a note on the masses

private hells made public
often puzzle the readers:
they wonder how this one
or that one
can endure and
continue.
well, there’s a secret:
don’t expect too
much of Humanity,
they have been
practicing hatred
for centuries,
it’s passed down
refined and
perfected,
oh, they have become
very good at that—
their hatreds blossom
with ever more frequent
regularity.
our public hell creates a
private hell and
there is no hell
except on
earth.
once you accept
this premise
you will be free to
exist
on your own terms
and you will never
know loneliness
and death will be as
nothing.
consider yourself
blessed in the
dark.


Charles Bukowski, Bone Palace Ballet, New Poems, Black Sparrow Press, Santa Rosa, 1997.

Este é o bónus:

a place in Philly

there's nothing like being young
and starving,
living in the roominghouse and
pretending to be a
writer
while the other men occupied
with their professions and
their possessions.
there's nothing like being
young and
starving,
listening to Brahms,
your belly sucked-in,
nary an ounce of
fat,
stretched out on the bed
in the dark,
smoking a rolled
cigarette
and working on the
last bottle of
wine,
the sheets of your
writing strewn across the
floor.
you have walked on and across
them,
your masterpieces, and
either
they'll be read in
hell,
or perhaps
gnawed at by the
curious
mice.
Brahms is the only
friend you have,
the only friend you
want,
him and the wine
bottle,
as you realize that
you will never
be a citizen of the
world,
and if you
live to be very
old
you still will never
be a citizen of the
world.
the wine and
Brahms mix well as
you watch the
lights
move across the
ceiling,
courtesy of
passing
automobiles.
soon you'll sleep
and
tomorrow there
certainly
will be
more
masterpieces.


Charles Bukowski, Bone Palace Ballet, New Poems, Black Sparrow Press, Santa Rosa, 1997.

Harmonia

Dostoevsky

against the wall, the firing squad ready.
then he got a reprieve.
suppose they had shot Dostoevsky?
before he wrote all that?
I suppose it wouldn't have
mattered
not directly.
there are billions of people who have
never read him and never
will.
but as a young man I know that he
got me through the factories,
past the whores,
lifted me high through the night
and put me down
in a better
place.
even while in the bar
drinking with the other
derelicts,
I was glad they gave Dostoevsky a
reprieve,
it gave me one,
allowed me to look directly at those
rancid faces
in my world,
death pointing its finger,
I held fast,
an immaculate drunk
sharing the stinking dark with
my
brothers.


Charles Bukowski, Bone Palace Ballet, New Poems, Black Sparrow Press, Santa Rosa, 1997.

The man with the beautiful eyes