---------------Charles Bukowski ---------------OH, YES there are worse things than being alone but it often takes decades

to realize this and most often when you do it's too late and there's nothing worse than too late.

MY FATHER AND THE BUM my father believed in work. he was proud to have a job. sometimes he didn't have a job and then he was very ashamed. he'd be so ashamed that he'd leave the house in the morning and then come back in the evening so the neighbors wouldn't know. me, I liked the man next door: he just sat in a chair in his back yard and threw darts at some circles he had painted on the side of his garage. in Los Angeles in 1930 he had a wisdom that Goethe, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Freud, Jaspers, Heidegger and Toynbee would find hard to deny.

THE MICE my father caught the baby mice they were still alive and he flung them into the flaming incinerator one by one. the flames leaped out and I wanted to throw my father in there

but my being 10 years old made that impossible. "o.k., they're dead," he told me, "I killed the bastards!" "you didn't have to do that," I said. "do you want them running all over the house? they leave droppings, they bring disease! what would you do with them?" "I'd make pets out of them." "pets! what the bell's wrong with you anyhow?" the flame in the incinerator was dying down. it was all too late. it was over. my father had won again.

IGLOO his name was Eddie and he had a big white dog with a curly tail a huskie like one of those that pulled sleighs up near the north pole Igloo he called him and Eddie had a bow and arrow and every week or two he'd send an arrow into the dog's side then run into his mother's house through the yelping saying that Igloo had fallen on the arrow. that dog took quite a few arrows and managed to survive but I saw what really happened and didn't like Eddie very much. so when I broke Eddie's leg in a sandlot football game that was my way of getting even for Igloo.

his parents threatened to sue my parents claiming I did it on purpose because that's what Eddie told them. well, nobody had any money anyhow and when Eddie's father got a job in San Diego they moved away and left the dog. we took him in. Igloo turned out to be rather dumb did not respond to very much had no life or joy in him just stuck out his tongue panted slept most of the time when he wasn't eating and although he wiped his ass up and down the lawn after defecating he usually had a large fragrant smear of brown under his tail when he was run over by an icecream truck 3 or 4 months later and died in a stream of scarlet I didn't feel more than the usual amount of grief and loss and I was still glad that I had managed to break Eddie's leg.

MY GARDEN in the sun and in the rain and in the day and in the night pain is a flower pain is flowers blooming all the time.

YOU You re a beast, she said Your big white belly And those hairy feet. You never cut your nails And you have fat hands

Paws like a cat Your bright red nose And the biggest balls I ve ever seen. You shoot sperm like a Whale shoots water out of the Hole in its back. Beast beast beast, She kissed me, What do you want for Breakfast?

CONFESSION waiting for death like a cat that will jump on the bed I am so very sorry for my wife she will see this stiff white body shake it once, then maybe again "Hank!" Hank won't answer. it's not my death that worries me, it's my wife left with this pile of nothing. I want to let her know though that all the nights sleeping beside her even the useless arguments were things ever splendid and the hard words I ever feared to say

can now be said: I love you.

TRUE one of Lorca's best lines is, "agony. always agony..." think of this when you kill a cockroach or pick up a razor to shave or awaken in the morning to face the sun.

THE ALIENS you may not believe it but there are people who go through life with very little friction or distress. they dress well, eat well, sleep well. they are contented with their family life. they have moments of grief but all in all they are undisturbed and often feel very good. and when they die it is an easy death, usually in their sleep. you may not believe it but such people do exist. but I am not one of them. oh no, I am not one of them,

I am not even near to being one of them but they are there and I am here.

WELL, THAT'S JUST THE WAY IT IS... Sometimes when everything seems at Its worst When all conspires And gnawls And the hours, days, weeks Years Seem wasted Stretch there upon my bed In the dark Looking up at the ceiling I get what many will consider am Obnoxious thought : It s still nice to be Bukowski

BE KIND we are always asked to understand the other person's viewpoint no matter how out-dated foolish or obnoxious. one is asked to view their total error their life-waste kindliness, especially if they are aged. but age is the total of our doing. they have aged badly because they have lived out of focus, they have refused to see. not their fault?

whose fault? mine? I am asked to hide my viewpoint from them for fear of their fear. age is no crime but the shame of a deliberately wasted life among so many deliberately wasted lives is.

