if you live in a closet with rats and
eat dry bread
they like you.
you’re a genius then.

or if you’re in the madhouse or
the drunktank
they call you a genius.

or if you’re drunk and shouting
obscenities and
vomiting your life-guts on
the floor
you’re a genius.

but get the rent paid up a month
in advance
put on a new pair of stockings
go to the dentist
make love to a healthy clean girl
instead of a whore
and you’ve lost your
soul.

I’m not interested enough to ask about
their souls.
I suppose I
should.

Charles Bukowski (excerpt from the poem ‘Soul’)

Be Kind

we are always asked
to understand the other person’s
viewpoint
no matter how
out-dated
foolish or
obnoxious.

one is asked
to view
their total error
their life-waste
with
kindliness,
especially if they are
aged.

but age is the total of
our doing.
they have aged
badly
because they have
lived
out of focus,
they have refused to
see.

not their fault?

whose fault?
mine?

I am asked to hide
my viewpoint
from them
for fear of their
fear.

age is no crime

but the shame
of a deliberately
wasted
life

among so many
deliberately
wasted
lives

is.

-Charles Bukowski

The night I was going to die

I was sweating on the bed

and I could hear the crickets

and there was a cat fight outside

and I could feel my soul dropping down through the

mattress

and just before it hit the floor I jumped up

I was almost too weak to walk

but I walked around and turned on all the lights

and then I went back to bed

and dropped it down again and

I was up

turning on all the lights

I had a 7-year-old daughter

and I felt sure she wouldn’t want me dead

otherwise it wouldn’t have

mattered

but all that night

nobody phoned

nobody came by with a beer

my girlfriend didn’t phone

all I could hear were the crickets and it was

hot

and I kept working at it

getting up and down

until the first of the sun came through the window

through the bushes

and then I got on the bed

and the soul stayed

inside at last and

I slept.

now people come by

beating on the doors and windows

the phone rings

the phone rings again and again

I get great letters in the mail

hate letters and love letters.

everything is the same again