Poems: Charles Bukowski

by Charles Bukowski

You can download it directly from goodreads

Genres: Poetry, Classics, Literature

176 pages, ebook

First published January 1, 2004

About the author

Henry Charles Bukowski (born as Heinrich Karl Bukowski) was a German-born American poet, novelist and short story writer. His writing was influenced by the social, cultural and economic ambience of his home city of Los Angeles.It is marked by an emphasis on the ordinary lives of poor Americans, the act of writing, alcohol, relationships with women and the drudgery of work. Bukowski wrote thousands of poems, hundreds of short stories and six novels, eventually publishing over sixty books

Charles Bukowski was the only child of an American soldier and a German mother. At the age of three, he came with his family to the United States and grew up in Los Angeles. He attended Los Angeles City College from 1939 to 1941, then left school and moved to New York City to become a writer. His lack of publishing success at this time caused him to give up writing in 1946 and spurred a ten-year stint of heavy drinking. After he developed a bleeding ulcer, he decided to take up writing again. He worked a wide range of jobs to support his writing, including dishwasher, truck driver and loader, mail carrier, guard, gas station attendant, stock boy, warehouse worker, shipping clerk, post office clerk, parking lot attendant, Red Cross orderly, and elevator operator. He also worked in a dog biscuit factory, a slaughterhouse, a cake and cookie factory, and he hung posters in New York City subways.

Bukowski published his first story when he was twenty-four and began writing poetry at the age of thirty-five. His first book of poetry was published in 1959; he went on to publish more than forty-five books of poetry and prose, including Pulp (1994), Screams from the Balcony (1993), and The Last Night of the Earth Poems (1992).

He died of leukemia in San Pedro on March 9, 1994.

Reviews

[floreana · Rating 4 out of 5]

An Almost Made Up Poem

I see you drinking at a fountain with tiny
blue hands, no, your hands are not tiny
they are small, and the fountain is in France
where you wrote me that last letter and
I answered and never heard from you again.
you used to write insane poems about
ANGELS AND GOD, all in upper case, and you
knew famous artists and most of them
were your lovers and I wrote back, it's all right,
go ahead, enter their lives, I'm not jealous
because we've never met, we got close once in
New Orleans, one half block, but never met, never
touched. so you went with the famous and wrote
about the famous, and, of course, what you found out
is that the famous are worried about
their fame's, not the beautiful young girl in bed
with them, who gives them that, and then awakens
in the morning to write upper case poems about
ANGELS AND GOD. we know God is dead, they've told
us, but listening to you I wasn't sure. maybe
it was the upper case. you were one of the
best female poets and I told the publishers,
editors, her, print her, she's mad but she's
magic, there's no lie in her fire. I loved you
like a man loves a woman he never touches, only
writes to, keeps little photographs of. I would have
loved you more if I had sat in a small room rolling a
cigarette and listened to you piss in the bathroom,
but that didn't happen. your letters got sadder.
your lovers betrayed you. kid, i wrote back, all
lovers betray. it didn't help. you said
you had a crying bench and it was by a bridge and
the bridge was over a river and you sat on the crying
bench every night and wept for the lovers who had
hurt and forgotten you. I wrote back but never
heard again. a friend wrote me of your suicide
3 or 4 months after it happened. if I had met you
I would probably have been unfair to you or you
to me. it was best like this.

[Nahed.E · Rating 5 out of 5]

علي الرغم من غرابة أشعاره ، فإن هانك تشارلز بوكوفسكي مميز في هذه الغرابة ، فشعره مختلف تماما عن سائر الأدباء ، وعلي الرغم من حديثه عن العدمية أو العبثية مثله كمثل صموئيل بيكيت وأكتافيو باث وسيلفيا بلاث ، إلا أن كتاباته مميزة عنهم ، فنبرة الحزن في كتاباته تُمزج باللامبالاه والأمل أيضاً ، وبالتأكيد تتميز بالروح الفلسفية العالية
علي الرغم من أنك لن تتفق مع كثير كثير من قصائده ، إلا أنه يجب الاعتراف ببراعته كشاعر
وبراعته في الإتيان بأفكار لا تخطر لك علي بال
وربما تكون معانيها أمام عينيك ، إلا أنك لم تفكر فيها من قبل

[Iwana · Rating 4 out of 5]

'I loved you like a man loves a woman he never touches, only writes to, keeps little photographs of.'

