Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Because Short Term Mermory Protests

An e-mail notice! Library books overdue. And what with having finished them, I see no reason not to return them. However, as the offending items are two books of poetry, I thought it might be prudent to jot down the poems that stuck out for me in some way shape or form. Looking back, some of them must have appealed based on context, or based on a growing understanding of the underlying character of Bukowski. One line that is interjected between the parts of Sifting Through..., doesn't quite fall in below, but I liked. Here is that:

real
loneliness
is not
necessarily
limited to
when
you are
alone.

And here comes the rest:

The Last Night of the Earth Poems by Charles Bukowski
begging
days like razors, nights full of rats
air and light and time and space
pulled down shade
confession
spark
in the bottom
darkness & ice
sitting with the IBM
the aliens
splashing
get close enough and you can't see
them and us
luck was not a lady
oh, I was a ladies' man!
creative writing class
cool black air
Dinosauria, we
the area of pause
my first computer poem
it's a shame
hangovers
classical music and me
an invitation
batting order:*
the open canvas
in the shadow of the rose

Sifting Through the Madness for the Word, the Line, the Way by Charles Bukowski
so you want to be a writer?
work-fuck problems
observations on music
unblinking grief
houses and dark streets
the joke is on the sun
like a polluted river flowing
warriors in this place
a sickness?*
who needs it?
the significance was obscure
working through it all
Los Angeles
excuses
written before I got one
little poem
regrets of a sort
misbegotten paradise
nobody but you

And as an afterword on all this, before I move on to reading something else, I'll throw in a quote about Bukowski that seems pertinent to how it all seemed to align for me:

From Modest Mouse's song, Bukowski - "Went to bed and didn't see why every day turns out to be a little bit more like Bukowski. And yeah, I know he's a pretty good read. But God who'd wanna be? God who'd wanna be such an asshole?"