What Matters Most is How Well You Walk Through the Fire

by Charles Bukowski

my garden in the sun and in the rain and in the day and in the night pain is a flower pain is flowers blooming all the time.

true revolution comes from true revulsion; when things get bad enough the kitten will kill the lion.

I wish to weep but sorrow is stupid. I wish to believe but belief is a graveyard.

some lose all mind and become soul: insane. some lose all soul and become mind: intellectual. some lose both and become: accepted.

the people out there expect miracles continual miracles with words. the world is full of constipated writers. and eager readers who need plenty of new shit. it’s depressing.

things get bad for all of us, almost continually, and what we do under the constant stress reveals who/what we are.

I only want to go to bed close my eyes and sleep forever.

I remember awakening one morning and finding everything smeared with the color of forgotten love

when a hot woman meets a hermit one of them is going to change.

the proper mix of the woman and the poem is infinite Art.

the legions of death appeared and vanished, the sun blinked once I thought of love with its head ripped off still trying to sing

I’m so bored, bored, bored, bored, I’m about to go crazy! o.k., I say, and hang up. now she can get un-bored. I wonder who will un-bore her first? probably a bore. an unemployed actor with asthma who likes the 3 Stooges. what she doesn’t realize is that—usually—only boring people get bored.

I hear soft sounds from the night outside and I am happy.

to create art means to be crazy alone forever.

there is a loneliness in this world so great that you can see it in the slow movement of a clock’s hands. there is a loneliness in this world so great that you can see it in blinking neon in Vegas, in Baltimore, in Munich. people are tired strafed by life mutilated either by love or no love. we don’t need new governments new revolutions we don’t need new men new women we don’t need new ways we just need to care. people are not good to each other one on one. people are just not good to each other. we are afraid. we think that hatred signifies strength. that punishment is love. what we need is less false education what we need are fewer rules fewer police and more good teachers. we forget the terror of one person aching in one room alone unkissed untouched cut off watering a plant alone without a telephone that would never ring anyway. people are not good to each other

I like to think about these people they taught me so many things that I never dreamed of before. and they taught me well, very well when it was so much needed they showed me so many things that I never knew were possible. those friends deep in my blood who when there was no chance gave me one.

“I never heard of you,” he said. “I never heard of you either,” I replied.

if only we were crazy enough to be willing to ignore our mechanical and static perceptions we’d know that a half-filled coffee cup holds more secrets than, say, the Grand Canyon.

at least 4 women are in love with him and he deserves them all and I hope he gets them all. it’s the only way we can teach that son-of-a-bitch what suffering is.

we asked for no mercy or miracles and we ask for none now; we paid our way, laugh if you will, we walked the only paths there were to walk. and when love came to us twice and lied to us twice we decided to never love again that was fair fair to us and fair to love itself.

ask for no mercy no miracles; and don’t forget: time is meant to be wasted, love fails and death is useless.

you must refuse to join them. you must remain yourself. you must open the curtains or the blinds or the windows to the gentle light. to joy. it’s there in life and even in death it can be there.

dying’s not bad, it’s that little transition from here to there that’s strange like flicking the light switch off.

god damn all this that they’ve brought down upon us, we are brave and good even though we are selfish and kill each other and kill ourselves, we are the people born to kill and die and weep in dark rooms and love in dark rooms, and wait, and wait and wait and wait. we are the people. we are nothing more.