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Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski

finished?

the critics now have me
drinking champagne and
driving a BMW
and also married to a
socialite from
Philadelphia’s Main Line
which of course is going to prevent me
from writing my earthy
and grubby stuff.
and they might be
right,
I could be getting to be
more like them,
and that’s as close to
death as you can
get.
 
we’ll see.
but don’t bury me yet.
don’t worry if I drink with
Sean Penn.
just measure the poems
as they come off the
keyboard.
listen only to them.
after this long fight
I have no intention of
quitting short.
or late.
or satisfied.

#Americans #XXCentury

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this then—

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Three Oranges

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a poem is a city

a poem is a city filled with stree… filled with saints, heroes, beggar… filled with banality and booze, filled with rain and thunder and p… drought, a poem is a city at war,
a horse with greenblue eyes

what you see is what you see: madhouses are rarely on display. that we still walk about and scratch ourselves and light
girl in a mini skirt reading the Bible outside my window

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the drowning

for five years I have been looking across the way at the side of a red apartment hou… there must be people in there even love in there
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the shit shits

yes, it’s dark in here. can’t open the door. can’t open the jam lid. can’t find a pair of socks that ma… was born in Andernach in 1920 and…
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I sit here on the 2nd floor hunched over in yellow pajamas still pretending to be a writer.
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the elephants of Vietnam

first they used to, he told me, gun and bomb the elephants, you could hear their screams over… but you flew high to bomb the peop… you never saw it,
Women: 79

Bobby and Valerie came by and I introduced everybody around. “Valerie and I are going to take a vacation and rent rooms by the seashore in Manhattan Beach,” said Bobby. “Why don’t you g...



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