I remembered why I like reading Bukowski

[Sladjana Kovacevic · Rating 5 out of 5]

WRITING
often it is the only
thing
between you and
impossibility.
no drink,
no woman's love,
no wealth
can
match it.
nothing can save
you
except
writing.
it keeps the walls
from
failing.
the hordes from
closing in.
it blasts the
darkness.
writing is the
ultimate
psychiatrist,
the kindliest
god of all the
gods.
writing stalks
death.
it knows no
quit.
and writing
laughs
at itself,
at pain.
it is the last
expectation,
the last
explanation.
that's
what it
is.
🇷🇸
🥣ukus-jeftinog vina "Pre nego što sam postao bogat i poznat samo sam sedeo,pio vino i blenuo u zidove."
🎧Zvuk-klasika na starom radio aparatu
💐miris-dim cigarete i dim uopšte. 🎨boja-crvena,boja krvi i boja crvenog vina
🐙dodir-oštar,hrapav,kao brada od tri dana
🎭identifikacija(likovi)-svi smo mi Bukovski oniliko koliko smo spremni da skinemo ružičaste naočare i pogledamo svet oko sebe širom otvorenih očiju
🤓👻🧙🏼‍♀️vizija(san)-nema sna,samo siva surova realnost
📝ekstra-To je Bukovski,ili ga voliš ili ga ne voliš. Jedinon što je nemoguće,nemoguće je ostati ravnodušan
✒ocena🔟
🇺🇸
🥣taste-cheap wine "Before I became rich and famous I just sat round drinking wine and staring at the walls."
🎧sound-classical music on an old radio
💐smell-"You don't smell like fire,'I yelled,'you smell like smoke!"🚬
🎨colour-red like blood and red like red wine
🐙touch-sharp,rough like a three day old beard
🎭identification(characters)-we are all Bukowski as much as we are ready to take off pink glasses and look at the world with oure eyes open wide
🤓🧙🏼‍♀️👻vision(dream)-don't dream,it's just grey hard reality
📝extra credit-This is Bukowski,you can love him,you can hate him. Only thing impossible is to stay indifferent
✒grade🔟

[M.F. Moonzajer · Rating 3 out of 5]

a smoky room at the edge, it’s always
been a smoky room at the
edge.
the edge never goes away.
sometimes you understand it
better,
sometimes you even talk to it, you might
say, “hello, old friend,”
but it has no sense of humor, it slams you in the
gut, says,
“this is a serious business, I’m here to
kill you or drive you mad.”
“all right,” you reply, “I understand.”

Charles Bukowsk's poetry is beautiful in terms of meaning and complicity, but it is not as swift as most of the contemporary poets to read it. His poems often talks about daily life and the loneliness and the life harshness. Overall, one can love most of his poems.

[Platon Cristina · Rating 2 out of 5]

"... dar, cum zice Dumnezeu,
stând picior peste picior,
observ că am făcut mulți poeți
dar prea puțină
poezie.
..."

"...sistemul nostru de învățământ
ne spune la toți că putem fi
cu toții învingători de super-căcat.
..."

[Grace Rita Nottingham · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brutal

[teotoh · Rating 5 out of 5]

//
the illusion is that you are simply
reading this poem.
the reality is that this is
more than a
poem.
this is a beggar's knife.
this is a tulip.
this is a soldier marching
through Madrid.
this is you on your
death bed.
this is Li Po laughing
underground.
this is not a god-damned
poem.
this is a horse asleep.
a butterfly in
your brain.
this is the devil's
circus.
you are not reading this
on a page.
the page is reading
you.
feel it?
it's like a cobra. it's a hungry eagle circling the room.

this is not a poem. poems are dull,
they make you sleep.

these words force you
to a new
madness.

you have been blessed, you have been pushed into a
blinding area of
light.

the elephant dreams
with you
now.
the curve of space
bends and
laughs.

you can die now.
you can die now as
people were meant to
die:
great,
victorious,
hearing the music,
being the music,
roaring,
roaring,
roaring.
//
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 ...
//
There is enough treachery, hatred violence absurdity in the average
Human being to supply any given army on any given day

And the best at murder are those who preach against it
And the best at hate are those who preach love
And the best at war finally are those who preach peace

Those who preach god, need god
Those who preach peace do not have peace
Those who preach peace do not have love

Beware the preachers
Beware the knowers
Beware those who are always reading books
Beware those who either detest poverty
Or are proud of it
Beware those quick to praise
For they need praise in return
Beware those who are quick to censor
They are afraid of what they do not know
Beware those who seek constant crowds for
They are nothing alone
Beware the average man the average woman
Beware their love, their love is average
Seeks average
But there is genius in their hatred
There is enough genius in their hatred to kill you
To kill anybody
Not wanting solitude
Not understanding solitude
They will attempt to destroy anything
That differs from their own
Not being able to create art
They will not understand art
They will consider their failure as creators
Only as a failure of the world
Not being able to love fully
They will believe your love incomplete
And then they will hate you
And their hatred will be perfect

Like a shining diamond
Like a knife
Like a mountain
Like a tiger
Like hemlock

Their finest art
//
and the sun wields mercy
but like a jet torch carried to high,
and the jets whip across its sight
and rockets leap like toads,
and the boys get out the maps
and pin-cushion the moon,
old green cheese,
no life there but too much on earth:
our unwashed India boys
crossing their legs,playing pipes,
starving with sucked in bellies,
watching the snakes volute
like beautiful women in the hungry air;
the rockets leap,
the rockets leap like hares,
clearing clump and dog
replacing out-dated bullets;
the Chinese still carve
in jade,quietly stuffing rice
into their hunger, a hunger
a thousand years old,
their muddy rivers moving with fire
and song, barges, houseboats
pushed by drifting poles
of waiting without wanting;
in Turkey they face the East
on their carpets
praying to a purple god
who smokes and laughs
and sticks fingers in their eyes
blinding them, as gods will do;
but the rockets are ready: peace is no longer,
for some reason,precious;
madness drifts like lily pads
on a pond circling senselessly;
the painters paint dipping
their reds and greens and yellows,
poets rhyme their loneliness,
musicians starve as always
and the novelists miss the mark,
but not the pelican , the gull;
pelicans dip and dive, rise,
shaking shocked half-dead
radioactive fish from their beaks;
indeed, indeed, the waters wash
the rocks with slime; and on wall st.
the market staggers like a lost drunk
looking for his key; ah,
this will be a good one,by God:
it will take us back to the
sabre-teeth, the winged monkey
scrabbling in pits over bits
of helmet, instrument and glass;
a lightning crashes across
the window and in a million rooms
lovers lie entwined and lost
and sick as peace;
the sky still breaks red and orange for the
painters-and for the lovers,
flowers open as they always have
opened but covered with thin dust
of rocket fuel and mushrooms,
poison mushrooms; it's a bad time,
a dog-sick time-curtain
act 3, standing room only,
SOLD OUT, SOLD OUT, SOLD OUT again,
by god,by somebody and something,
by rockets and generals and
leaders, by poets , doctors, comedians,
by manufacturers of soup
and biscuits, Janus-faced hucksters
of their own indexterity;
I can now see now the coal-slick
contaminated fields, a snail or 2,
bile, obsidian, a fish or 3
in the shallows, an obloquy of our
source and our sight.....
has this happened before? is history
a circle that catches itself by the tail,
a dream, a nightmare,
a general's dream, a presidents dream,
a dictators dream...
can't we awaken?
or are the forces of life greater than we are?
can't we awaken? must we forever,
dear friends, die in our sleep?
//
these things that we support most well
have nothing to do with up,
and we do with them
out of boredom or fear or money
or cracked intelligence;
our circle and our candle of light
being small,
so small we cannot bear it,
we heave out with Idea
and lose the Center:
all wax without the wick,
and we see names that once meant
wisdom,
like signs into ghost towns,
and only the graves are real.
//
I can remember starving in a
small room in a strange city
shades pulled down, listening to
classical music
I was young I was so young it hurt like a knife
inside
because there was no alternative except to hide as long
as possible—
not in self-pity but with dismay at my limited chance:
trying to connect.

the old composers — Mozart, Bach, Beethoven,
Brahms were the only ones who spoke to me and
they were dead.

