by God, I don’t know what to
do.
they’re so nice to have around.
they have a way of playing with
the balls

this fear of being what they are:
dead.
at least they are not out on the s
are careful to stay indoors, those
pasty mad who sit alone before the

god I got the sad blue blues,
this woman sat there and she
said
are you really Charles
Bukowski?

it was on the 2nd floor on Coronad
I used to get drunk
and throw the radio through the wi
while it was playing, and, of cour
it would break the glass in the wi

there’s a bluebird in my heart tha
wants to get out
but I’m too tough for him,
I say, stay in there, I’m not goi
to let anybody see

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

sway with me, everything sad—
madmen in stone houses
without doors,
lepers steaming love and song
frogs trying to figure

I laugh sometimes when I think ab
say
Céline at a typewriter
or Dostoevsky...
or Hamsun...

often it is the only
thing
between you and
impossibility.
no drink,

drunk again at 3 a.m. at the end o
of wine, I have typed from a dozen
poesy
an old man
maddened for the flesh of young gi