Charles Bukowski Short Poems
Famous Short Charles Bukowski Poems. Short poetry by famous poet Charles Bukowski. A collection of the all-time best Charles Bukowski short poems
by
Charles Bukowski
it sits outside my window now
like and old woman going to market;
it sits and watches me,
it sweats nevously
through wire and fog and dog-bark
until suddenly
I slam the screen with a newspaper
like slapping at a fly
and you could hear the scream
over this plain city,
and then it left.
the way to end a poem
like this
is to become suddenly
quiet.
by
Charles Bukowski
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
with white-legged, white-bellied rotting creatures
lengthily dead and rioting against surrounding scenes.
Dear child, I only did to you what the sparrow
did to you; I am old when it is fashionable to be
young; I cry when it is fashionable to laugh.
I hated you when it would have taken less courage
to love.
by
Charles Bukowski
shot in the eye
shot in the brain
shot in the ass
shot like a flower in the dance
amazing how death wins hands down
amazing how much credence is given to idiot forms of life
amazing how laughter has been drowned out
amazing how viciousness is such a constant
I must soon declare my own war on their war
I must hold to my last piece of ground
I must protect the small space I have made that has allowed me life
my life not their death
my death not their death...
by
Charles Bukowski
To end up alone
in a tomb of a room
without cigarettes
or wine--
just a lightbulb
and a potbelly,
grayhaired,
and glad to have
the room.
...in the morning
they're out there
making money:
judges, carpenters,
plumbers, doctors,
newsboys, policemen,
barbers, carwashers,
dentists, florists,
waitresses, cooks,
cabdrivers...
and you turn over
to your left side
to get the sun
on your back
and out
of your eyes.
from "All's Normal Here" - 1985
by
Charles Bukowski
I met a genius on the train
today
about 6 years old,
he sat beside me
and as the train
ran down along the coast
we came to the ocean
and then he looked at me
and said,
it's not pretty.
it was the first time I'd
realized
that.
by
Charles Bukowski
these things that we support most well
have nothing to do with up,
and we do with them
out of boredom or fear or money
or cracked intelligence;
our circle and our candle of light
being small,
so small we cannot bear it,
we heave out with Idea
and lose the Center:
all wax without the wick,
and we see names that once meant
wisdom,
like signs into ghost towns,
and only the graves are real.
by
Charles Bukowski
the best often die by their own hand
just to get away,
and those left behind
can never quite understand
why anybody
would ever want to
get away
from
them
by
Charles Bukowski
Long walks at night--
that's what good for the soul:
peeking into windows
watching tired housewives
trying to fight off
their beer-maddened husbands.
by
Charles Bukowski
in the winter on my
ceiling my eyes the size of street-
lamps. I have 4 feet like a mouse but
wash my own underwear-bearded and
hungover and a hard-on and no lawyer. I
have a face like a washrag. I sing
love songs and carry steel.
I would rather die than cry. I can't
stand hounds can't live without them.
I hang my head against the white
refrigerator and want to scream like
the last weeping of life forever but
I am bigger then the mountains.
by
Charles Bukowski
the words have come and gone,
I sit ill.
the phone rings, the cats sleep.
Linda vacuums.
I am waiting to live,
waiting to die.
I wish I could ring in some bravery.
it's a lousy fix
but the tree outside doesn't know:
I watch it moving with the wind
in the late afternoon sun.
there's nothing to declare here,
just a waiting.
each faces it alone.
Oh, I was once young,
Oh, I was once unbelievably
young!
from Transit magazine, 1994
by
Charles Bukowski
cimen altinda gecen 225 gunden sonra benden daha cok sey biliyor olmalisin.
kanini emip bitireli epey oldu, artik bir sepetteki kuru bir cubuksun.
bu isler boyle mi oluyor?
bu odada hala ask saatlerinin golgeleri var.
birakip gittiginde asagi yukari herseyi alip gittin.
geceleri beni ben olmaya koymayan kaplanlarin onunde diz cokuyorum.
senin sen olman asla bir daha olmayacak.
kaplanlar beni buldular ama artik umurumda bile degil.
translated by somebody
by
Charles Bukowski
once
we were young
at this
machine. . .
