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Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski

Note to a Lady Who Expected Rupert Brooke
wha’, what did you expect? a schoolboy lisping Donne? or
some more practical lover filling you with the stench of Life?
I’m a fool and no gentleman: I walked the Brooklyn Bridge
with Crane in pajamas, but suicide fails as you get older:
there’s less and less to kill.
 
so among the skin and lambchops, the sick neckties of
other closets, I scheme schemes round as oranges
filled with the music of my crafty mumbling.
 
Brooke? no. I am a monkey with an olive lost in the
circus sand of your laughter, circus apes, circus tigers,
circus madmen of finance screwing their secretaries before
the 5:15...and what did you expect?
 
a pink-cheek dribbling Picasso colors on your dry brain?
 
so, the room was blue with the smoke of my boiling, hell,
a senseless sea
and I fell fingers sotted to the last pinch of your juice,
fell through the thorned vines cursing your name,
no gentleman
no gentleman,
kissed-off love like snake-bite,
the veranda buzzed with flies, buzzed with flies
and lies, and your red mouth screamed,
your lamps screamed
breaking like overdue bills:
 
DRUNK! DRUNK AGAIN!
O, YOU IDIOT!
 
so, Yeats, Keats, teats... nothing but an apricot!
 
wha’, what happened to Spain? my boy Lorca?
the revolution? must join the brigade!
lemme outa here!

#1973 #AmericanWriters #AtTerrorStreetAndAgonyWay #BurningInWaterDrowningInFlame

Other works by Charles Bukowski...
Stag at Sharkeys, by George Bellows
Style

Style is the answer to everything. A fresh way to approach a dull or… To do a dull thing with style is p… To do a dangerous thing with style… Bullfighting can be an art
 4
 30
Post Office. Chapter III: 16

One morning about 10 a.m. the phon… I recognized the voice and began t… “Yes, yes, Miss Graves, but go on… “So therefore we have notified the… “And you are scheduled to throw yo…
oh, yes

there are worse things than being alone but it often takes de cades to realize this and most often
 1
Class

these boys have got class they ought to make kings out of old men rolling cigarettes in rooms small enough
Post Office. Chapter III: 10

The funeral was to be at 10:30 a.m. but it was already hot. I had on a cheap black suit, bought and fitted in a rush. It was my first new suit in years. I had located the son. We drove ...
Post Office. Chapter II: 10

The guide took us all over the building. There were so many of us that they had to break us up into groups. We used the elevator in shifts. We were shown the employee’s cafeteria, the b...
As the Sparrow

To give life you must take life, and as our grief falls flat and ho… upon the billion—blooded sea I pass upon serious inward—breakin… with white—legged, white—bellied r…
the little girls hissed

since my last name was Fuch, he sa… believe the school yard was tough:… powder down my neck, threw gravel… with rubber bands in class, and ou… me names, well, one name mainly, o…
Christmas eve, alone

Christmas eve, alone, in a motel room down the coast near the Pacific— hear it?
hot

she was hot, she was so hot I didn’t want anybody else to have… and if I didn’t get home on time she’d be gone, and I couldn’t bear… I’d go mad. . .
Ham on Rye: 57

After English class one day Mrs. Curtis asked me to stay. She had great legs and a lisp and there was something about the legs and the lisp together that heated me up. She was about 32,...
View From the Screen

I cross the room to the last wall the last window the last pink sun with its arms around the world
As the Poems Go

as the poems go into the thousands… realize that you’ve created very little. it comes down to the rain, the sun… the traffic, the nights and the da…
 1
225 pounds

we were in bed and she started to fight: “you son of a bitch! you just wait… I’ll get you!” I began laughing:
Lack of Almost Everything

the essence of the belly like a white balloon sacked is disturbing like the running of feet on the stairs



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