between the shadow and the soul

all right, lay on the rain.
lay the rain on.
lay it on.
on the roof.
I hear it on the roof.
I know that it soothes
old wounds and
new.
then too,
one always remembers
the times when there
was no roof
and it
rained.
one does not forget
that.

it will rain all this
night
and we will sleep
transfixed by the dark
water
as our blood runs through
our fragile
life.

lay the rain on.

the divine
broth.

by Charles Bukowski

self-congratulatory nonsense as the
famous gather to applaud their seeming
greatness
you
wonder where
the real ones are
what
giant cave
hides them
as
the deathly talentless
bow to
accolades
as
the fools are
fooled
again
you
wonder where
the real ones are
if there are
real ones.
this self-congratulatory nonsense
has lasted
decades
and
with some exceptions
centuries.
this
is so dreary
is so absolutely pitiless
it
churns the gut to
powder
shackles hope
it
makes little things
like
pulling up a shade
or
putting on your shoes
or
walking out on the street
more difficult
near
damnable
as
the famous gather to
applaud their
seeming
greatness
as
the fools are
fooled
again
humanity
you sick
motherfucker.

by Charles Bukowski

either peace or happiness,
let it enfold you

when I was a young man
I felt these things were
dumb, unsophisticated.
I had bad blood, a twisted
mind, a precarious
upbringing.

I was hard as granite, I
leered at the
sun.
I trusted no man and
especially no
woman.

I was living a hell in
small rooms, I broke
things, smashed things,
walked through glass,
cursed.
I challenged everything,
was continually being
evicted, jailed,in and
out of fights, in and out
of my mind.
women were something
to screw and rail
at, I had no male
freinds,

I changed jobs and
cities, I hated holidays,
babies, history,
newspapers, museums,
grandmothers,
marriage, movies,
spiders, garbagemen,
english accents,spain,
france,italy,walnuts and
the color
orange.
algebra angred me,
opera sickened me,
charlie chaplin was a
fake
and flowers were for
pansies.

peace an happiness to me
were signs of
inferiority,
tenants of the weak
an
addled
mind.

but as I went on with
my alley fights,
my suicidal years,
my passage through
any number of
women-it gradually
began to occur to
me
that I wasn’t different

from the
others, I was the same,

they were all fulsome
with hatred,
glossed over with petty
greivances,
the men I fought in
alleys had hearts of stone.
everybody was nudging,
inching, cheating for
some insignificant
advantage,
the lie was the
weapon and the
plot was
empty,
darkness was the
dictator.

cautiously, I allowed
myself to feel good
at times.
I found moments of
peace in cheap
rooms
just staring at the
knobs of some
dresser
or listening to the
rain in the
dark.
the less I needed
the better I
felt.

maybe the other life had worn me
down.
I no longer found
glamour
in topping somebody
in conversation.
or in mounting the
body of some poor
drunken female
whose life had
slipped away into
sorrow.

I could never accept
life as it was,
i could never gobble
down all its
poisons
but there were parts,
tenous magic parts
open for the
asking.

I re formulated
I don’t know when,
date, time, all
that
but the change
occured.
something in me
relaxed, smoothed
out.
i no longer had to
prove that I was a
man,

I did’nt have to prove
anything.

I began to see things:
coffee cups lined up
behind a counter in a
cafe.
or a dog walking along
a sidewalk.
or the way the mouse
on my dresser top
stopped there
with its body,
its ears,
its nose,
it was fixed,
a bit of life
caught within itself
and its eyes looked
at me
and they were
beautiful.
then- it was
gone.

I began to feel good,
I began to feel good
in the worst situations
and there were plenty
of those.
like say, the boss
behind his desk,
he is going to have
to fire me.

I’ve missed too many
days.
he is dressed in a
suit, necktie, glasses,
he says, ‘I am going
to have to let you go’

‘it’s all right’ I tell
him.

He must do what he
must do, he has a
wife, a house, children.
expenses, most probably
a girlfreind.

I am sorry for him
he is caught.

I walk onto the blazing
sunshine.
the whole day is
mine
temporailiy,
anyhow.