finally, starved and beaten, I had to go into
the streets to be interviewed for low-paying and
monotonous
jobs
by strange men behind desks
men without eyes men without faces
who would take away my hours
break them
piss on them.

now I work for the editors the readers the
critics

but still hang around and drink with
Mozart, Bach, Brahms and the
Bee
some buddies
some men
sometimes all we need to be able to continue alone
are the dead
rattling the walls
that close us in.
//
this fear of being what they are:
dead.

at least they are not out on the street, they
are careful to stay indoors, those
pasty mad who sit alone before their tv sets,
their lives full of canned, mutilated laughter.

their ideal neighborhood
of parked cars
of little green lawns
of little homes
the little doors that open and close
as their relatives visit
throughout the holidays
the doors closing
behind the dying who die so slowly
behind the dead who are still alive
in your quiet average neighborhood
of winding streets
of agony
of confusion
of horror
of fear
of ignorance.

a dog standing behind a fence.

a man silent at the window.
//
there is always that space there
just before they get to us
that space
that fine relaxer
the breather
while say
flopping on a bed
thinking of nothing
or say
pouring a glass of water from the
spigot
while entranced by
nothing

that
gentle pure
space

it's worth

centuries of
existence

say

just to scratch your neck
while looking out the window at
a bare branch

that space
there
before they get to us
ensures
that
when they do
they won't
get it all

ever.
//
Making love in the sun, in the morning sun
in a hotel room
above the alley
where poor men poke for bottles;
making love in the sun
making love by a carpet redder than our blood,
making love while the boys sell headlines
and Cadillacs,
making love by a photograph of Paris
and an open pack of Chesterfields,
making love while other men- poor folks-
work.
That moment- to this. . .
may be years in the way they measure,
but it's only one sentence back in my mind-
there are so many days
when living stops and pulls up and sits
and waits like a train on the rails.
I pass the hotel at 8
and at 5; there are cats in the alleys
and bottles and bums,
and I look up at the window and think,
I no longer know where you are,
and I walk on and wonder where
the living goes
when it stops.
//
We are like roses that have never bothered to
bloom when we should have bloomed and
it is as if
the sun has become disgusted with
waiting
//
It's never quite right, he said, the way people look,
the way the music sounds, the way the words are
written.
It's never quite right, he said, all the things we are
taught, all the loves we chase, all the deaths we
die, all the lives we live,
they are never quite right,
they are hardly close to right,
these lives we live
one after the other,
piled there as history,
the waste of the species,
the crushing of the light and the way,
it's not quite right,
it's hardly right at all
he said.

don't I know it? I
answered.

I walked away from the mirror.
it was morning, it was afternoon, it was
night

nothing changed
it was locked in place.
something flashed, something broke, something
remained.

I walked down the stairway and
into it.
//
I even hear the mountains
the way they laugh
up and down their blue sides
and down in the water
the fish cry
and the water
is their tears.
I listen to the water
on nights I drink away
and the sadness becomes so great
I hear it in my clock
it becomes knobs upon my dresser
it becomes paper on the floor
it becomes a shoehorn
a laundry ticket
it becomes
cigarette smoke
climbing a chapel of dark vines. . .
it matters little
very little love is not so bad
or very little life
what counts
is waiting on walls
I was born for this
I was born to hustle roses down the avenues of the dead.
//
the flesh covers the bone
and they put a mind
in there and
sometimes a soul,
and the women break
vases against the walls
and the men drink too
much
and nobody finds the
one
but keep
looking
crawling in and out
of beds.
flesh covers
the bone and the
flesh searches
for more than
flesh.

there's no chance
at all:
we are all trapped
by a singular
fate.

nobody ever finds
the one.

the city dumps fill
the junkyards fill
the madhouses fill
the hospitals fill
the graveyards fill

nothing else
fills.
//
we had the goldfish and they went around and around
in the bowl on the table near the purple drapes
across our front picture window and
my mother, poor fish, always smiling, wanting to
appear happy, she always told me, "be happy, Henry,"
and she was right: it's better to be happy if you
can be
but my father beat her two or three times a week while
raging through his 6 foot two frame because he couldn't
defeat what was attacking him.
my mother, poor fish, poor goldfish, poor nothing fish,
wanting to be happy, being beaten two or three times a
week and telling me to be happy: "Henry, smile!
why don't you smile?
and then, she always did to show me how, and it was the
saddest smile I ever saw upon the earth, like hell and
hell and hell and hell, and nothing else
one day all the goldfish died, all five of them,
they floated on top of the water, on their sides, the
eye on each top side still open,
and when my father got home he threw them to the cat
there on the kitchen floor and we watched as my mother
smiled

