Poetry - Charles Bukowski - a man of beauty

By now you must have figured out I love Bukowski. That's right. You heard me. I love Charles Bukowski. But you post all this stuff that's beautiful. You go to gardens and art galleries and films searching for beauty. Right. I'm always searching. Beauty is what drives my life, but if you read closely you'll find the beautiful in this man's poetry. It's raw. It's real. It cuts through all the malarky of what's going on and gets down to truth. I'm trying to write. YOU never write me back, and you know I need distraction, but it doesn't matter. I get to the next line and the next, and in the meantime I go to gardens and art galleries and films and look at things that are beautiful. The same way Buk went to the track. He had to go out, so he could come back. Here's another one of his that is so true.

drawing courtesy of The Huntington Library


"so you want to be a writer?"
                          by Charles Bukowski

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.