POETRY it takes a lot of desperation dissatisfaction and disillusion to write a few good poems. it's not for everybody either to write it or even to read it.

THE BLUEBIRD there's a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out but I'm too tough for him, I say, stay in there, I'm not going to let anybody see you. there's a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out but I pour whiskey on him and inhale cigarette smoke and the whores and the bartenders and the grocery clerks never know that he's in there. there's a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out but I'm too tough for him, I say, stay down, do you want to mess me up? you want to screw up the works? you want to blow my book sales in Europe? there's a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out but I'm too clever, I only let him out at night sometimes when everybody's asleep. I say, I know that you're there, so don't be sad. then I put him back, but he's singing a little in there, I haven't quite let him die and we sleep together like that with our secret pact and it's nice enough to make a man weep, but I don't weep, do you?

SHOES when you're young

a pair of female high-heeled shoes just sitting alone in the closet can fire your bones; when you're old it's just a pair of shoes without anybody in them and just as well.

CAUSE AND EFFECT the best often die by their own hand just to get away, and those left behind can never quite understand why anybody would ever want to get away from them

FOR JANE 225 days under grass and you know more than I. they have long taken your blood, your are a dry stick in a basket. is this how it works? in this room the hours of love still make shadows. when you left you took almost everything. I kneel in the nights before tigers that will not let me be. what you were will not happen again. the tigers have found me

and I do not care.

PULL A STRING, A PUPPET MOVES... each man must realize that it can all disappear very quickly: the cat, the woman, the job, the front tire, the bed, the walls, the room; all our necessities including love, rest on foundations of sand and any given cause, no matter how unrelated: the death of a boy in Hong Kong or a blizzard in Omaha ... can serve as your undoing. all your chinaware crashing to the kitchen floor, your girl will enter and you'll be standing, drunk, in the center of it and she'll ask: my god, what's the matter? and you'll answer: I don't know, I don't know ...

RUIN William Saroyan said, "I ruined my life by marrying the same woman twice." there will always be something to ruin our lives, William, it all depends upon what or which finds us first, we are always ripe and ready to be taken. ruined lives are normal both for the wise and others. it is only when that life ruined becomes ours we realize then

that the suicides, the drunkards, the mad, the jailed, the dopers and etc. etc. are just as common a part of existence as the gladiola, the rainbow the hurricane and nothing left on the kitchen shelf.

TRAPPED don't undress my love you might find a mannequin: don't undress the mannequin you might find my love. she's long ago forgotten me. she's trying on a new hat and looks more the coquette than ever. she is a child and a mannequin and death. I can't hate that. she didn't do anything unusual. I only wanted her to.

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 down through the matress

and just before it hit the floor I jumped up I was almost too weak to walk but I walked around and turned on all the lights and then I went back to bed and dropped it down again and I was up turning on all the lights I had a 7-year-old daughter and I felt sure she wouldn't want me dead otherwise it wouldn't have mattered but all that night nobody phoned nobody came by with a beer my girlfriend didn't phone all I could hear were the crickets and it was hot and I kept working at it getting up and down until the first of the sun came through the window through the bushes and then I got on the bed and the soul stayed inside at last and I slept. now people come by beating on the doors and windows the phone rings the phone rings again and again I get great letters in the mail hate letters and love letters. everything is the same again.

EVERYWHERE, EVERYWHERE amazing, how grimly we hold onto our misery ever defensive, thwarted by the forces. amazing, the energy we burn fueling our anger. amazing, how one moment we can be snarling like a beast, then a few moments later, forgetting what or why. not hours of this or days or months or years of this but decades, lifetimes completely used up, given over to the pettiest rancor and hatred. finally

there is nothing here for death to take away.