[ria · Rating 3 out of 5]

charles bukowski is one of the very rare poets that i have extremely mixed feelings on, he has a selection of good poems but on the other hand he has A LOT of illiterate and dumb pieces that are either degrading or just sentences that cant be considered a poem

[Evelyn Achilles · Rating 5 out of 5]

He's a brilliant poet. One of the best. Must read.

[Lisbeth Parra · Rating 4 out of 5]

- "Los muertos no necesitan aspirina o tristeza supongo.
Pero quizás necesitan lluvia.
Zapatos no pero un lugar donde caminar.
Cigarrillos no, nos dicen, pero un lugar donde arder."

- "Me pregunto que hacen cuando se sienten mal
Probablemente no hablan de eso.
Dicen:
"Mira, está lloviendo"
Es la mejor manera."

[shivling chamkure · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is on my shelf till date, some blues music with a gin and Bukowski. Yeah, sometime its ok to be self-indulgent and congruent about the fact that end that awaits us all. I love to read him occasionally.

[Wajiha · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not one of the best collection of poems that I've read by Bukowski. But certainly worth the while.

[Danijel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Zbirka pesmi z naslovom Angeli so na dnu mojega kozarca.

Str. 40\41(ENA ZA DOBRO STARO ŠKRBAVKO)- [........]
če pa zdaj ramislim o njenem življenju
in ga primerjam z življenjem drugih,
bolj razburljivimi, izvirnejšimi
in lepšimi,
ugotovim, da je ranila manj
ljudi kot kdorkoli drug
(in z ranila mislim enostavno ranila).
preživela je nekaj strašnih trenutkov,
trenutkov, ko bi ji mogoče moral
bolj pomagati,
[......]
in če tako gledam -
ja,
ustvarila je boljši svet,
zmagala je!

[Noura Rizk · Rating 3 out of 5]

I LOVE Bukowski (Bukowski The Poet), not Bukowski the person, he seemed a little nope a lot "........" :D.

I love reading his poems, for any situation I always find the right poem. This book didn't have the best poems, but it has some of my favorites nonetheless.

[Laura Giles · Rating 5 out of 5]

The thing about Bukowski is that he has a knack for capturing the smallest of moments in words. And that's a simply brilliant thing to do because the realest things are felt. And there are no words for that. But he manages to find them. So awesome.

[Irma · Rating 2 out of 5]

it just seems that Bukowski isn't my cup of tea.

[Óscar Ortiz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Realidad pura en cada verso.

[Nicole Mackey]

Raw and mesmerizing.

[Hafsa Errabboun · Rating 5 out of 5]

masterpiece, I'm really thankful i read it in this period of ma life
I definitely will read more of his poems

[Polina Lerman · Rating 5 out of 5]

It was very beneficial for me to read him at this period in my life

[Nicolas Van Der Haar · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bukowski wrote something unique and weird. But he’s like H.P. Lovecraft for poets. Don’t be TOO inspired.

[Rafaèle · Rating 2 out of 5]

mmmmmm no.

[Ishdolgor · Rating 4 out of 5]

охин минь
миний зүрхний хамгийн үхмэл,
хамгийн алс цэг дээр,
салхинд
цэцэг хийсгэж тоглоно. (х56)

бичнэ гэдэг ихэнхдээ
чиний болоод
боломжгүй зүйлсийн хоорондох
цорын ганц зүйл байдаг. (х12)

[Reader · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fine book

[Maria · Rating 4 out of 5]

He was a drunkard, a misogynist, and one lazy asshole but he had a deeper understanding of humanity than most of us ever will possess.

[Meryem Ben · Rating 4 out of 5]

everything? everything.

[zullarte · Rating 5 out of 5]

https://zullarte.medium.com/%D1%87%D0...

[Mia Milicevic · Rating 5 out of 5]

citat ovo nakon seste pive je nesto

[Molly Brem · Rating 5 out of 5]

Controversial but very honest.