Charles Bukowski / As The Poems Go

Sunset boulevard, Los Angeles, 2013
Photo by Triunfo Arciniegas

AS THE POEMS GO

by Charles Bukowski

as the poems go into the thousands you
realize that you've created very
little.
it comes down to the rain, the sunlight,
the traffic, the nights and the days of the
years, the faces.
leaving this will be easier than living
it, typing one more line now as
a man plays a piano through the radio,
the best writers have said very
little
and the worst,
far too much.

from ONTHEBUS - 1992

POEMS

Bukowski / Shoes

Bukowski / The Laughing Heart

Bukowski / Bluebird

Bukowski / The Genius of the Crowd

Bukowski / Tonigh

Bukowski / A Note Upon Modern Poetry

Bukowski / Poetry

Bukowski / I'm in Love

Bukowski / Rhyming Poem

Buwoski / I Made a Mistake

Bukowski / To the Whore Who Took My Poems

Bukowski / Girl in a Miniskirt Reading the Bible

Bukowski / There are worse things than being alone

Bukowski / Somebody

Bukowski / So Now?

Bukowski / The Great Lover

Bukowski / The Shoelace

Bukowski / Rain

Bukowski / As the Poems Go

Bukowski / How to be a great writer
Bukowski / The best love poem I can write at the moment

Bukowski / Thuis kind of fire

Charles Bukowski / Rain

Rain

by Charles Bukowski

a symphony orchestra. 

POEMS

Bukowski / Shoes

Bukowski / The Laughing Heart

Bukowski / Bluebird

Bukowski / The Genius of the Crowd

Bukowski / Tonigh

Bukowski / A Note Upon Modern Poetry

Bukowski / Poetry

Bukowski / I'm in Love

Bukowski / Rhyming Poem

Buwoski / I Made a Mistake

Bukowski / To the Whore Who Took My Poems

Bukowski / Girl in a Miniskirt Reading the Bible

Bukowski / There are worse things than being alone

Bukowski / Somebody

Bukowski / So Now?

Bukowski / The Great Lover

Bukowski / The Shoelace

Bukowski / Rain

Bukowski / As the Poems Go

Bukowski / How to be a great writer
Bukowski / The best love poem I can write at the moment

Bukowski / Thuis kind of fire

Charles Bukowski / The Shoelace

Charles Bukowski

The Shoelace

by Charles Bukowski

a woman, a
tire that’s flat, a
disease, a
desire: fears in front of you,
fears that hold so still
you can study them
like pieces on a
chessboard…
it’s not the large things that
send a man to the
madhouse. death he’s ready for, or
murder, incest, robbery, fire, flood…
no, it’s the continuing series of small tragedies
that send a man to the
madhouse…
not the death of his love
but a shoelace that snaps
with no time left …
The dread of life
is that swarm of trivialities
that can kill quicker than cancer
and which are always there -
license plates or taxes
or expired driver’s license,
or hiring or firing,
doing it or having it done to you, or
roaches or flies or a
broken hook on a
screen, or out of gas
or too much gas,
the sink’s stopped-up, the landlord’s drunk,
the president doesn’t care and the governor’s
crazy.
light switch broken, mattress like a
porcupine;
$105 for a tune-up, carburetor and fuel pump at
sears roebuck;
and the phone bill’s up and the market’s
down
and the toilet chain is
broken,
and the light has burned out -
the hall light, the front light, the back light,
the inner light; it’s
darker than hell
and twice as
expensive.
then there’s always crabs and ingrown toenails
and people who insist they’re
your friends;
there’s always that and worse;
leaky faucet, christ and christmas;
blue salami, 9 day rains,
50 cent avocados
and purple
liverwurst.

or making it
as a waitress at norm’s on the split shift,
or as an emptier of
bedpans,
or as a carwash or a busboy
or a stealer of old lady’s purses
leaving them screaming on the sidewalks
with broken arms at the age of 80.

suddenly
2 red lights in your rear view mirror
and blood in your
underwear;
toothache, and $979 for a bridge
$300 for a gold
tooth,
and china and russia and america, and
long hair and short hair and no
hair, and beards and no
faces, and plenty of zigzag but no
pot, except maybe one to piss in
and the other one around your
gut.

with each broken shoelace
out of one hundred broken shoelaces,
one man, one woman, one
thing
enters a
madhouse.

so be careful
when you
bend over.

