The Essential Bukowski: Poetry

by Charles Bukowski

do you want to enter the arena? if it doesn’t come rushing out of you, don’t do it. unless it comes bursting out of your ears and your head and your ass and your bellybutton, don’t do it. if you have to sit for an hour staring at your computer screen or hunched over your typewriter, don’t do it. if you’re doing it for money or fame, don’t do it. if you’re doing it because you want women in your bed, don’t do it. if you have to sit there and rework it, rewrite it, don’t do it. if it’s hard work doing it, don’t do it. if you’re trying to write like somebody else, don’t do it. if you have to wait for it to roar out of you, then wait. if it never roars out of you, do something else. if you have to read it to your wife or your girlfriend or your boyfriend or your parents or anybody at all, you’re not ready. don’t be like so many writers, don’t be so like so many thousands of writers who call themselves writers, don’t be so dull and boring and pretentious, don’t lock in with self-love. don’t work the pages to death with your crap. the libraries of the world have yawned themselves to sleep. don’t add to that, don’t do it. unless it comes bursting through your skull like a rocket, unless being still about it would drive you to madness or suicide or murder, don’t do it. unless the sun inside of you is burning your guts out, don’t do it. when it is known to you truly, it will do it by itself and it will keep doing it until you die or it dies in you. there is no other way. there neve...