You Get So Alone At Times That It Just Makes Sense

by Charles Bukowski

he should have been my father, and I liked best what he said over and over: “Nothing is worth it.”

it felt good like screaming in a madhouse, the madhouse of my world as the mice scattered among the empties.

men evaded me and the women were terrified of me. bartenders asked that I leave.

that crazy son of a bitch, he was a lyric poem himself.

—those poor darlings had no idea… and neither did I that those ugly roaring nights would be fodder such as even Dostoevski would not shy away from.

I got so god damned thin that if I turned sidewise it was hard to see my shadow under a hard noon sun.

I don’t think I was insane but many of the insane think that

I once even asked my wife: look, I must be sick…perhaps I ought to see a shrink? Christ, I said, he might cure me and then what would I do?

after you’ve pulled off the tablecloth with the full plates of food and broken the windows and rung the bells of idiots and have spoken true and terrible words

Faulkner loved his whiskey and along with the writing he didn’t have time for much else.

Beethoven rattles his bones majestically and those damn cats don’t care about any of it

things begin to lose their natural value when they approach human endeavor.

nothing against Beethoven: he did fine for what he was but I wouldn’t want him on my rug with one leg over his head while he was licking his balls.

we are unwanted and burning we are burning and unwanted we are an unwanted burning

as the lonely unfulfill the lonely.

there’s no clarity. there was never meant to be clarity.

if I had a grandmother my grandmother could whip your grandmother.

it’s almost entirely waste. regret is mostly caused by not having done anything. the mind barks like a dog.

it is so arranged all the way to oblivion.

there are certainly any number of lonely people without much to do with their nights.

I was more visible and available then

it was somewhere between the Rose Bowl and one of the largest graveyards in Southern California

I poured her a drink and we talked very drab talk and kissed a bit. the kisses were neither good nor bad nor interesting or un- interesting.

and all the women who should have loved me but didn’t and

one doesn’t even think of the liver and if the liver doesn’t think of us, that’s fine.

but it does seem the more we drink the better the words go.

death doesn’t matter but the ultimate inconvenience of near-death is worse than galling.

sometimes getting started in the big time is tantamount to trying to raise an erection in a tornado and even if you do nobody has the time to notice.

past wives and wars and jobs and all the things that happen.

there’s fire in the fingers and there’s fire in the shoes and there’s fire in walking across a room there’s fire in the cat’s eyes and there’s fire in the cat’s balls

and as I listen to the symphonies of dead composers I am consumed with a glad sadness

there’s fire in the walls and the snails in the garden only want love and there’s fire in the crabgrass we are burning burning burning

there is a wild wind outside and in between times I have sat in the dark here electric (haha) typer off lights out radio off drinking in the dark lighting cigarettes in the dark

there was fire off the match we are all burning together burning brothers and sisters I like it I like it I like it.

shit: drink without smoke is like cock without pussy

all you want is me sitting next to you with popcorn and Dr. Pepper as those dull celluloid teeth chew away at my remains.

and I sit there alone with you and Dostoevsky

as the real and the artificial heart continues to falter, famished…

I love you but don’t know ...

we all hold up well for a while, then inherent with flaws and skips and misses most of us so often deteriorate overnight into a state so near defecation that the end result is almost unbearable to the senses.

complaint is often the result of an insufficient ability to live within the obvious restrictions of this god damned cage.

all that I can say to them is show me more leg show me more ass— that’s all you (or I) have while it lasts

I was the mindless drunken ape in a sad and dying neighborhood.

I was a fucking fool.

it is so dark now with the sadness of people

history surrounds us and our lives slink away in shame.

and in between the panties and/or the jockstraps and the cocaine many of them manage to screw up with the IRS.

it happens and happens and continues to: the mutilation of talent the gods seldom give but so quickly take.

as we find profundity in being an asshole—

and people will shudder just a bit and look the other way knowing that too much ego is not enough.