Bone Palace Ballet Quotes

“you've got to burn
straight up and down
and then maybe sidewise
for a while
and have your guts
scrambled by a
bully
and the demonic
ladies,
you've got to run
along the edge of
madness
teetering,
you've got to starve
like a winter
alleycat,
you've go to live
with the imbecility
of at least a dozen
cities,
then maybe
maybe
maybe
you might know
where you are
for a tiny
blinking
moment.”
― Charles Bukowski, Bone Palace Ballet: New Poems

“people diminish me;
the longer I sit and listen to them
the more empty I feel but I don't get
the idea that they feel empty, I feel
that they enjoy the sound from their
mouths.”
― Charles Bukowski, Bone Palace Ballet: New Poems

“I don't know if this is true to you but for me
sometimes it gets so bad
that anything else
say like
looking at a bird on an overhead
power line
seems as great as a Beethoven symphony.
then you forget it and you're back
again.”
― Charles Bukowski, Bone Palace Ballet: New Poems

“nothing's news.
it's the same old thing in
disguise.
only one thing comes without a
disguise and you only see it
once, or
maybe never.
like getting hit by a freight
train.
makes us realize that all our
moaning about long lost girls
in gingham dresses
is not so important
after
all.”
― Charles Bukowski, Bone Palace Ballet: New Poems

“ah it will never end, there will be no help, no mercy, no living thing, it will all go on, uselessly, through fabrication and old habits, it will continue, a headless body of life, walking old walks, doing old tricks, dreaming old dreams, it will be as alone as a mountain, and despite billions of beings there will not be one real being, there will be everlasting waste and only the animals will be real, they will have the pureness of eye and the grace, they will be the last, the simple, pure, the ember, what it meant truly, the wolf will have the heart and the panther the lungs and the eagle, the eyes, and the last war will be one man sitting in a chair, laughing at it all.”
― Charles Bukowski, Bone Palace Ballet: 175 Unpublished Poems and Stories—From Hard-Drinking Apprentice to Defiant Artist Facing Fate

“we were never meant to be what we are or where we are, we are looking for an escape, some music from the sun, the girl we never found. we are betting on the miracle again there before the purple mountains as the horses parade past so much more beautiful than our lives.”
― Charles Bukowski, Bone Palace Ballet: 175 Unpublished Poems and Stories—From Hard-Drinking Apprentice to Defiant Artist Facing Fate