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I've been reading over this thread.
I like the Jeffers better than the Yeats.
Bukowski is still somehow my favorite though.
End of The World Poems.
The blue bird one...
I don't think the one about the man with the beautiful eyes is in that collection but that's a formative poem for me.
And the one with YOU STOLE MY GODDAMN WHISKEY YOU BITCH! or something...I dunno. I'll have to go read it, but my books are upstairs and I'm worn.
End of the world poem? I think you mean "Dinosauria We"...Quote:
Originally Posted by Ms.Stepford
And the Blue bird I probably can find back for you.
OK. Here's the first one. Is that it?
DINOSAURIA, WE
by Charles Bukowski
Born like this
Into this
As the chalk faces smile
As Mrs. Death laughs
As the elevators break
As political landscapes dissolve
As the supermarket bag boy holds a college degree
As the oily fish spit out their oily prey
As the sun is masked
We are
Born like this
Into this
Into these carefully mad wars
Into the sight of broken factory windows of emptiness
Into bars where people no longer speak to each other
Into fist fights that end as shootings and knifings
Born into this
Into hospitals which are so expensive that it’s cheaper to die
Into lawyers who charge so much it’s cheaper to plead guilty
Into a country where the jails are full and the madhouses closed
Into a place where the masses elevate fools into rich heroes
Born into this
Walking and living through this
Dying because of this
Muted because of this
Castrated
Debauched
Disinherited
Because of this
Fooled by this
Used by this
Pissed on by this
Made crazy and sick by this
Made violent
Made inhuman
By this
The heart is blackened
The fingers reach for the throat
The gun
The knife
The bomb
The fingers reach toward an unresponsive god
The fingers reach for the bottle
The pill
The powder
We are born into this sorrowful deadliness
We are born into a government 60 years in debt
That soon will be unable to even pay the interest on that debt
And the banks will burn
Money will be useless
There will be open and unpunished murder in the streets
It will be guns and roving mobs
Land will be useless
Food will become a diminishing return
Nuclear power will be taken over by the many
Explosions will continually shake the earth
Radiated robot men will stalk each other
The rich and the chosen will watch from space platforms
Dante’s Inferno will be made to look like a children’s playground
The sun will not be seen and it will always be night
Trees will die
All vegetation will die
Radiated men will eat the flesh of radiated men
The sea will be poisoned
The lakes and rivers will vanish
Rain will be the new gold
The rotting bodies of men and animals will stink in the dark wind
The last few survivors will be overtaken by new and hideous diseases
And the space platforms will be destroyed by attrition
The petering out of supplies
The natural effect of general decay
And there will be the most beautiful silence never heard
Born out of that.
The sun still hidden there
Awaiting the next chapter.
Now, the one I can think about where a bitch stole something from him was his paintings and poems. This one?
To the Whore Who Took My Poems
Charles Bukowski
some say we should keep personal remorse from the
poem,
stay abstract, and there is some reason in this,
but jezus;
twelve poems gone and I don't keep carbons and you have
my
paintings too, my best ones; its stifling:
are you trying to crush me out like the rest of them?
why didn't you take my money? they usually do
from the sleeping drunken pants sick in the corner.
next time take my left arm or a fifty
but not my poems:
I'm not Shakespeare
but sometime simply
there won't be any more, abstract or otherwise;
there'll always be mony and whores and drunkards
down to the last bomb,
but as God said,
crossing his legs,
I see where I have made plenty of poets
but not so very much
poetry.
We pretty much have similar tastes in poetry, Trixi! This one is lovely! the Blue Bird poem...
Blue Bird
Charles Bukowski
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 pur 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?
The Last Night of The Earth Poems. I had to go up to the bookcase. I've bought that collection of poems three times because I've found myself out of town and wanting it. It's not the same if I just get it on digits. The Lady and The Mountain Lion, yo.
Hunk of rock is the one I was thinking of. It's starred in my table of contents. I feel that he sympathetically portrays Nina while still calling her a whore who stole his whiskey...
"just do
whatever the fuck
you feel
like doing,"
said Nina
her big ass
blazing
in the
lamplight.
blue bird and the man with the beautiful eyes are very important to me.
He spoke his own piece in his own voice, in honesty.
To loosely quote John Waters, if you go home with someone and they don't have books, don't fuck them.
:iagree::iagree:Quote:
Originally Posted by Ms.Stepford
Yes, and I think The Last Night of the Earth Poems was the last poetry book published while he was alive. He was much older when he wrote this one and although written as freely and as straight as all the others, it's full of wisdom. There's much wiser poems in this one than in the others. It's the work of a man who was sure of what he knew for good.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ms.Stepford
When they don't have books you just wonder what they can possibly live for... And someone who doesn't have the faintest idea of what he's alive for is a bottomless whole for anyone around him...Quote:
Originally Posted by Ms.Stepford
Well, it's not for me to judge the meaning of another's entire life, but people who read are more fun to fuck, I think, and I'm sticking with it.
I've always got on well with the aged, so it kinda makes sense that I love that book so much.
I hear you on the bongs and blunts. I'm really curious about vapes because I recently quit cigarettes and i don't want to go through that again. I'm wanting to avoid smoke altogether. Seems like it would be less convenient of course but the hype about those things is really positive.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ms.Stepford
I've done gravity bong with a pop bottle plenty of times. It's really effective and doesn't waste much of the stuff. There's a small company that's selling them and the reviews are pretty good. But it seems like the maintenance might be a pain in the butt.
http://www.vortexgravitybong.com/
http://www.dope-smoker.co.uk/vortex.jpg
http://www.vortexgravitybong.com/photos/2.jpg
You should model for them ;)
There's also this thing called the gravitron which I know nothing about.
http://i27.tinypic.com/voph60.jpg