POEMS

Bukowski / Shoes

Bukowski / The Laughing Heart

Bukowski / Bluebird

Bukowski / The Genius of the Crowd

Bukowski / Tonigh

Bukowski / A Note Upon Modern Poetry

Bukowski / Poetry

Bukowski / I'm in Love

Bukowski / Rhyming Poem

Buwoski / I Made a Mistake

Bukowski / To the Whore Who Took My Poems

Bukowski / Girl in a Miniskirt Reading the Bible

Bukowski / There are worse things than being alone

Bukowski / Somebody

Bukowski / So Now?

Bukowski / The Great Lover

Bukowski / The Shoelace

Bukowski / Rain

Bukowski / As the Poems Go

Bukowski / How to be a great writer
Bukowski / The best love poem I can write at the moment

Bukowski / Thuis kind of fire

We too are drifting by Sophie Robinson

 

we too are drifting

by Sophie Robinson

Sophie Robinson / Nosotros también vamos a la deriva

 

our tenderness being muttered up by other

people I lie awake twisting & stripped

of physical dwelling; hips with the same

feeling finding myself mumbling ‘I’m sorry

we jerked’ & your mouth is a place to go

a place where the human need for (relative)

peaceful sanctuary can collect itself –

suck me –nuzzle me – foster me– we are

in our separate spaces mouths mouthing

along to the words of the film Patch Adams

& learning that returning to “home” as an

adult promotes restlessness; but let’s keep

kissing & dipping with friction against

the softness of ‘Hum Sweat Hum’, licking punk

I found myself dwelling in the conceptual

heart of nonsense breaking up, I have two

hands to cope with his death by values by

economix, we are locked in structure in

spite of our nylon surgings, them being

reduced to slits of marginal import &

we know better huh, & yes you the

eternal optimistic you turn to me & say

that it’s good to get perspective on a

perspective even when the sky’s so black

with clouds it looks like night (upon which

you would remark at least that we are less

visible under extreme conditions &

besides we have more fun after dark)

Charles Bukowski / The great lover

the great lover

by Charles Bukowski

I mean, at that place in east Hollywood
I was so often with the hardest numbers
in town
I don’t speak as a misogynist
I had other people ask me,
“what the hell are you doing, anyhow?”

these were floozies, killers, blanks

they had bodies, hair, eyes, legs
parts
but, say, take one of them, it was like
sitting there with a shark dressed in a
dress, high heels, smoking, drinking,
pilling

the nights went into days and the days
went into nights
and we babbled on through, sometimes
bedding down, badly.

through the drink, the uppers, the
downers, I got myself to imagine
things–say, that this one was the
golden girl of the golden heart and
the golden way of laughter and love
and hope

in the dim smokey light the long hair
looked better than it was, the legs
more shapely, the conversation not as
bare, not as vicious

I fooled myself pretty well. I even
got myself to thinking that I loved
one of them, the worst one

I mean, why the hell be negative?
accept

we drank, drugged, stayed in the
center of the rug, through sunset,
sunrise, played Scrabble for 8
or ten hours

each time I went in to piss she
stole the letters she needed
she was a survivor, the
bitch

after one marathon session
of 52 hours of whatever we
were doing
she said, “let’s drive to
Vegas and get married?”

“what?” I asked.

“let’s drive to Vegas and
get married before we
change our minds!”

“but suppose we get married,
then what?”

