12 poemas imprescindibles

Here are 12 poems by Charles Bukowski that you cannot miss. Some are on the lists of the most famous or the best, others are not, but all are essential. I hope you like them.

This selection of poems aims to show all its aspects and facets. Their different ways of approaching life and expressing their sensitivity and humor.

1 · They are everywhere. 2 · Oigo las melodias de exito más actuales. 3 · Mariposas. 4 · ¿Así que quieres ser escritor?. 5 · El mejor poema de amor que puedo escribir por el momento. 6 · 38.000 contra uno. 7 · en el zoo. 8 · Tira los dados. 9 · el fregado. 10 · la gente de la heladeria. 11 · llegaron a tiempo. 12 · Cuanto más te esfuerzas

1 · they are everywhere

The tragedy-sniffers are all
about.
they get up in the morning
and begin to find things
wrong
and they fling themselves
into a rage about
it,
a rage that lasts until
bedtime,
where even there
they twist in their
insomnia,
not able to rid their
mind
of the petty obstacles
they have
encountered.

they feel set against,
it’s a plot.
and by being constantly
angry they feel that
they are constantly
right.

you see them in traffic
honking wildly
at the slightest
infraction,
cursing,
spewing their
invectives.

you feel them
in lines
at banks
at supermarkets
at movies,
they are pressing
at your back
walking on your
heels,
they are impatient to
a fury.

they are everywhere
and into
everything,
these violently
unhappy
souls.

actually they are
frightened,
never wanting to be
wrong
they lash out
incessantly…
it is a malady
an illness of
that
breed.

the first one
I saw like that
was my
father

and since then
I have seen a
thousand
fathers,
ten thousand
fathers
wasting their lives
in hatred,
tossing their lives
into the
cesspool
and
ranting
on.

2 · I hear all the latest hit tunes

somewhere in whatever neighborhood
there’s
some guy at 10:30 in the morning
sunday morning
monday morning
any morning

washing and polishing his
car
with the radio on
LOUD
so that the entire neighborhood
is compelled
to listen to the music
that he is
listening to
but it’s all right
because we surely don’t
want him to be bored out
there;
it’s boing to make him
hours.

they’d arrest a drunk or a
panhandler
as a
public nuisance
but this boy is a
respectable citizen
and it’s the respectable
citizens
that our culture is built
upon
and whom
the music is written
for.

if I murdered him
no court in America would
firgive
my courage.

meanwhile
he circles his car
with the
hose plus
a bucket of
suds.

he’s safe
he’s fearless
look at him there
almost as handsome as that twittering
bluejay
and at least 4 women are
in love with
him and he
deserves them all
and I hope he
gets them all.

it’s the only way we can
teach that
son-of-a-bitch what
suffering is.

3 · butterflies

I believe in earning one’s own way
but I also believe in the unexpected
gift
and it is a wondrous thing
when a woman who has read your works
(or parts of them, anyhow)
offers her self to you
out of the blue
a total
stranger.

such an offer
such a communion
must be taken as
holy.

the hands
the fingers
the hair
the smell
the light.

one would like to be strong enough
to turn them away

those butterflies.

I believe in earning one’s own way
but also believe in the unexpected gift.

4 · so you want to be a writer?

if it doesn’t come bursting out of you
in spite of everything,
don’t do it.
unless it comes unasked out of your
heart and your mind and your mouth
and your gut,
don’t do it.
if you have to sit for hours
staring at your computer screen
or hunched over your
typewriter
searching for words,
don’t do it.
if you’re doing it for money or
fame,
don’t do it.
if you’re doing it because you want
women in your bed,
don’t do it.
if you have to sit there and
rewrite it again and again,
don’t do it.
if it’s hard work just thinking about doing it,
don’t do it.
if you’re trying to write like somebody
else,
forget about it.

if you have to wait for it to roar out of
you,
then wait patiently.
if it never does roar out of you,
do something else.

if you first have to read it to your wife
or your girlfriend or your boyfriend
or your parents or to anybody at all,
you’re not ready.

don’t be like so many writers,
don’t be like so many thousands of
people who call themselves writers,
don’t be dull and boring and
pretentious, don’t be consumed with self-
love.
the libraries of the world have
yawned themselves to
sleep
over your kind.
don’t add to that.
don’t do it.
unless it comes out of
your soul like a rocket,
unless being still would
drive you to madness or
suicide or murder,
don’t do it.
unless the sun inside you is
burning your gut,
don’t do it.

when it is truly time,
and if you have been chosen,
it will do it by
itself and it will keep on doing it
until you die or it dies in you.

there is no other way.

and there never was.

