Poeticous Logo
en
English Español Français Italiano
Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski

a plate glass window

dogs and angels are not
very different.
I often go to this place
to eat
about 2:30 in the afternoon
because all the people who
eat there are particularly addled
simply glad to be alive and
eating baked beans
near a plate glass window
which holds the heat
and doesn’t let the cars and
sidewalks inside.
 
we are allowed as much free
coffee as we can drink
and we sit and quietly drink
the black strong coffee.
 
it is good to be sitting someplace
in a world at 2:30 in the afternoon
without having the flesh ripped from
your bones. even
being addled, we know this.
 
nobody bothers us
we bother nobody.
 
angels and dogs are not
very different
at 2:30 in the afternoon.
 
I have my favorite table
and after I have finished
I stack the plates, saucers,
the cup, the silverware
neatly—
my offering to the luck—
and that sun
working good
all up and
down
inside the
darkness
here.

#1977 #AmericanWriters #LoveIsADogFromHell

Other works by Charles Bukowski...
The Death of Chatterton, by Henry Wallis
the last days of the suicide kid

I can see myself now after all these suicide days and n… being wheeled out of one of those… (of course, this is only if I get… by a subnormal and bored nurse
 2
 22
a change of habit

Shirley came to town with a broken… and met the Chicano who smoked long slim cigars and they got a place together on Beacon street
the proud thin dying

I see old people on pensions in th… supermarkets and they are thin and… proud and they are dying they are starving on their feet an… nothing. long ago, among other lie…
 2
I'm in Love

she’s young, she said, but look at me, I have pretty ankles, and look at my wrists, I have pret… wrists
Three Oranges

first time my father overheard me… this bit of music he asked me, “what is it?” “it’s called Love For Three Oran… I informed him.
Young Spartans Exercising, by Edgar Degas
Friendly advice to a lot of young men

Go to Tibet. Ride a camel. Read the Bible. Dye your shoes blue. Grow a Beard.
 16
 68
A Report Upon the Consumption of Myself

I am a panther shut up and bellowi… cement walls, and I am angry at bl… evenings without ventilation and I am angry with you, and it wi… like a rose
 2
Grass

at the window I watch a man with a power mower the sounds of his doing race like flies and bees
the colored birds

is a highrise apt. next door and he beats her at night and she… and I see her the next day standing in the driveway with curl… and she has her huge buttocks jamm…
Another Day

having the low down blues and goin… into a restraunt to eat. you sit at a table. the waitress smiles at you. she’s dumpy. her ass is too big.
462-0614

I get many phonecalls now. They are all alike. “are you Charles Bukowski, the writer?” “yes,” I tell them.
Ham on Rye: 8

I took the envelope home to my mother and handed it to her and walked into the bedroom. My bedroom. The best thing about the bedroom was the bed. I liked to stay in bed for hours, even ...
Post Office. Chapter II: 3

Her father really hated me. He thought I was after his money. I didn’t want his god damned money. And I didn’t even want his god damned precious daughter. The only time I ever saw him w...
Post Office. Chapter II: 17

Each night as I got ready to go on in, Joyce had my clothing laid out on the bed. Everything was the most expensive money could buy. I never wore the same pair of pants, the same shirt,...
The Beast

Beowulf may have killed Grendel a… Grendel’s mother but he couldn’t kill this one:



Top