“then you can have it any
time you want it.” she told
me

I went in to take a piss
to let her steal the letters
she needed

but when I came out I opened
a new bottle of wine
and spoke no more of the
subject

she didn’t come around as
much after that
but there were others,
about the same
sometimes there were
more than one
they’d come in two’s
the word got out that
there was an old sucker
in the back court, free
booze and he wasn’t overly
sexually demanding,
although at times something
would overtake me and I
would grab a body and throw
in a sweaty horse copulation,
mostly, I guess, to see if
I could still do it

and I confused the mailman
there was an old couch on
the porch and many a morning
as he came by I’d be sitting
there with, say, two of them
we’d be sitting there with our
beer cans, smoking and
laughing

one day he found me alone

“pardon me,” he said, “but can
I ask you something?”

“sure”

“well, I don’t think you’re
rich…”

“no, I’m broke.”

“Listen, he said, “I’ve been around
the world.”

“yeah?”

“and I’ve never seen a man with
as many women as you.
there’s always a different one.
or a different pair…”

“yeah?”

“how do you do it?
I mean, pardon me, but you’re kind
of old and you’re not exactly a
Cassanova, you know?”

“I could be ugly, even.”

he shifted his letters from one hand to the
other.

“I mean, how do you do it?”

“availability,” I told him.

“what do you mean?”

“I mean, women like a guy who is always
around.”

“uh,” he said, then walked off to continue his
rounds

his praise didn’t help me
what he saw wasn’t as good as he thought
even with them there were unholy periods of
drab senselessness,
and worse

I walked back into my place
the phone was ringing

I knew that it would be a female
voice

from “Third Lung Review” – 1992



Read also
Biography of Charles Bukowski

POEMS

Bukowski / Shoes

Bukowski / The Laughing Heart

Bukowski / Bluebird

Bukowski / The Genius of the Crowd

Bukowski / Tonigh

Bukowski / A Note Upon Modern Poetry

Bukowski / Poetry

Bukowski / I'm in Love

Bukowski / Rhyming Poem

Buwoski / I Made a Mistake

Bukowski / To the Whore Who Took My Poems

Bukowski / Girl in a Miniskirt Reading the Bible

Bukowski / There are worse things than being alone

Bukowski / Somebody

Bukowski / So Now?

Bukowski / The Great Lover

Bukowski / The Shoelace

Bukowski / Rain

Bukowski / As the Poems Go

Bukowski / How to be a great writer
Bukowski / The best love poem I can write at the moment

Bukowski / Thuis kind of fire

Alice Walker / Women

WOMEN

by Alice Walker

They were women then
My mama’s generation
Husky of voice—stout of
Step
With fists as well as
Hands
How they battered down
Doors
And ironed
Starched white
Shirts
How they led
Armies
Headragged generals
Across mined
Fields
Booby-trapped
Ditches
To discover books
Desks
A place for us
How they knew what we
Must know
Without knowing a page
Of it
Themselves.

Geometry No. 1 by Sophie Robinson

Geometry No. 1

by Sophie Robinson

 

Sophie Robinson / Geometría no. 1

The uprigth nature of a girl, belied by

formless whirrs, signs of visible lust like the

density of skies, & the disappearing hour;

I think of you urgent & weak walking beside

billboards, missing out, flaking off in the

silence between 2 traxx, no tender riot

in yr geekheart [spliced open & pulsating

in four different places whilst the summer

is blaring musty and lithe, awful shiny

skin & sick tune of birds germinating light

as a new kind of loudness] & the crude urban

cosmos misses you & is just passing the

time w/dirt & money & pouting in the

corner w/out your nocturno-suspicious lure.

Denise Levertov / Magic

MAGIC

by Denise Levertov
BIOGRAPHY

for Jon

The brass or bronze cup, stroked at the rim, 

round and round, begins 

to hum, 

             the hum slowly 

buzzes more loudly, and rapidly now 

becomes 

             the clang of the bell of the 

             deep world, unshaken, sounding 

             crescendo out of its wide mouth 

                                                one note, 

             continuous, 

                                 gong 

             of the universe, neither beginning nor ending, 

but heard 

only those times we take 

the cup and stroke 

the rim, 

diminuendo, 

only seeming 

to cease when we cease 

to listen… 

Poems 1972-1982

New Directions Publishing Corporation, 2001

Li Po / A Mountain Revelry

A Mountain Revelry

by Li Po

To wash and rinse our souls of their age-old sorrows,
We drained a hundred jugs of wine.
A splendid night it was . . . .
In the clear moonlight we were loath to go to bed,
But at last drunkenness overtook us;
And we laid ourselves down on the empty mountain,
The earth for pillow, and the great heaven for coverlet. 

