Hollywood (Canons)

by Charles Bukowski

I must have been crazy but there are many kinds of crazy and some are quite delightful.

Back at the bar the barflies were still there and they didn’t look any drunker. It took a lot to buzz a pro.

The door to the room opened and Jack Bledsoe weaved in. Shit, it was the young Chinaski! It was me! I felt a tender aching within me. Youth, you son of a bitch, where did you go? I wanted to be the young drunk again. I wanted to be Jack Bledsoe. But I was just the old guy in the corner, sucking on a beer.

had been a hell of a young bull. Really a top-notch fuck-up.

But, in another sense, the racetrack is a sickness, a fill-in, a cop-out, a substitute for something else that should be faced. Yet, we all need to escape. The hours are long and must be filled somehow until our death. And there ’s just not enough glory and excitement to go around. Things quickly get drab and deadly. We awaken in the morning, kick our feet out from under the sheets, place them on the floor and think, ah, shit, what now?