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
...

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
...

there is enough treachery, hatred violence absurdity in the average
human being to supply any given army on any given day

and the best at murder are those who preach against it
...

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

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

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

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,
...