Read also

Biography of Li Po

Li Po / A Song Of Changgan

Li Po

A Song of Changgan

My hair had hardly covered my forehead.
I was picking flowers, paying by my door,
When you, my lover, on a bamboo horse,
Came trotting in circles and throwing green plums.
We lived near together on a lane in Ch'ang-kan,
Both of us young and happy-hearted.

...At fourteen I became your wife,
So bashful that I dared not smile,
And I lowered my head toward a dark corner
And would not turn to your thousand calls;
But at fifteen I straightened my brows and laughed,
Learning that no dust could ever seal our love,
That even unto death I would await you by my post
And would never lose heart in the tower of silent watching.

...Then when I was sixteen, you left on a long journey
Through the Gorges of Ch'u-t'ang, of rock and whirling water.
And then came the Fifth-month, more than I could bear,
And I tried to hear the monkeys in your lofty far-off sky.
Your footprints by our door, where I had watched you go,
Were hidden, every one of them, under green moss,
Hidden under moss too deep to sweep away.
And the first autumn wind added fallen leaves.
And now, in the Eighth-month, yellowing butterflies
Hover, two by two, in our west-garden grasses
And, because of all this, my heart is breaking
And I fear for my bright cheeks, lest they fade.

...Oh, at last, when you return through the three Pa districts,
Send me a message home ahead!
And I will come and meet you and will never mind the distance,
All the way to Chang-feng Sha. 

Read also

Biography of Li Po

Tang Dynasty Poets

Tang Dynasty Poets

Two poets of the golden age of Chinese Poetry appeared on a set of of Poets and Philosopher stamps issued in 1983.  The first is Li Bai (also known as Li Po) born in 701, who had what is described as a "hard living life" which means he liked a drink or two;  any poetry collection of the Tang Dynasty will contain many of his poems.

The painting is a modern one created by Liu Lingcang (1906-1989) who was apprenticed at 14 and and as a young man went to Beijing alone living off the sale of his paintings to follow the masters of his chosen art.  He himself became a great scholar of painting history and painting theories and in in his 70 year art career he spent 40 teaching those skills. It is interesting to see the scroll painting he made of Li Bai which expands the view of the poet and appeared as "Landscape of Tang Poetry"

Next is Du Fu (also known as Tu Fu) 712-770 who is known in China as the "Poet Sage".  But let the words of these poets tell their own story.  They share a page in my copy of Soame Jenyns's (who was keeper of Oriental Antiques in the British Museum) second collection of translations of Poems of the T'ang Dynasty, you will see why he has done this.

"Sending Off A Friend" by Li Po

Looking north of the city you see the line of blue hills,
Sparkling water flows past the eastern gate.
Here we part once for all;
A solitary waterweed drifts off into the distance.
When I think of the wandering clouds you will come back into my thoughts
Sunset will bring with it memories of you.
We part now with a wave of the hand; as we turn our horses they neigh farewell.

"With the width of Heaven between us thinking of Li Po" by Du Fu

A chill wind springs up from the horizon,
What are your thoughts now I wonder?
When will the wild geese arrive?
Rivers and lakes are big with autumn floods
Your literary compositions are a foe to your success,
The ghouls are gleeful when people (like you) pass by
I fear your path corresponds to that of the "aggrieved spirit".
Throw a poem to him in the Mi-lo River.

Legend has it that Li Po died in a most poetic way by falling from his boat when he tried to embrace the moon in the Yangtze River.  The 'aggrieved spirit' reference in the poem Jenyns says is an allusion to Ch'ü Yüan, who committed ritual suicide by holding a rock and wading into  a river, today celebrated by the dragon boat racing festival.

An entry to Virdian Postcard's Sunday Stamps celebration of National Poetry Month.

Read also

Biography of Li Po

Postal Picture