The Essential Bukowski: Poetry

by Charles Bukowski

all they want is a wooden Indian to say yes and no and stand over the fire and not raise too much hell;

somehow these mountains are like an old woman with a bad memory and a shopping basket. we are in a basin,

Special resonance for those living on the Wasatch Front -- the greatest of Basins.

butterblondes with Cadillac souls

days when children say funny and brilliant things like savages trying to send you a message through their bodies while their bodies are still alive enough to transmit and feel and run up and down without locks and paychecks and ideals and possessions and beetle-like opinions.

and nothing, and nothing. the days of the bosses, yellow men with bad breath and big feet, men who look like frogs, hyenas, men who walk as if melody had never been invented, men who think it is intelligent to hire and fire and profit, men with expensive wives they possess like 60 acres of ground to be drilled or shown-off or to be walled away from the incompetent, men who’d kill you because they’re crazy and justify it because it’s the law, men who stand in front of windows 30 feet wide and see nothing, men with luxury yachts who can sail around the world and yet never get out of their vest pockets, men like snails, men like eels, men like slugs, and not as good . . .

people in wax museums frozen into their best sterility are not bad, horrible but not bad.

There is enough treachery, hatred, violence, Absurdity in the average human being To supply any given army on any given day. AND The Best At Murder Are Those Who Preach Against It. AND The Best At Hate Are Those Who Preach LOVE AND THE BEST AT WAR —FINALLY—ARE THOSE WHO PREACH PEACE Those Who Preach GOD NEED God Those Who Preach PEACE Do Not Have Peace. THOSE WHO PREACH LOVE DO NOT HAVE LOVE

The Genius of the Crowd is a classic.

Beware Those Who Are ALWAYS READING BOOKS

A special Bukowski note for those on Goodreads.

I met a genius on the train today about 6 years old, he sat beside me and as the train ran down along the coast we came to the ocean and then he looked at me and said, “it’s not pretty.” it was the first time I’d realized that.

Reminds me of a line from my wife's book, "Falling Back to Earth" -- five year olds are the geniuses of the world.

it’s the continuing series of small tragedies that send a man to the madhouse . . .

all the women all the women all the bedrooms the rugs the photos the curtains, it’s something like a church only at times there’s laughter.

We could use more laughter in our churches . . .

what matters most is how well you walk through the fire.

I was a bibliophile, albeit a disenchanted one and this and the world shaped me.

A Goodreads quote -- for the disenchanted bibliophiles

born into this into hospitals which are so expensive that it’s cheaper to die into lawyers who charge so much it’s cheaper to plead guilty into a country where the jails are full and the madhouses closed into a place where the masses elevate fools into rich heroes

Prophetic Bukowski

there are no strong men, there are no beautiful women. at least, you can die knowing this and you will have the only possible victory.

the libraries of the world have yawned themselves to sleep.

strangers with faces like the backs of thumbtacks

there is a loneliness in this world so great that you can see it in the slow movement of the hands of a clock.