Henry Charles Bukowski
“I remember a long raging letter I got one day from a man who told me I had no right to say that I didn’t like Shakespeare. Too many youth believe me and just not bother to read Shakespeare. I had no right to take this stance. On and on about that. I didn’t answer him. But I will here. Screw you, buddy. And I don’t like Tolstoy either!”
“There’s nothing to mourn about death any more than there is to mourn about the growing of a flower. What is terrible is not death but the lives people live or don’t live up until their death. They don’t honor their own lives...Their minds are full of cotton. They swallow God without thinking, they swallow country without thinking. Soon they forget how to think, they let others think for them. Their brains are stuffed with cotton. They look ugly, they talk ugly, they walk ugly. Play them the great music of the centuries and they can’t hear it. Most people’s deaths are a sham. There’s nothing left to die.”
- H.C. Bukowski
Charles fled from the abusive childhood into alcohol and never found God (not that is known to us, outsiders..).
However, his decency as a human being was so visible through all the swearing words he was using to describe (his) life; he failed in hiding the blue bird of his heart.
I was asked too many times: “How can you like such a vulgar poet?” My answer then and always will be: vulgarity goes only with those who lie, and hide under the deception of morally superior, which are truly cowardly people.
Charles was in love with truth, even if the unfortunate searches to find it always led him to a dead end.
Nonetheless, his sincerity is breath of a fresh air in the world full of phony people.
Jean-Paul Sartre called him America's "greatest poet", but Bukowski refused to meet him: "No way baby! I wasn't into Sartre one little bit. I just had my bottle to take care of."
what can we do?
/by Charles Bukowski/
at their best, there is gentleness in Humanity.
some understanding and, at times, acts of
courage
but all in all it is a mass, a glob that doesn't
have too much.
it is like a large animal deep in sleep and
almost nothing can awaken it.
when activated it's best at brutality,
selfishness, unjust judgments, murder.
what can we do with it, this Humanity?
nothing.
avoid the thing as much as possible.
treat it as you would anything poisonous, vicious
and mindless.
but be careful. it has enacted laws to protect
itself from you.
it can kill you without cause.
and to escape it you must be subtle.
few escape.
it's up to you to figure a plan.
I have met nobody who has escaped.
I have met some of the great and
famous but they have not escaped
for they are only great and famous within
Humanity.
I have not escaped
but I have not failed in trying again and
again.
before my death I hope to obtain my
life.
from Dinosauria, We
by Charles Bukowski
...
We are
Born like this
Into this
Into these carefully mad wars
Into the sight of broken factory windows of emptiness
Into bars where people no longer speak to each other
Into fist fights that end as shootings and knifings
Born into this
Into hospitals which are so expensive that it's cheaper to die
Into lawyers who charge so much it's cheaper to plead guilty
Into a country where the jails are full and the madhouses closed
Into a place where the masses elevate fools into rich heroes
...
from Bluebird
by Charles Bukowski
(1992)
...
There's a bluebird in my heart
That wants to get out but I'm too clever
I only let him out at night sometimes
When everybody sleeps
I say: "I know that you're there
Don't be so sad", that's what I said
Then I put him back but he's always singing
I don't let him die and we sleep together
Like that with our secret pact
Is nice enough to make a little man weep
But I don't weep, do you?
...
The Old Guitarist, painting by Pablo Picasso (late 1903-early 1904);
it depicts an elderly musician, a blind, haggard man with threadbare clothing,
weakly hunched over his guitar while playing in the streets of Barcelona, Spain.