drinking
smoking
typing
it was a most
splendid
miraculous
time
still
is
only now
instead of
moving toward
time
it
moves toward
us
makes each word
drill
into the
paper
clear
fast
hard
feeding a
closing
space.
by
Charles Bukowski
as the poems go into the thousands you
realize that you've created very
little.
it comes down to the rain, the sunlight,
the traffic, the nights and the days of the
years, the faces.
leaving this will be easier than living
it, typing one more line now as
a man plays a piano through the radio,
the best writers have said very
little
and the worst,
far too much.
from ONTHEBUS - 1992
by
Charles Bukowski
don't undress my love
you might find a mannequin:
don't undress the mannequin
you might find
my love.
she's long ago
forgotten me.
she's trying on a new
hat
and looks more the
coquette
than ever.
she is a
child
and a mannequin
and death.
I can't hate
that.
she didn't do
anything
unusual.
I only wanted her
to.
by
Charles Bukowski
there is always that space there
just before they get to us
that space
that fine relaxer
the breather
while say
flopping on a bed
thinking of nothing
or say
pouring a glass of water from the
spigot
while entranced by
nothing
that
gentle pure
space
it's worth
centuries of
existence
say
just to scratch your neck
while looking out the window at
a bare branch
that space
there
before they get to us
ensures
that
when they do
they won't
get it all
ever.
by
Charles Bukowski
sway with me, everything sad --
madmen in stone houses
without doors,
lepers steaming love and song
frogs trying to figure
the sky;
sway with me, sad things --
fingers split on a forge
old age like breakfast shell
used books, used people
used flowers, used love
I need you
I need you
I need you:
it has run away
like a horse or a dog,
dead or lost
or unforgiving.
by
Charles Bukowski
We are like roses that have never bothered to
bloom when we should have bloomed and
it is as if
the sun has become disgusted with
waiting
by
Charles Bukowski
225 days under grass
and you know more than I.
they have long taken your blood,
you are a dry stick in a basket.
is this how it works?
in this room
the hours of love
still make shadows.
when you left
you took almost
everything.
I kneel in the nights
before tigers
that will not let me be.
what you were
will not happen again.
the tigers have found me
and I do not care.
by
Charles Bukowski
from my bed
I watch
3 birds
on a telephone
wire.
one flies
off.
then
another.
one is left,
then
it too
is gone.
my typewriter is
tombstone
still.
and I am
reduced to bird
watching.
just thought I'd
let you
know,
fucker.
by
Charles Bukowski
Van Gogh cut off his ear
gave it to a
prostitute
who flung it away in
extreme
disgust.
Van, whores don't want
ears
they want
money.
I guess that's why you were
such a great
painter: you
didn't understand
much
else.
by
Charles Bukowski
it
takes
a lot of
desperation
dissatisfaction
and
disillusion
to
write
a
few
good
poems.
it's not
for
everybody
either to
write
it
or even to
read
it.
by
Charles Bukowski
the vultures at the zoo
(all three of the)
sit very quietly in their
caged tree
and below
on the ground
are chunks of rotten meat.
the vultures are over-full.
our taxes have fed them
well.
we move on to the next
cage.
a man is in there
sitting on the ground
eating
his own ****.
i recognize him as
our former mailman.
his favorite expression
had been:
"have a beautiful day."
that day i did.
by
Charles Bukowski
"They only burn themselves to reach Paradise"
- Mne. Nhu
original courage is good,
motivation be damned,
and if you say they are trained
to feel no pain,
are they
guarenteed this?
is it still not possible
to die for somebody else?
you sophisticates
who lay back and
make statements of explanation,
I have seen the red rose burning
and this means more.
by
Charles Bukowski
if I suffer at this
typewriter
think how I'd feel
among the lettuce-
pickers of Salinas?
I think of the men
I've known in
factories
with no way to
get out-
choking while living
choking while laughing
at Bob Hope or Lucille
Ball while
2 or 3 children beat
tennis balls against
the wall.
some suicides are never
recorded.
by
Charles Bukowski
I took my girlfriend to your last poetry reading,
she said.
yes, yes? I asked.
she's young and pretty, she said.
and? I asked.
she hated your
guts.
then she stretched out on the couch
and pulled off her
boots.
I don't have very good legs,
she said.
all right, I thought, I don't have very good
poetry; she doesn't have very good
legs.
scramble two.