O We Are The Outcasts
ah, christ, what a CREW:
more
poetry, always more
P O E T R Y .
if it doesn't come, coax it out with a
laxative. get your name in LIGHTS,
get it up there in
8 1/2 x 11 mimeo.
keep it coming like a miracle.
ah christ, writers are the most sickening
of all the louts!
yellow-toothed, slump-shouldered,
gutless, flea-bitten and
obvious . . . in tinker-toy rooms
with their flabby hearts
they tell us
what's wrong with the world-
as if we didn't know that a cop's club
can crack the head
and that war is a dirtier game than
marriage . . .
or down in a basement bar
hiding from a wife who doesn't appreciate him
and children he doesn't
want
he tells us that his heart is drowning in
vomit. hell, all our hearts are drowning in vomit,
in pork salt, in bad verse, in soggy
love.
but he thinks he's alone and
he thinks he's special and he thinks he's Rimbaud
and he thinks he's
Pound.
and death! how about death? did you know
that we all have to die? even Keats died, even
Milton!
and D. Thomas-THEY KILLED HIM, of course.
Thomas didn't want all those free drinks
all that free pussy-
they . . . FORCED IT ON HIM
when they should have left him alone so he could
write write WRITE!
poets.
and there's another
type. I've met them at their country
places (don't ask me what I was doing there because
I don't know).
they were born with money and
they don't have to dirty their hands in
slaughterhouses or washing
dishes in grease joints or
driving cabs or pimping or selling pot.
this gives them time to understand
Life.
they walk in with their cocktail glass
held about heart high
and when they drink they just
sip.
you are drinking green beer which you
brought with you
because you have found out through the years
that rich bastards are tight-
they use 5 cent stamps instead of airmail
they promise to have all sorts of goodies ready
upon your arrival
from gallons of whisky to
50 cent cigars. but it's never
there.
and they HIDE their women from you-
their wives, x-wives, daughters, maids, so forth,
because they've read your poems and
figure all you want to do is fuck everybody and
everything. which once might have been
true but is no longer quite
true.
and-
he WRITES TOO.
POETRY, of
course. everybody
writes
poetry.
he has plenty of time and a
postoffice box in town
and he drives there 3 or 4 times a day
looking and hoping for accepted
poems.
he thinks that poverty is a weakness of the
soul.
he thinks your mind is ill because you are
drunk all the time and have to work in a
factory 10 or 12 hours a
night.
he brings his wife in, a beauty, stolen from a
poorer rich
man.
he lets you gaze for 30 seconds
then hustles her
out. she has been crying for some
reason.
you've got 3 or 4 days to linger in the
guesthouse he says,
"come on over to dinner
sometime."
but he doesn't say when or
where. and then you find out that you are not even
IN HIS HOUSE.
you are in
ONE of his houses but
his house is somewhere
else-
you don't know
where.
he even has x-wives in some of his
houses.
his main concern is to keep his x-wives away from
you. he doesn't want to give up a
damn thing. and you can't blame him:
his x-wives are all young, stolen, kept,
talented, well-dressed, schooled, with
varying French-German accents.
and!: they
WRITE POETRY TOO. or
PAINT. or
fuck.
but his big problem is to get down to that mail
box in town to get back his
rejected poems
and to keep his eye on all the other mail boxes
in all his other
houses.
meanwhile, the starving Indians
sell beads and baskets in the streets of the small desert
town.
the Indians are not allowed in his houses
not so much because they are a fuck-threat
but because they are
dirty and
ignorant. dirty? I look down at my shirt
with the beerstain on the front.
ignorant? I light a 6 cent cigar and
forget about
it.
he or they or somebody was supposed to meet me at
the
train station.
of course, they weren't
there. "We'll be there to meet the great
Poet!"
well, I looked around and didn't see any
great poet. besides it was 7 a.m. and
40 degrees. those things
happen. the trouble was there were no
bars open. nothing open. not even a
jail.
he's a poet.
he's also a doctor, a head-shrinker.
no blood involved that
way. he won't tell me whether I am crazy or
not-I don't have the
money.
he walks out with his cocktail glass
disappears for 2 hours, 3 hours,
then suddenly comes walking back in
unannounced
with the same cocktail glass
to make sure I haven't gotten hold of
something more precious than
Life itself.
my cheap green beer is killing
me. he shows heart (hurrah) and
gives me a little pill that stops my
gagging.
but nothing decent to
drink.
he'd bought a small 6 pack
for my arrival but that was gone in an
hour and 15
minutes.
"I'll buy you barrels of beer," he had
said.
I used his phone (one of his phones)
to get deliveries of beer and
cheap whisky. the town was ten miles away,
downhill. I peeled my poor dollars from my poor
roll. and the boy needed a tip, of
course.
the way it was shaping up I could see that I was
hardly Dylan Thomas yet, not even
Robert Creeley. certainly Creeley wouldn't have
had beerstains on his
shirt.
anyhow, when I finally got hold of one of his
x-wives I was too drunk to
make it.
scared too. sure, I imagined him peering
through the window-
he didn't want to give up a damn thing-
and
leveling the luger while I was
working
while "The March to the Gallows" was playing over
the Muzak
and shooting me in the ass first and
my poor brain
later.
"an intruder," I could hear him telling them,
"ravishing one of my helpless x-wives."
