Myriad Ways

there is a loneliness in this world so great
that you can see it in the slow movement of
the hands of a clock.

people so tired
mutilated
either by love or no love.

people just are not good to each other
one on one.

the rich are not good to the rich
the poor are not good to the poor.

we are afraid.

our educational system tells us
that we can all be
big-ass winners.

it hasn’t told us
about the gutters
or the suicides.

or the terror of one person
aching in one place
alone

untouched
unspoken to

watering a plant.”

― Charles Bukowski,  Exerpt of Crunch from, Love Is a Dog from Hell

The human being can be very stupid, especially in the half-light of almost 2000 years of semi-christian culture where emotionally barbaric ideals are mixed through with educational systems of learning based upon national, regional, economic and status forces. The development of the pure mind in America is almost impossible unless a man is fortunate enough to spend 25 years of his life in a madhouse or in some other entombed untouchable state.

Charles Bukowski, from an interview for the L. A. free press in 1967

collected in Sunlight Here I Am

 With life there is always hope, but some days you just have to slog through the rain and stand your ground against the madness with your own madness. Sometimes you gotta be crazier than what comes at ya to just get through. That is why we need the ones like Bukowski who fight like hell to remain who they are for no reason in particular except that anything else would be surrender. We need to see that it can be done just to get through a day in which you don’t let the relentless slog break your spirit. You sit down and type or write or do whatever the hell you do that is your communion with life and death, yours to share or keep, sell or give away, and nothing but death can relieve you of.