Poeticous Logo
en
English Español Français Italiano
Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski

guru

big black beard
tells me
that I don’t feel
terror
 
I look at him
my gut rattles
gravel
 
I see his eyes
look upward
 
he’s strong
 
has dirty fingernails
 
and upon the walls:
scabbards.
 
he knows things:
 
books
the odds
the best road
home
 
I like him
but I think he
lies
 
(I’m not sure
he lies)
 
his wife sits
in a dark
corner
 
when I first met
her she was the
most beautiful
woman
I had ever
seen
 
now she has
become
his twin
 
perhaps not his
fault:
 
perhaps the thing
does us all
like that
 
yet after I leave
their house
I feel terror
 
the moon looks
diseased
 
my hands slip
on the
steering wheel
 
I get my car
out
and down the
hill
 
almost crash it
into a
blue-green
parked car
clod me forever,
Beatrice
 
wavering poet, ha
haha
 
dinky dog of
terror.

#Americans #XXCentury #1977 #LoveIsADogFromHell

Enjoyed this read? Treat us to a coffee!.
Your help allows us to exist.
Other works by Charles Bukowski...
No Lady Godiva

she came to my place drunk riding a deer up on the front porc… so many women want to save the wor… but can’t keep their own kitchens… but me...
What a Writer

what i liked about e.e. cummings was that he cut away from the holiness of the word and with charm
 2
the drill

our marriage book, it says. I look through it. they lasted ten years. they were young once.
Women: 38

Luckily I had auto insurance that paid for a rental car. I drove Katherine to the racetrack in it. We sat in the sundeck at Hollywood Park near the stretch turn. Katherine said she didn...
German

being the German kid in the 20’s i… was difficult. there was much anti-German feeling… a carry-over from World War 1. gangs of kids chased me through th…
 1
Women: 72

I drank for the next week. I drank night and day and wrote 25 or 30 mournful poems about lost love. It was Friday night when the phone rang. It was Mercedes. “I got married,” she said, ...
For Jane

225 days under grass and you know more than I. they have long taken your blood, you are a dry stick in a basket. is this how it works?
 2
The Night I Was Going to Die

the night I was going to die I was sweating on the bed and I could hear the crickets and there was a cat fight outside and I could feel my soul dropping…
 2
the retreat

this time has finished me. I feel like the German troops whipped by snow and the communists walking bent with newspapers stuffed into
I am eaten by butterflies

maybe I’ll win the Irish Sweepsta… maybe I’ll go nuts maybe Harcourt Brace will call or maybe unemployment insurance or rich lesbian at the top of a hill.
Women: 15

Lydia phoned me in the morning. “Whenever you get drunk,” she said, “I’m going out dancing. I went to the Red Umbrella last night and I asked men to dance with me. A woman has a right t...
no wonder

Tony phoned and told me that Jan had left him but that he was a… helped him he said to think about… like D. H. Lawrence pissed off with life in general bu…
Women: 4

I was editing a little magazine at the time, The Laxative Approach. I had two co-editors and we felt that we were printing the best poets of our time. Also some of the other kind. One o...
the American Flag Shirt

now more and more all these people running around wearing the American Flag Shirt and it was more or less once assum… think but I’m not sure)
 1
my big night on the town

sitting on a 2nd-floor porch at 1:… while looking out over the city. could be worse. we needn’t accomplish great things…



Top