Charles Bukowski Poems

To give life you must take life,
and as our grief falls flat and hollow
upon the billion-blooded sea
I pass upon serious inward-breaking shoals rimmed
...

the best often die by their own hand
just to get away,
and those left behind
can never quite understand
...

As the poems go into the thousands you
realize that you've created very
little.
...

waiting for death
like a cat
that will jump on the
bed
...

I awaken about noon and go out to get the mail
in my old torn bathrobe.
I'm hung over
hair down in my eyes
...

at the track today,
Father's Day,
each paid admission was
entitled to a wallet
...

she died of alcoholism
wrapped in a blanket
on a deck chair
on an ocean
...

I even hear the mountains
the way they laugh
up and down their blue sides
and down in the water
...

drunk on the dark streets of some city,
it's night, you're lost, where's your
room?
you enter a bar to find yourself,
...