5 · the Best Love Poem I Can Write at the Moment

«Listen» I told her
«Why don’t you stick your
Tongue up my ass?» «No!» She said
«Well» I said, «If I stick my tongue
Up your ass first
then will you stick your tongue up my ass?»
«Alright» She said
I got my head down there and looked around
Opened a section
Then my tongue moved forward
«Not there!» She said
«Hahaha not there! That’s not
The right place!»
You women have more holes than Swiss cheese
«I don’t want you to do it!» «Why?»
«Well, then I’ll have to do it back
And then at the next
Party you’ll tell people
I licked your ass with my tongue!»
«Suppose, I promise not to tell»
«You’ll get drunk, you’ll tell»
«Okay» I said «Roll over
I’ll stick it in the other place»
She rolled over
And I stick my tongue in that other place
We were in love we were in love except with
What I said at parties
And we were not in love
With each others assholes
She wants me to write a love poem
But I think if people can’t love each
Other’s assholes, and farts, and shit’s
And terrible parts
Just like they love the good parts
That ain’t complete love

6 · 38,000-to-one

it was during a reading at the University of Utah.
the poets ran out of drinks
and while one was reading
2 or 3 of the others
got into a car
to drive to a liquor store
but we were blocked on the road
by the cars coming to the football stadium.
we were the only car that wanted to go the other way,
they had us: 38,000-to-one.
we sat in our lane and honked.
400 cars honked back.
the cop came over.
«look, officer,» I said, «we’re poets and we need drink.»
«turn around and to the stadium,» said
the officer.
«look, we need a drink. we don’t want to see the
football game. we don’t care who wins. we’re poets, we’re
reading at the Underwater Poetry Festival
at the University of Utah!»
«traffic can only move one way,» said the cop,
«turn your car around and go to the stadium.»
«look, I’m reading in 15 minutes. I’m Henry Chinasky!
you’ve hear of me, haven’t you?»
«turn your car around and go to the stadium!» said the cop.
«shit,» said Betsy who was at the wheel,
and she ran the car up over the curb
and we drove across the campus lawn
leaving tire marks an inch deep.
I was a bit tipsy and I don’t know how long we drove
or how we got there
but suddenly we were all standing in a liquor store
and we bought wine, vodka, beer, scotch, got it and left.
we drove back,
got back there, read the ass right off that audience,
picked up ourchecks and left to applause.
UCLA won the football game
something to something.

7 · at the zoo

here’s a male giraffe
he wants it
but the female’s not ready
and male leans against her
he wants it
he pushes against her
follows her around
those tiny heads up in the sky
their eyes are pools of brown
the necks rock
they bump
walk about
2 ungainly forms
stretching up in the air
those stupid legs
those stupid necks

he wants it
she doesn’t care
this is the way the gods have arranged it
for the moment:
one caring
one not caring

and the people watch
and throw peanuts and candy wrappers
and chunks of green and blue popsicles

they don’t care either.

that’s the way the gods have
arranged it
for now.

8 · roll the dice

if you’re going to try, go all the
way.
otherwise, don’t ever start.

if you’re going to try, go all the
way.
this could mean losing girlfriends,
wives, relatives, jobs and
maybe your mind.

go all the way.
this could mean not eating for 3 or
4 days.
it could mean freezing on a
park bench.
it could mean jail,
it could mean derision,
mockery,
isolation.
isolation is the gift,
all the others are a test of your
endurance, of
how much you really want to
do it.
and you’ll do it
despite rejection and the
worst odds
and it will be better than
anything else
you can imagine.

if you’re going to try,
go all the way.
there is no other feeling like
that.
you will be alone with the
gods
and the nights will flame with
fire.

do it, do it, do it.
do it.

all the way
all the way.

you will ride life straight to
perfect laughter, it’s
the only good fight
there is.

