On Love

by Charles Bukowski

I am, at best, the delicate thought of a delicate hand that quenches for the mixing rope,

what can I make of history when it narrows down to the three o’clock shadow under a leaf?

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? you mean a love I have not met is less than a selfishness I call near?

I don’t know why people think effort and energy have anything to do with creation. I suppose that in matters like politics, medicine, history and religion they have been lied to also.

I’m sure he feared the well-written word that appeared with gentleness and reasonableness in our best and most interesting literature. and it was there close to me under the covers more woman than woman more man than man. I had it all and I took it.

those ears those arms those elbows those eyes looking the fondness and the waiting I have been held I have been held.

the grace is in being able to like rock music, symphony music, jazz . . . anything that contains the joy of original energy. and the mathematic that returns is the deep blue low yourself flat upon yourself within the guillotine walls— angry at the sound of the phone or anybody’s footsteps passing;

I act very bitter sometimes but the taste has often been sweet, it’s only that I’ve feared to say it. it’s like when your woman says, “tell me you love me,” and you can’t say it.

if you ever see me grinning from my blue Volks running a yellow light driving straight into the sun without dark shades I will only be locked into the afternoon of a crazy life thinking of trapeze artists of midgets with big cigars of a Russian winter in the early forties of Chopin with his bag of Polish soil or an old waitress bringing me an extra cup of coffee and seeming to laugh at me as she does so. the best of you I like more than you think. the others don’t count except that they have fingers and heads and some of them eyes and most of them legs and all of them good and bad dreams and a way to go.

love is nothing but headlights at night running through the fog

love is the crushed cats of the universe

love is the first 3 rows of potential killers at the Olympic Auditorium love is what you think the other person has destroyed

love is betrayal love is the burning of the wino in the alley

love is your father in a coffin who hated you

love is the way we boil like the lobster

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

love is your woman dancing pressed against a stranger

“hello?” “I LOVE YOU!” she said. “thanks,” I said. “is that all you’ve got to say?” “yes.” “eat shit!” she said and hung up. love dries up, I thought as I walked back to the bathroom, about as fast as sperm.

there is much good in being alone but there is a strange warmth in not being alone.

I’ve done the town, I’ve drunk the city, I’ve fucked the country, I’ve pissed on the universe. there’s little left to do but consolidate and ease out. I have a nice garden. I have a lovely woman. I no longer feel like a dildo. I feel like a man. it feels much better, it does. don’t worry about me.

she taught me the agony of the damned and the useless. one wants good weather, good luck, good dreams.

I have this machine. this machine and I live together. Olympia, that’s her name. a good girl. almost always faithful.

you were good, Rosalie in 1935, good enough to remember now when the light is yellow and the nights are slow.

love dead like a crushed fly, I was reaching back and wandering through my idiocy, realizing that as a being I could have been better—

power corrupts, life aborts and all you have left is a bunch of warts.

it was crazier than the sun burning up the sea,