Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame Quotes

“each man must realize
that it can all disappear very
quickly:
the cat, the woman, the job,
the front tire,
the bed, the walls, the
room; all our necessities
including love,
rest on foundations of sand —
and any given cause,
no matter how unrelated:
the death of a boy in Hong Kong
or a blizzard in Omaha . . .
can serve as your undoing.
all your chinaware crashing to the
kitchen floor, your girl will enter
and you'll be standing, drunk,
in the center of it and she'll ask:
my god, what's the matter?
and you'll answer: I don't know,
I don't know . . .

— PULL A STRING, A PUPPET MOVES . . .”
― Charles Bukowski, Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame

“New Year's Eve always terrifies me.”
― Charles Bukowski, Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame

“out of the arms...


out of the arms of one love
and into the arms of another

I have been saved from dying on the cross
by a lady who smokes pot
writes songs and stories,
and is much kinder than the last,
much much kinder,
and the sex is just as good or better.

it isn't pleasant to be put on the cross and left there,
it is much more pleasant to forget a love which didn't
work
as all love
finally
doesn't work...

it is much more pleasant to make love
along the shore in Del Mar
in room 42, and afterwards
sitting up in bed
drinking good wine, talking and touching
smoking

listening to the waves...

I have died too many times
believing and waiting, waiting
in a room
staring at a cracked ceiling
waiting for the phone, a letter, a knock, a sound...
going wild inside
while she danced with strangers in nightclubs...

out of the arms of one love
and into the arms of another

it's not pleasant to die on the cross,
it's much more pleasant to hear your name whispered in the dark.”
― Charles Bukowski, Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame

“Sometimes a man doesn’t know what to do about things and sometimes it’s best to lie very still and try not to think at all about anything.”
― Charles Bukowski, Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame

“I am this fiery snail crawling home.”
― Charles Bukowski , Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame

“Lost"

they say that hell is crowded, yet,
when you’re in hell,
you always seem to be alone.
& you can’t tell anyone when you’re in hell
or they’ll think you’re crazy
& being crazy is being in hell
& being sane is hellish too.

those who escape hell, however,
never talk about it
& nothing much bothers them after that.
I mean, things like missing a meal,
going to jail, wrecking your car,
or even the idea of death itself.

when you ask them,
“how are things?”
they’ll always answer, “fine, just fine…”

once you’ve been to hell and back,
that’s enough
it’s the greatest satisfaction known to man.

once you’ve been to hell and back,
you don’t look behind you when the floor creaks
and the sun is always up at midnight
and things like the eyes of mice
or an abandoned tire in a vacant lot
can make you smile
once you’ve been to hell and back.”
― Charles Bukowski, Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame

“2 p.m. beer

nothing matters
but flopping on a mattress
with cheap dreams and a beer
as the leaves die and the horses die
and the landladies stare in the halls;
brisk the music of pulled shades,
a last man's cave
in an eternity of swarm
and explosion;
nothing but the dripping sink,
the empty bottle,
euphoria,
youth fenced in,
stabbed and shaven,
taught words
propped up
to die.”
― Charles Bukowski, Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame

“nerves


twitching in the sheets --
to face the sunlight again,
that's clearly
trouble.
I like the city better when the
neon lights are going and
the nudies dance on top of the
bar
to the mauling music.

I'm under this sheet
thinking.
me nerves are hampered by
history --
the most memorable concern of mankind
is the guys it takes to
face the sunlight again.

love begins at the meeting of two
strangers. love for the world is
impossible. I'd rather stay in bed
and sleep.

dizzied by the days and the streets and the years
I pull the sheets to my neck.
I turn my ass to the wall.
I hate the mornings more than
any man.”
― Charles Bukowski, Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame

“I have been
hanging here
headless
for so long
that the body has forgotten
why
or where or when it
happened
and the toes
walk along in shoes
that do not
care

and although
the fingers
slice things and
hold things and
move things and
touch
things
such as
oranges
apples
onions
books
bodies
I am no longer
reasonably sure
what these things
are

they are mostly
like
lamplight and
fog

then often the hands will
go to the
lost head
and hold the head
like the hands of a
child
around a ball
a block
air and wood -
no teeth
no thinking part

and when a window
blows open
to a
church
hill
woman
dog
or something singing

the fingers of the hand
are senseless to vibration
because they have no
ears
senseless to color because
they have no
eyes
senseless to smell
without a nose

they country goes by as
nonsense
the continents

the daylights and evenings
shine
on my dirty
fingernails

and in some mirror
my face
a block to vanish
scuffed part of a child’s
ball

while everywhere
moves
worms and aircraft
fires on the land
tall violets in sanctity
my hands let go let go
let go”
― Charles Bukowski, Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame

“Days like this, like your day today.
maybe the rain on the window trying to
get through to you. What do you see today?
what is it? where are you?
the best days are sometimes the first,
sometimes the middle and even sometimes the last”
― Charles Bukowski, Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame

“New Year’s Eve always terrifies me life knows nothing of years. now the horns have stopped and the firecrackers and the thunder… it’s all over in five minutes… all I hear is the rain on the palm leaves, and I think, I will never understand men, but I have lived it through.”
― Charles Bukowski, Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame

“sometimes you’ve got to kill 4 or 5
thousand men before you somehow
get to believe that the sparrow
is immortal, money is piss and
that you have been wasting
your time.”
― Charles Bukowski, Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame

“I know I went mad, almost as an act of theory: the lost are found the sick are healthy the non-creators are the creators.”
― Charles Bukowski, Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame

“you must some day die for nothing
as I
have lived.”
― Charles Bukowski, Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame

“it never happened
but it seemed like
there were times when rot
stopped
waited like a streetcar
at a signal.”
― Charles Bukowski, Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame

“and I walked into a dark hall
where the landlady stood
execrating and final,
sending me to hell,
waving her fat, sweaty arms
and screaming
screaming for rent
because the world had failed us
both.”
― Charles Bukowski, Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame

“I only want the sky
to burn me more and more
burn me out
so that the sun begins at
6 in the morning
and goes past midnight”
― Charles Bukowski, Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame

“the next time you listen to Borodin remember his wife used his compositions to line the cat boxes with or to cover jars of sour milk;”
― Charles Bukowski, Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame

“i am dead but i know the dead are not like this."

the dead can sleep
they don’t get up and rage
they don’t have a wife.

her white face
like a flower in a closed window lifts up and
looks at me.

the curtain smokes a cigarette
and a moth dies in a
freeway cash
as I examine the shadows of my
hands.

an owl, the size of a baby clock
rings for me, come on come on
it says as Jerusalem is hustled
down crotch-stained halls.

the 5 a.m. grass is nasal now
in hums of battleships and valleys
in the raped light that brings on
the fascist birds.

I put out the lamp and get in bed
beside her, she thinks I’m there
mumbles a rosy gratitude
as I stretch my legs
to coffin length
get in and swim away
from frogs and fortunes.”
― Charles Bukowski, Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame

“I guess she felt as I: that the weakness was not Government
but Man, one at a time, that men were never as strong as
their ideas and that ideas were governments turned into men;
and so it began on a couch with a spilled martini
and it ended in the bedroom: desire, revolution,
nonsense ended, and the shades rattled in the wind,
rattled like sabres, cracked like cannon,
and 30 dogs, 20 men on 20 horses chased one fox
across the fields under the sun”
― Charles Bukowski, Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame

“I guess she felt as I: that the weakness was not Government but Man, one at a time, that men were never as strong as their ideas and that ideas were governments turned into men;
and so it began on a couch with a spilled martini
and it ended in the bedroom: desire, revolution,
nonsense ended, and the shades rattled in the wind,
rattled like sabres, cracked like cannon,
and 30 dogs, 20 men on 20 horses chased one fox
across the fields under the sun”
― Charles Bukowski, Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame

“Whats the Use of a Title?"

They don’t make it
the beautiful die in flame—
suicide pills, rat poison, rope what—
ever...
they rip their arms off,
throw themselves out of windows,
they pull their eyes out of the sockets,
reject love
reject hate
reject, reject.

they don’t make it
the beautiful can’t endure,
they are butterflies
they are doves
they are sparrows,
they don’t make it.

one tall shot of flame
while the old men play checkers in the park
one flame, one good flame
while the old men play checkers in the park
in the sun.

the beautiful are found in the edge of a room
crumpled into spiders and needles and silence
and we can never understand why they
left, they were so
beautiful.

they don’t make it,
the beautiful die young
and leave the ugly to their ugly lives.

lovely and brilliant: life and suicide and death
as the old men play checkers in the sun
in the park.”
― Charles Bukowski, Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame

“I drive toward it not wanting it getting it getting it as the cat stretches yawns and rolls over into another dream.”
― Charles Bukowski, Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame

“كل ماعليك
إدراكُه أن أغلبَ الأشياء
لن تجدي نفعاً ، وهكذا
لن تحاولَ ادّخارها
ومع الوقت ستتعلمُ تبديد
السنوات”
― تشارلز بوكوفسكي, Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame

“لا أطمح بالكثير
فقط
أحاول البقاء حياً
لمدةٍ أطول قليلاً”
― تشارلز بوكوفسكي, Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame

“Woman"

this head like a saucer
decorated with everything
as lip to lip we hang
in mechanical joy;
my hands blaze with arias
but i think of books
on anatomy,
and i fall from you
as nations burn in anger…

to recover from most pitiful error
and rebuild, this is it
loss and mending
until they take us in.

the glory of a saturday afternoon
like biting into an old peach
and you walk across the room
heavy with everything
except my love.”
― Charles Bukowski, Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame

“من المريع أن يخذلك ما بدا متكئًا”
― تشارلز بوكوفسكي, Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame

“your sure body lit candles for men on dark nights, and now your night is darker than the candle’s reach and we will forget you,”
― Charles Bukowski, Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame

“لقد بحنا بما يعوزنا، وتبقّى
لنا التنحي ، فقط”
― تشارلز بوكوفسكي, Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame

“أيام مثل هذه. مثلَ يومك اليوم.
ربما المطر الضارب على النافذة يحاول.
الوصول إليك. مالذي تراه الآن؟
ماهو؟ أين أنت؟ أحياناً الأيام
أفضلها الأولى ، أحياناً
المتوسطة وأحياناً الأخيرة.”
― تشارلز بوكوفسكي, Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame