Charles Bukowski

A poster from a Charles Bukowski poetry reading in San Francisco..............a wild nite with Hank Chinaski .....4 Buk


We will go for broke
ride the rails
see how she flys
caution to the wind
no chance undertaken
or forgotten
dismissed
or ever regretted,

six plus Five

eleven is good
like a seven
with that slash
across its main sail,

a stranger once spoke
said
just like a summer night,

here I am again
asking about the rain,

like the merry beauties of the Left Bank
like a smile
brilliantly splattered
on the sun's face,
as if time stopped
at the Pink Palace
time alerted to its own clicking
clocking capsule,

this time of the day
always reminds me of the Great Plains
the Dakota territory
after a storm
after the wild noise of mother nature
then the quiet
the deafening quiet,

good, bad or ugly as they say, it was the place to be that day,

It was just beautiful there in all that blue ruin
I love decaying city structures
looking more from the set of the Blade Runner
than the milky highway of the android's dream,
then i had to smile that day
old haunted warehouses
one last hurrah one guy said sitting on a milk crate
one last glimpse of those grayed gorgeous buildings
finally I turned on my bike and drove off,
just miles of walls
graffiti and oil barrels and the emptiness
a meeting with the Devil
it was sheer beauty,

flaming ember cow cocktails,
tit for toe in a pig’s eye
I am the walrus
or just imagining

and finally
always remember

float like a butterfly, sting like a bee