(the whole world is at the
throat of the world,
everybody feels angry,
short-changed, cheated,
everybody is despondent,
dissillusioned)

I welcomed shots of
peace, tattered shards of
happiness.

I embraced that stuff
like the hottest number,
like high heels, breasts,
singing,the
works.

(dont get me wrong,
there is such a thing as cockeyed optimism
that overlooks all
basic problems just for
the sake of
itself-
this is a shield and a
sickness.)

The knife got near my
throat again,
I almost turned on the
gas
again
but when the good
moments arrived
again
I did’nt fight them off
like an alley
adversary.
I let them take me,
i luxuriated in them,
I bade them welcome
home.
I even looked into
the mirror
once having thought
myself to be
ugly,
I now liked what
I saw,almost
handsome, yes,
a bit ripped and
ragged,
scares, lumps,
odd turns,
but all in all,
not too bad,
almost handsome,
better at least than
some of those movie
star faces
like the cheeks of
a baby’s
butt.

and finally I discovered
real feelings of
others,
unheralded,
like lately,
like this morning,
as I was leaving,
for the track,
i saw my wife in bed,
just the
shape of
her head there
(not forgetting
centuries of the living
and the dead and
the dying,
the pyramids,
Mozart dead
but his music still
there in the
room, weeds growing,
the earth turning,
the toteboard waiting for
me)
I saw the shape of my
wife’s head,
she so still,
I ached for her life,
just being there
under the
covers.

I kissed her in the,
forehead,
got down the stairway,
got outside,
got into my marvelous
car,
fixed the seatbelt,
backed out the
drive.
feeling warm to
the fingertips,
down to my
foot on the gas
pedal,
I entered the world
once
more,
drove down the
hill
past the houses
full and empty
of
people,
I saw the mailman,
honked,
he waved
back
at me.

by Charles Bukowski

the nights you fight best
are
when all the weapons are pointed
at you,
when all the voices
hurl their insults
while the dream is being
strangled.

the nights you fight best
are
when reason gets
kicked in the
gut,
when the chariots of
gloom
encircle
you.

the nights you fight best
are
when the laughter of fools
fills the
air,
when the kiss of death is
mistaken for
love.

the nights you fight best
are
when the game is
fixed,
when the crowd screams
for your
blood.

the nights you fight best
are
on a night like
this
as you chase a thousand
dark rats from
your brain,
as you rise up against the
impossible,
as you become a brother
to the tender sister
of joy and

move on

regardless.

by Charles Bukowski from Slouching Toward Nirvana

some want me to go on writing about whores
and puking.

others say that type of thing disgusts
them.

well, I don’t miss the
whores

although now and then one or another makes an
attempt to locate
me.

I don’t know if they miss all the booze and
the bit of money I gave them

or if they are enthralled at the way
I’ve immortalized them in
literature.

anyhow, they must now make do with
whatever men
they are able to scrounge
up.

—those poor darlings had no
idea …

and neither did I
that those ugly roaring nights
would be fodder

such as even
Dostoevski
would not shy away
from.

by Charles Bukowski from You Get So Alone At Times That It Just Makes Sense (1986)

girl in shorts, biting your nails, revolving your ass,
the boys are looking at you—-
you hold more, it seems,
than Gauguin or Brahma or Balzac,
more, at least, than the skulls that swim at our feet,
your swagger breaks the Eiffel tower,
turns the heads of old newsboys long ago gone
sexually to pot;
your caged malarkey, your idiot’s dance,
mugging it, delightful—-don’t ever wash stained under-
wear or chase your acts of love
through neighborhood alleys—-
don’t spoil it for us,
putting on weight and weariness,
settling for TV and a namby-pamby husband;
don’t give up that absurd dispossessed wiggle
to water a Saturday’s front lawn—-
don’t send us back to Balzac or introspection
or Paris
or wine, don’t send us back
to the incubation of our doubts or the memory
of death-wiggle, bitch, madden us with love
and hunger, keep the sharks, the bloody sharks,
from the heart.

