The Essential Bukowski: Poetry

by Charles Bukowski

for a father is always your master even when he’s gone;

while on Sunset Boulevard the hippies and yippies hitchhike in $50 boots.

it’s the order of things: each one gets a taste of honey then the knife.

we gave them better than they asked yet we gave them nothing.

the men stood on their porches smoking cigarettes, now knowing they’d have to go out there to look for that job that probably wasn’t there, to start that car that probably wouldn’t start.

like the dog who got across the busy street: not all of it was good luck.

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