9 · floor job

she has a new apartment
and I stretch out the couch
smoking
while she scrubs the floor
kneeling in her blue jeans
I see that beautiful big ass
and her long hair falls almost to the floor
I have been in that body a few times
never enough times, of course,
but I consider my luck sufficient.

I no longer want to make her totally mine,
just my share will do
and it’s a far more comfortable arrangement:
I have no need for exclusive possession.

let her have others
then she’ll know who’s best at heart.
otherwise she’ll likely consider herself
unduly trapped.

but what a show now:
those blue jeans so tight
there’s nothing so magical as a woman’s ass
(unless it be some other part).

I don’t want to die just yet
so now and then I look away
at a curtain or down into the
ashtray or at a dresser.

then I look back
and all the parts
are still there.

I hear soft sounds from the night outside
and I am happy.

10 · the Icecream People

the lady has me temporarily off the bottle
and now the pecker stands up
better.
however, things change overnight–
instead of listening to Shostakovich and
Mozart through a smeared haze of smoke
the nights change, new
complexities:
we drive to Baskin-Robbins,
31 flavors:
Rocky Road, Bubble Gum, Apricot Ice, Strawberry
Cheesecake, Chocolate Mint…

we park outside and look at icecream
people
a very healthy and satisfied people,
nary a potential suicide in sight
(they probably even vote)
and I tell her
«what if the boys saw me go in there? suppose they
find out I’m going in for a walnut peach sundae?»
«come on, chicken,» she laughs and we go in
and stand with the icecream people.
none of them are cursing or threatening
the clerks.
there seem to be no hangovers or
grievances.
I am alarmed at the placid and calm wave
that flows about. I feel like a * in a
beauty contest. we finally get our sundaes and
sit in the car and eat them.

I must admit they are quite good. a curious new
world. (all my friends tell me I am looking
better. «you’re looking good, man, we thought you
were going to die there for a while…»)
–those 4,500 dark nights, the jails, the
hospitals…

and later that night
there is use for the pecker, use for
love, and it is glorious,
long and true,
and afterwards we speak of easy things;
our heads by the open window with the moonlight
looking through, we sleep in each other’s
arms.

the icecream people make me feel good,
inside and out.

11 · they arrived on time

I like to think about writers like James Joyce
Hemingway, Ambrose Bierce, Faulkner, Sherwood
Anderson, Jeffers, D. H. Lawrence, A. Huxley,
John Fante, Gorki, Turgenev, Dostoevsky, Saroyan,
Villon, even Sinclair Lewis, and Hamsun, even T. S.
Elliot and Auden, William Carlos Williams and
Stephen Spender and gutsy Ezra Pound.

They taught me so many things that my parents
never taught me, and
I also like to think of Carson McCullers
with her Sad Cafe and Golden Eye.
she too taught me much that my parents
never knew.

I liked to read the hardcover library books
in their simple library bindings
blue and green and brown and light red
I liked the older librarians (male and female)
who stared seriously at one
if you coughed or laughed too loudly,
and even though they looked like my parents
there was no real resemblance.

Now I no longer read those authors I once read
with such pleasure,
but it’s good to think about them,
and I also
like to look again at photographs of Hart Crane and
Caresse Crosby at Chantilly, 1929
or at photographs of D. H. Lawrence and Frieda
sunning at Le Moulin, 1928.
I like to see André Malraux in his flying outfit
with a kitten on his chest and
I like photos of Artaud in the madhouse
Picasso at the beach with his strong legs
and his hairless head, and there’s
D. H. Lawrence milking that cow
and Aldous at Saltwood Castle, Kent, August
1963.

I like to think about these people
they taught me so many things that I
never dreamed of before.
and they taught me well,
very well
when it was so much need
they showed me so many things
that I never knew were possible.
those friends
deep in my blood
who
when there was no chance
gave me one.

12 · the Harder You Try

the waste of words
continues with a stunning
persistence
as the waiter runs by carrying the loaded
tray
for all the wise white boys who laugh at
us.
no matter. no matter,
as long as your shoes are tied and
nobody is walking too close
behind.
just being able to scratch yourself and
be nonchalant is victory
enough.
those constipated minds that seek
larger meaning
will be dispatched with the other
garbage.
back off.
if there is light
it will find
you.