Post Office

by Charles Bukowski

Food is good for the nerves and the spirit. Courage comes from the belly-all else is desperation.

Any damn fool can beg up some kind of job; it takes a wise man to make it without working.

I wasn’t much of a petty thief. I wanted the whole world or nothing.

Humans, birds, everything has to make these decisions. It was a hard game.

That is the nature of Woman. They like the mutual exchange of dirty laundry, a bit of screaming, a bit of dramatics.

But now and then, a woman walks up, full blossom, a woman just bursting out of her dress … a sex creature, a curse, the end of it all.

The old gal was only another lonely creature in a world that didn’t care.

Women were meant to suffer; no wonder they asked for constant declarations of love.

Well, as the boys said, you had to work somewhere. So they accepted what there was. This was the wisdom of the slave.

In the morning it was morning and I was still alive. Maybe I’ll write a novel, I thought. And then I did.