The Pleasures of the Damned: Selected Poems 1951-1993

by Charles Bukowski

I listen to the pulse of the sun,

it was the cold, willful attitude of the young and powerful doctors despite the wishes of the helpless old.

I sit with 3 junkies at one-thirty in the afternoon. the smoke pisses upward. I wait.

DEATH COMES SLOWLY LIKE ANTS TO A FALLEN FIG.

here comes a voice saying something dull with authority

there are times when we should remember the strange courage of the second-rate who refuse to quit when the nights are black and long and sleepless and the days are without end.

begging a 20-year-old typewriter to say something,

—but once you get the taste, it’s good to get your teeth into words. I forgive those who can’t quit. I forgive myself. this is where the action is, this is the hot horse that comes in.

“hello,” I say. she turns eyes like imitation diamonds up at me. her face has no expression.

the jobless men, failures in a failing time were imprisoned in their houses with their wives and children and their pets. the pets refused to go out and left their waste in strange places.

my father, never a good man at best, beat my mother when it rained as I threw myself between them, the legs, the knees, the screams until they separated.

I’d rather be Lost than Last but as I read these books about them I feel a gentleness and a generosity

I like to read about them: Joyce blind and prowling the bookstores like a tarantula, they said. Dos Passos with his clipped newscasts using a pink typewriter ribbon.

Ernie, you had no idea how good it had been four decades later when you blew your brains into the orange juice although I grant you that was not your best work.

it would take decades of living and writing before I would be able to put down a sentence that was anywhere near what I wanted it to be.

time hangs helpless from the doorknob

the telephone rings without sound the small limp arm petering against the bell.

I sit eating, looking at my fingernails. the sweat comes down behind my ears and I hear the shooting in the streets and I chew and wait without wonder.

looking, the fondness and the wanting I have been held I have been held.

“Hank,” she said, “it’s hard,” and I tried in vain to say something that might comfort her.

he disgusted me. I turned and walked off. he had outwitted me: praise was the only thing I couldn’t handle.

people are worn away with striving, they hide in common habits. their concerns are herd concerns. few have the ability to stare at an old shoe for ten minutes or to think of odd things like who invented the doorknob? they become unalive because they are unable to pause undo themselves unkink unsee unlearn roll clear. listen to their untrue laughter, then walk away.

I knew you in the love bed as you whispered lies of passion while your nails dug me into you.

I saw you adored by crowds in Spain while pigtail boys with swords colored the sun for your glory.

her shoes themselves would light my room like many candles.

my 3 male cats have had their balls clipped. now they sit and look at me with eyes emptied of all but killing.

and now sometimes I’m interviewed, they want to hear about life and literature and I get drunk and hold up my cross-eyed, shot, runover de-tailed cat and I say, “look, look at this!” but they don’t understand, they say something like, “you say you’ve been influenced by Céline?” “no,” I hold the cat up, “by what happens, by things like this, by this, by this!”

you realize when you’re plucked out of the mainstream that it doesn’t need you or anybody else. the birds don’t notice you’re gone, the flowers don’t care, the people out there don’t notice, but the IRS, the phone co., the gas and electric co., the DMV, etc., they keep in touch.

half-past nowhere alone in the crumbling tower of myself stumbling in this the darkest hour

as the bankers scurry to survive, as the young girls paint their hungry lips, as the dogs sleep in temporary peace,

clowns in love with dollar bills, nations moving people like pawns; daylight thieves with beautiful nighttime wives and wines; the crowded jails, the commonplace unemployed, dying grass, 2-bit fires; men old enough to love the grave.