You Get So Alone At Times That It Just Makes Sense

by Charles Bukowski

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?

and have spoken true and terrible words

and the next best part was nobody ever missed me.

looking at me as if I was a dog.

and those damn cats don’t care about any of it and if they did I wouldn’t like them as well:

we are unwanted and burning we are burning and unwanted we are an unwanted burning as we sizzle and fry to the bone the coals of Dante’s Inferno spit and sputter beneath us and above the sky is an open hand and the words of wise men are useless it’s not a nice world, a nice world it’s not…

I lost it I lost it somewhere while walking down the street or while lifting weights or while watching a parade I lost it

or while waiting at a red light at noon on some smoggy day I lost it while putting a coin into a parking meter I lost it as the wild dogs slept.

“I’ve heard about your brutality, please desist from that!”

“you are a fine writer,” he said, “but as a person you are utterly despicable!” “that’s what I like about me best, baby!”

I called him a Viking

it’s the dream that keeps you going then and now.

neither ugly nor beautiful, of average body and features, seeming to be neither vicious, intelligent, dumb or insane.

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

you get so alone at times that it just makes sense

being a student of the word and the way, I realized that they were faking it: I could sense each false emotion, each utter pretense, it made me feel that the editors had their heads up their asses—

many I disliked for personal and artistic reasons… but what I overlooked was their endurance and their ability to improve.

they lash against the typer ribbons: they came to fight.

being drunk at the typer beats being with any woman

we are burning burning burning there’s fire in a glass of water

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.

and the problem with writing these poems as you get into number 7 or 8 or 9 into the second bottle near 3 a.m. trying to light your cigarette with a book of stamps after already setting the wastebasket on fire

you light up you flick the match toward a tray it misses and like that… a flame rises everything is BURNING at last!

the flame whirls and leaps then the whole ashtray of cigarette and cigar stubs begins to smoke as if mouths were inhaling them