On Love

by Charles Bukowski

what you were will not happen again.

but what can I make of love when we are all born at a different time and place and only meet through a trick of centuries and a chance three steps to the left?

when you take it away do it slowly and easily make it as if I were dying in my sleep instead of in my life, amen.

she was hot, she was so hot I didn’t want anybody else to have her, and if I didn’t get home on time she’d be gone, and I couldn’t bear that— I’d go mad . . . it was foolish I know, childish, but I was caught in it, I was caught.

the grace is in being able to like rock music, symphony music, jazz . . . anything that contains the joy of original energy.

love is a filter cigarette stuck in your mouth and lighted the wrong way