I see him published in some of the magazines
now. not very good stuff.
a poem about me
too: the Polack.
the Polack whines too much. the Polack whines about his
country, other countries, all countries, the Polack
works overtime in a factory like a fool, among other
fools with "pre-drained spirits."
the Polack drinks seas of green beer
full of acid. the Polack has an ulcerated
hemorrhoid. the Polack picks on fags
"fragile fags." the Polack hates his
wife, hates his daughter. his daughter will become
an alcoholic, a prostitute. the Polack has an
"obese burned out wife." the Polack has a
spastic gut. the Polack has a
"rectal brain."
thank you, Doctor (and poet). any charge for
this? I know I still owe you for the
pill.
Your poem is not too good
but at least I got your starch up.
most of your stuff is about as lively as a
wet and deflated
beachball. but it is your round, you've won a round.
going to invite me out this
Summer? I might scrape up
trainfare. got an Indian friend who'd like to meet
you and yours. he swears he's got the biggest
pecker in the state of California.
and guess what?
he writes
POETRY
too!
Literary Analysis
This literary analysis was generated with AI and may contain interpretive differences. Provide your analysis in the comments section.
Summary
Charles Bukowski stages the poem as a furious, comic rant against the social world of writers and poets. The poem moves through a series of bitter portraits: the self-important bohemian who pretends to suffer for art, the wealthy amateur who has leisure, houses, and connections, and the polished literary figure who speaks about hardship from a safe distance. Bukowski's narrator keeps puncturing each pose with crude details of drink, work, sex, money, and humiliation, insisting that poetry does not grant moral superiority or protect anyone from the mess of ordinary life.
What gives the poem its force is the tension between contempt and recognition. The narrator mocks poets for vanity, pretension, and self-dramatization, yet he also sounds like one of them: defensive, wounded, restless, and obsessed with his own outsider status. The poem's central meaning emerges in that contradiction. Bukowski is attacking the literary establishment, but he is also exposing how easily rebellion becomes another performance. By the end, the repeated claim that everyone writes poetry turns the whole hierarchy upside down, leaving the art form both ridiculous and unavoidable.
Theme
- Anti-pretension - The poem ridicules writers who cultivate an image of depth, suffering, or genius while remaining comfortably removed from real hardship.
- Class resentment - Bukowski contrasts working-class struggle with inherited privilege, showing how money buys time, leisure, and access to the literary world.
- Outsider identity - The narrator defines himself against publishers, social elites, and polished poets, turning exclusion into a badge of authenticity.
- Art versus performance - The poem suggests that literary ambition often becomes theater, with poets performing bohemian intensity instead of confronting life honestly.
- Self-mockery - Even while attacking others, the narrator includes himself in the disorder of drink, lust, and failure, which keeps the satire from sounding purely moralistic.
- Disillusionment with literary fame - The obsession with publication, reputation, and admiration is exposed as small-minded and transactional rather than spiritually elevated.
Literary Devices
- Satire - The poem uses biting humor to expose vanity, hypocrisy, and class privilege in the literary scene.
- Repetition - Repeated references to poetry, drinking, and rejection create a manic rhythm that reinforces the narrator's contempt and obsession.
- Hyperbole - Exaggerated insults and extreme comparisons magnify the comic rage and make the criticism feel deliberately over the top.
- Colloquial diction - The blunt, street-level language gives the poem its rough energy and rejects the polished tone associated with conventional verse.
- Direct address - The narrator speaks as if confronting poets and rich hosts personally, which makes the attack feel immediate and theatrical.
- Irony - The poem mocks literary seriousness while itself performing an elaborate, highly crafted monologue about poetry.
- Accumulation - Long lists of jobs, habits, and social types build a crowded social portrait and emphasize the world's ugliness and clutter.
Symbolism
- Green beer - The cheap drink stands for rough, working-class survival and the narrator's refusal of refined literary manners.
- Luxury houses - The wealthy poet's many houses suggest privilege, insulation, and the power to separate art from need.
- Postoffice box - The mailbox becomes a symbol of literary hope, rejection, and the anxious chase for validation.
- Cocktail glass - The carefully held glass represents cultivated ease and social distinction, opposite the narrator's harsher drinking.
- Mimeo pages - The small-scale self-publication image suggests vanity, amateur ambition, and the hunger to be seen.
- Train station - The missed meeting at the station symbolizes isolation and the failure of literary hospitality or community.
Tone
Bukowski's tone is mocking, profane, and fiercely combative, but it also carries a note of grim familiarity; he sounds like someone who knows the world he is insulting from the inside. The mood for the reader is noisy, abrasive, and darkly comic, with moments of embarrassment and pity breaking through the anger. The poem feels like a drunken performance that keeps turning into confession, so the emotional atmosphere stays unstable: funny, bitter, mean, and oddly vulnerable at the same time.
Historical Context
Bukowski wrote in a postwar American literary culture where poetry was increasingly split between academic respectability, bohemian self-mythology, and smaller, independent publishing scenes. His work often pushes back against the idea that poetry belongs to a polished elite, instead favoring the voices of drinkers, laborers, drifters, and other people outside institutional prestige.
The poem also reflects a long-standing modern tension between artistic seriousness and suspicion of literary vanity. Its references to famous poets and the narrow social world of readings, magazines, and affluent patrons place it within a broader twentieth-century argument about who gets to speak for art and what kinds of lives are allowed to count as authentic sources of poetry.