by Charles Bukowski from The Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over the Hills (1969)

ignore all possible concepts and possibilities—-
ignore Beethoven, the spider, the damnation of Faust—-
just make it, babe, make it:
a house a car a belly full of beans
pay your taxes
fuck
and if you can’t fuck
copulate.
make money but don’t work too
hard—-make somebody else pay to
make it—-and
don’t smoke too much but drink enough to
relax, and
stay off the streets
wipe your ass real good
use a lot of toilet paper
it’s bad manners to let people know you shit or
could smell like it
if you weren’t
careful.

by Charles Bukowski, from Mockingbird Wish Me Luck (1972)

it feels good
to be driven about in a red
porsche
by a woman better-
read than I
am.
it feels good
to be driven about in a red
porsche
by a woman who can explain
things about
classical
music to
me.

it feels good
to be driven about in a red
porsche
by a woman who buys
things for my refrigerator
and my
kitchen:
cherries, plums, lettuce, celery,
green onions, brown onions,
eggs, muffins, long
chilis, brown sugar,
Italian seasoning, oregano, white
wine vinegar, pompeian olive oil
and red
radishes.

I like being driven about
in a red porsche
while I smoke cigarettes in
gentle languor.
I’m lucky. I’ve always been
lucky:
even when I was starving to death
the bands were playing for
me.
but the red porsche is very nice
and she is
too, and
I’ve learned to feel good when
I feel good.

it’s better to be driven around in a
red porsche
than to own
one. the luck of the fool is
inviolate.

by Charles Bukowski from Play the Piano Drunk Like a Percussion Instrument Until The Fingers Begin To Bleed a Bit (1979)

red summers and black satin
charcoal and blood
ringing the sheets
while snails are stepped on
and moths go batty
trying to put on the eyes
of lightbulbs in
artificial cities;
I light her a cigarette
and she blows up a plasma
of relaxation
to prove we’ve both been
good lovers—-
white on black, and in black;
and her toes strike dark
intersections
in my beefy sheets
she says, that elevator boy …
y’know him?
I say yes.
a bastard … beats his wife.
I put my hand
flat to the surface
where the curve goes down.
damn for an OLD man,
you sure likes to play!
I reach over and pick up
the bottle, suck it down
flat on my back,
the suds like soap
gagging me with gulp-dull
sounds, and she’s listening,
eyes rolling
like newsreel cameras,
and suddenly I have got to laugh,
I spiral out a whale-stream
of foam and liquid
majestic against the wallpaper
not knowing why,
and she laughs
looking down at my flat madness,
she laughs
holding her cigarette
high in the air
with one arm
smoke sifting off
ignored
and we are in bed together
laughing
and we don’t care
about anything
and it is very
very funny.

by Charles Bukowski from Burning in Water Drowning in Flame: Selected Poems 1955-1973

at one time
when I was 16 
a few writers gave me
my only hope and
chance.

my father disliked
books and
my mother disliked
books (because my father
disliked books)
especially those I brought back
from the library:
D. H. Lawrence
Dostoevsky
Turgenev
Gorky
A. Huxley
Sinclair Lewis
others.

I had my own bedroom
but at 8 p.m.
we were all supposed to go to sleep:
“Early to bed and early to rise
makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise,”
my father would say.

“LIGHTS OUT!” he would shout.

then I would take the bed lamp
place it under the covers
and with the heat and hidden light
I would continue to read:
Ibsen
Shakespeare
Chekov
Jeffers

Thurber
Conrad Aiken
others.

they gave me a chance and some hope
in a place of no chance
no hope, no feeling.

I worked for it.
it got hot under the covers.
sometimes the sheets would begin to smoke
then I’d switch the lamp off,
hold it outside to
cool off.

without those books
I’m not quite sure
how I would have turned
out:
raving; the
murderer of the father;
idiocy;
hopelessness.

when my father shouted
“LIGHTS OUT!”
I’m sure he feared
the well-written word
immortalized
forever
in our best and
most interesting
literature.

and it was there
for me
close to me
under the covers
more woman than woman
more man than man.

I had it all
and
I took it.

by Charles Bukowski from Bone Palace Ballet: New Poems (1997)