“so you want to be a writer” by Charles Bukowski

if it doesn’t come bursting out of you
in spite of everything,
don’t do it.
unless it comes unasked out of your
heart and your mind and your mouth
and your gut,
don’t do it.
if you have to sit for hours
staring at your computer screen
or hunched over your
typewriter
searching for words,
don’t do it.
if you’re doing it for money or
fame,
don’t do it.
if you’re doing it because you want
women in your bed,
don’t do it.
if you have to sit there and
rewrite it again and again,
don’t do it.
if it’s hard work just thinking about doing it,
don’t do it.
if you’re trying to write like somebody
else,
forget about it.
if you have to wait for it to roar out of
you,
then wait patiently.
if it never does roar out of you,
do something else.

if you first have to read it to your wife
or your girlfriend or your boyfriend
or your parents or to anybody at all,
you’re not ready.

don’t be like so many writers,
don’t be like so many thousands of
people who call themselves writers,
don’t be dull and boring and
pretentious, don’t be consumed with self-
love.
the libraries of the world have
yawned themselves to
sleep
over your kind.
don’t add to that.
don’t do it.
unless it comes out of
your soul like a rocket,
unless being still would
drive you to madness or
suicide or murder,
don’t do it.
unless the sun inside you is
burning your gut,
don’t do it.

when it is truly time,
and if you have been chosen,
it will do it by
itself and it will keep on doing it
until you die or it dies in you.

there is no other way.

and there never was.

- Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski

Writing

often it is the only
thing
between you and
impossibility.
no drink,
no woman’s love,
no wealth
can
match it.

- Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski

Raw With Love

little dark girl with
kind eyes
when it comes time to
use the knife
I won’t flinch and
I won’t blame
you,
as I drive along the shore alone
as the palms wave,
the ugly heavy palms,
as the living does not arrive
as the dead do not leave,
I won’t blame you,
instead
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.
little dark girl with kind eyes
you have no
knife. the knife is
mine and I won’t use it
yet.

Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski

The Shoelace

a woman, a
tire that’s flat, a
disease, a
desire: fears in front of you,
fears that hold so still
you can study them
like pieces on a
chessboard…
it’s not the large things that
send a man to the
madhouse. death he’s ready for, or
murder, incest, robbery, fire, flood…
no, it’s the continuing series of small tragedies
that send a man to the
madhouse…
not the death of his love
but a shoelace that snaps
with no time left …
The dread of life
is that swarm of trivialities
that can kill quicker than cancer
and which are always there -
license plates or taxes
or expired driver’s license,
or hiring or firing,
doing it or having it done to you, or
roaches or flies or a
broken hook on a
screen, or out of gas
or too much gas,
the sink’s stopped-up, the landlord’s drunk,
the president doesn’t care and the governor’s
crazy.
light switch broken, mattress like a
porcupine;
$105 for a tune-up, carburetor and fuel pump at
sears roebuck;
and the phone bill’s up and the market’s
down
and the toilet chain is
broken,
and the light has burned out -
the hall light, the front light, the back light,
the inner light; it’s
darker than hell
and twice as
expensive.
then there’s always crabs and ingrown toenails
and people who insist they’re
your friends;
there’s always that and worse;
leaky faucet, christ and christmas;
blue salami, 9 day rains,
50 cent avocados
and purple
liverwurst.

or making it
as a waitress at norm’s on the split shift,
or as an emptier of
bedpans,
or as a carwash or a busboy
or a stealer of old lady’s purses
leaving them screaming on the sidewalks
with broken arms at the age of 80.

suddenly
2 red lights in your rear view mirror
and blood in your
underwear;
toothache, and $979 for a bridge
$300 for a gold
tooth,
and china and russia and america, and
long hair and short hair and no
hair, and beards and no
faces, and plenty of zigzag but no
pot, except maybe one to piss in
and the other one around your
gut.

with each broken shoelace
out of one hundred broken shoelaces,
one man, one woman, one
thing
enters a
madhouse.

so be careful
when you
bend over.

Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski

 

 

the great lover

I mean, at that place in east Hollywood
I was so often with the hardest numbers
in town
I don’t speak as a misogynist
I had other people ask me,
“what the hell are you doing, anyhow?”

these were floozies, killers, blanks

they had bodies, hair, eyes, legs
parts
but, say, take one of them, it was like
sitting there with a shark dressed in a
dress, high heels, smoking, drinking,
pilling

the nights went into days and the days
went into nights
and we babbled on through, sometimes
bedding down, badly.

through the drink, the uppers, the
downers, I got myself to imagine
things–say, that this one was the
golden girl of the golden heart and
the golden way of laughter and love
and hope

in the dim smokey light the long hair
looked better than it was, the legs
more shapely, the conversation not as
bare, not as vicious

I fooled myself pretty well. I even
got myself to thinking that I loved
one of them, the worst one

I mean, why the hell be negative?
accept

we drank, drugged, stayed in the
center of the rug, through sunset,
sunrise, played Scrabble for 8
or ten hours

each time I went in to piss she
stole the letters she needed
she was a survivor, the
bitch

after one marathon session
of 52 hours of whatever we
were doing
she said, “let’s drive to
Vegas and get married?”

“what?” I asked.

“let’s drive to Vegas and
get married before we
change our minds!”

“but suppose we get married,
then what?”

“then you can have it any
time you want it.” she told
me

I went in to take a piss
to let her steal the letters
she needed

but when I came out I opened
a new bottle of wine
and spoke no more of the
subject

she didn’t come around as
much after that
but there were others,
about the same
sometimes there were
more than one
they’d come in two’s
the word got out that
there was an old sucker
in the back court, free
booze and he wasn’t overly
sexually demanding,
although at times something
would overtake me and I
would grab a body and throw
in a sweaty horse copulation,
mostly, I guess, to see if
I could still do it

and I confused the mailman
there was an old couch on
the porch and many a morning
as he came by I’d be sitting
there with, say, two of them
we’d be sitting there with our
beer cans, smoking and
laughing

one day he found me alone

“pardon me,” he said, “but can
I ask you something?”

“sure”

“well, I don’t think you’re
rich…”

“no, I’m broke.”

“Listen, he said, “I’ve been around
the world.”

“yeah?”

“and I’ve never seen a man with
as many women as you.
there’s always a different one.
or a different pair…”

“yeah?”

“how do you do it?
I mean, pardon me, but you’re kind
of old and you’re not exactly a
Cassanova, you know?”

“I could be ugly, even.”

he shifted his letters from one hand to the
other.

“I mean, how do you do it?”

“availability,” I told him.

“what do you mean?”

“I mean, women like a guy who is always
around.”

“uh,” he said, then walked off to continue his
rounds

his praise didn’t help me
what he saw wasn’t as good as he thought
even with them there were unholy periods of
drab senselessness,
and worse

I walked back into my place
the phone was ringing

I knew that it would be a female
voice

from “Third Lung Review” – 1992

Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski

 

“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.”

- Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski

SHE SAID
from: War All the Time

what are you doing with all those paper
napkins in your car?
we dont have napkins like
that
how come your car radio is
always turned to some
rock and roll station?do you drive around with
some
young thing?

you’re
dripping tangerine
juice on the floor.
whenever you go into
the kitchen
this towel gets
wet and dirty,
why is that?

when you let my
bathwater run
you never
clean the
tub first.

why don’t you
put your toothbrush
back
in the rack?

you should always
dry your razor

sometimes
I think
you hate
my cat.

Martha says
you were
downstairs
sitting with her
and you
had your
pants off.

you shouldn’t wear
those
$100 shoes in
the garden

and you don’t keep
track
of what you
plant out there

that’s
dumb

you must always
set the cat’s bowl back
in
the same place.

don’t
bake fish
in a frying
pan…

I never saw
anybody
harder on the
brakes of their
car
than you.

let’s go
to a
movie.

listen what’s
wrong with you?
you act
depressed.

Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski

“Genius might be the ability to say a profound thing in a simple way.”

- Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski

 

 

 

writing 

often it is the only
thing
between you and
impossibility.
no drink,
no woman’s love,
no wealth
can
match it.

nothing can save
you
except
writing.

it keeps the walls
from
failing.
the hordes from
closing in.

it blasts the
darkness.

writing is the
ultimate
psychiatrist,

the kindliest
god of all the
gods.

writing stalks
death.
it knows no
quit.

and writing
laughs
at itself,
at pain.

it is the last
expectation,
the last
explanation.

that’s
what it
is.

Charles Bukowski

from blank gun silencer – 1991