after day after day.
“but when he left Hollywood, I stayed on, and while I
didn’t drink like that maybe I should have, I might have
had the guts then to follow him and get

the words have come and gone,
I sit ill.
the phone rings, the cats sleep.
Linda vacuums.
I am waiting to live,
waiting to die.
-So Now? by Charles Bukowski

some people never go crazy.
me, sometimes I’ll lie down behind the couch
for 3 or 4 days.
they’ll find me there.
it’s Cherub, they’ll say, and
they pour wine down my throat
rub my chest
sprinkle me with oils.
-Charles Bukowski

we have everything and we have nothing
and some men do it in churches
and some men do it by tearing butterflies
in half
and some men do it in Palm Springs
laying it into butterblondes
with Cadillac souls
Cadillacs and butterflies
nothing and everything,
the face melting down to the last puff
in a cellar in Corpus Christi.
there’s something for the touts, the nuns,
the grocery clerks and you . . .
something at 8 a.m., something in the library
something

the illusion is that you are simply
reading this poem.
the reality is that this is
more than a poem.
this is a beggar’s knife.
this is a tulip.
this is a soldier marching
through Madrid.
this is you on your
death bed.
this is Li Po laughing
underground.
this is not a god-damned poem.
this is a horse asleep.
a butterfly in
your brain.
this is the devil’s circus.
you are not reading this
on a page.
the page is reading you.
feel it?
it’s like a cobra. it’s

sway with me, everything sad
madmen in stone houses
without doors,
lepers steaming love and song
frogs trying to figure
the sky;
sway with me, sad things
fingers split on a forge
old age like breakfast shell
used books, used people
used flowers, used love
I need you
I need you
I need you:
it has run away
like a horse or a dog,
dead or lost
or unforgiving.
-Charles

you may not believe it
but there are people
who go through life with
very little
friction or
distress.
they dress well, eat
well, sleep well.
they are contented with
their family
life.
they have moments of
grief
but all in all
they are undisturbed
and often feel
very good.
and when they die
it is an easy
death, usually in their
sleep.
-The Aliens, -Charles Bukowski

lonely as a dry and used orchard
spread over the earth
for use and surrender.
shot down like an ex-pug selling
dailies on the corner.
taken by tears like
an aging chorus girl
who has gotten her last check.
a hanky is in order your lord your
worship.
the blackbirds are rough today
like
ingrown toenails
in an overnight
jail-
wine wine whine,
the blackbirds run around and
fly around
harping about
Spanish melodies and bones.
and everywhere is
nowhere-
the dream is as bad as
flapjacks and flat tires:
why do we

too much too little
too fat
too thin
or nobody.
laughter or
tears
haters
lovers
strangers with faces like
the backs of
thumb tacks
armies running through
streets of blood
waving winebottles
bayoneting and fucking
virgins.
an old guy in a cheap room
with a photograph of M. Monroe.
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

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
and the best at hate are those who preach love
and the best at war finally are those who preach peace
those who preach god, need god

those who preach peace do not have peace
those who preach peace do not have love
beware the

the German hotel was very strange and expensive and had
double doors to the rooms, very thick doors, and it over-
looked the park and the vasser tern and in the mornings
it was usually too late for breakfast and the maids
would be everywhere changing sheets and bringing in
towels, but you never saw any hotel guests, only the
maids and the desk man and the day desk man was all
right because we were

I was always a natural slob
I liked to lay upon the bed
in undershirt (stained, of
course)
(and with cigarette holes)
–
shoes off
beerbottle in hand
trying to shake off a
difficult night, say with a
woman still around
walking the floor
complaining about this and
that,
and I’d work up a
belch and say,
–
“HEY, YOU DON’T
LIKE IT? THEN GET YOUR ASS
OUT OF HERE!”
–
I really loved myself, I
really loved my slob-
self, and
they seemed to also:
always leaving
but almost
always
coming
back.

he came to the door one night wet thin beaten and
terrorized
a white cross-eyed tailless cat
I took him in and fed him and he stayed
grew to trust me until a friend drove up the driveway
and ran him over
I took what was left to a vet who said,
“not much chance…give him these pills…his backbone
is crushed, but is was crushed before and somehow
mended, if he lives he’ll never walk, look at
these x-rays,

They are building a house
half a block down
and I sit up here
with the shades down
listening to the sounds,
the hammers pounding in nails,
thack thack thack thack,
and then I hear birds,
and thack thack thack,
and I go to bed,
I pull the covers to my throat;
they have been building this house
for a month, and soon it will have
its people…sleeping, eating,
loving, moving around,
but somehow now-
it is not right,
there seems a madness,
men walk on top

the lady has me temporarily off the bottle
and now the pecker stands up
better.
however, things change overnight-
instead of listening to Shostakovich and
Mozart through a smeared haze of smoke-
the nights change, new
complexities:
we drive to Baskin-Robbins,
31 flavors:
Rocky Road, Bubble Gum, Apricot Ice, Strawberry
Cheesecake, Chocolate Mint…
we park outside and look at icecream
people
a very healthy and satisfied people,
nary a potential suicide in sight
(they probably even vote)
and I tell her
“what if the boys saw me

stuck in the rain on the freeway, 6:15 p.m.,
these are the lucky ones, these are the
dutifully employed, most with their radios on as loud
as possible as they try not to think or remember.
this is our new civilization: as men
once lived in trees and caves now they live
in their automobiles and on freeways as-
the local news is heard again and again while
we shift from first gear to second and back

if I suffer at this
typewriter
think how I’d feel
among the lettuce-
pickers of Salinas?
-The Meek Shall Inherit The Earth by Charles Bukowski

and the sun weilds mercy
but like a jet torch carried to high,
and the jets whip across its sight
and rockets leap like toads,
and the boys get out the maps
and pin-cuishon the moon,
old green cheese,
no life there but too much on earth:
our unwashed India boys
crosssing their legs,playing pipes,
starving with sucked in bellies,
watching the snakes volute
like beautiful women in the hungry air;
the rockets leap,
the rockets leap like hares,
clearing clump and dog
replacing out-dated

in the hospitals and jails
it’s the worst
in madhouses
it’s the worst
in penthouses
it’s the worst
in skid row flophouses
it’s the worst
at poetry readings
at rock concerts
at benefits for the disabled
it’s the worst
at funerals
at weddings
it’s the worst
at parades
at skating rinks
at sexual orgies
it’s the worst
at midnight
at 3 a.m.
at 5:45 p.m.
it’s the worst
-The Worst And The Best by Charles Bukowski

these things that we support most well
have nothing to do with up,
and we do with them
out of boredom or fear or money
or cracked intelligence;
our circle and our candle of light
being small,
so small we cannot bear it,
we heave out with Idea
and lose the Center:
all wax without the wick,
and we see names that once meant
wisdom,
like signs into ghost towns,
and only the graves are real.