Charles Bukowski Mondays

From the book:
Drinking With Bukowski

Charles Bukowski interviewed by Sean Penn

On Shakespeare:
He's unreadable and overrated. But people don't want to hear that. You see, you cannot attack shrines. Shakespeare is embedded through the centuries. You can say "So-and-so is lousy actor!" But you can't say Shakespeare is shit. The longer something is around, snobs begin to attach themselves to it, like suckerfish. When snobs feel something is safe...they attach. The moment you tell them the truth, they go wild. They can't handle it. It's attacking their own thought process. They disgust me.

On Writing:
I never write in the daytime. It's like running through the shopping mall with your clothes off. Everybody can see you. At night... that's when you pull the tricks... magic.

M.I.A & Jack Kerouac

It has been a crazy last few weeks so I apologize that I havent updated. My new seattlepi.com gig has kept me busy which has been a great blessing. So while I finally post a new piece I wanted to share some wisdom from the late great...



Jack Kerouac

Belief and Technique for Modern Prose, a list of thirty "essentials."


1. Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for your own joy
2. Submissive to everything, open, listening
3. Try never get drunk outside your own house
4. Be in love with your life
5. Something that you feel will find its own form
6. Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind
7. Blow as deep as you want to blow
8. Write what you want bottomless from bottom of the mind
9. The unspeakable visions of the individual
10. No time for poetry but exactly what is
11. Visionary tics shivering in the chest
12. In tranced fixation dreaming upon object before you
13. Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition
14. Like Proust be an old teahead of time
15. Telling the true story of the world in interior monolog
16. The jewel center of interest is the eye within the eye
17. Write in recollection and amazement for yourself
18. Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea
19. Accept loss forever
20. Believe in the holy contour of life
21. Struggle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in mind
22. Don't think of words when you stop but to see picture better
23. Keep track of every day the date emblazoned in yr morning
24. No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language & knowledge
25. Write for the world to read and see yr exact pictures of it
26. Bookmovie is the movie in words, the visual American form
27. In praise of Character in the Bleak inhuman Loneliness
28. Composing wild, undisciplined, pure, coming in from under, crazier the better
29. You're a Genius all the time
30. Writer-Director of Earthly movies Sponsored & Angeled in Heaven

Charles Bukowski Mondays

the Interview

By Charles Bukowski

I read it all.
the poet went on and on
talking about the value of
workshops.
this poet taught at a
university.
believed in teaching poets in
prison,
and teaching poets in the schools,
high schools,
reading his poems there,
bringing the word.
this poet had studied under
C. and R. and O.
yes, this poet always carried
a notebook
to capture impressions
at odd moments
else they would be forgotten.
yes, this poet revised his stuff
many times.
as much as six revisions per
poem.
this poet had been awarded
grants and
prizes.
during dry periods this poet hiked
or rode his bicycle.
the masses, said this poet,
were hungry for poetry.
the reason the books didn't
sell was not that poetry itself
was insufficient but that the
masses were sadly unaware of
it.
it was our duty to awaken the
people he said, it was our responsi
bility, etc.

I dropped the magazine to the
floor, got up, walked to the
bathroom
and had one of my best
bowel movements in
several years.

Poetry and Prose...

"The next day"

Sincere exhaled laughter screaming from tree branches
lived in by sparrows
not anymore by crows

the sky is lighter, the unwoven streets less rough
with edges softened of padded concrete

tolerable days arrive once again
anger has subsided making way
for joy
I may spring for the expensive booze
this time

an asphyxiated feeling

even if short-lived.

I hope not
I have to hope not

A Great Opportunity Has Come My Way...

As an aspiring writer whose words mostly cling to the back of napkins and beer-stained notebooks, yet wish to write for a magazine or newspaper, it is always something to shout about when your pain-staking sentences see the light of day, up from the pitch-darkened "Office Space" basements while still holding on to your stapler. I have just gotten that opportunity, another baby-step closer towards a desk with walls. I will be a reader blogger for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer online at seattlepi.com. I will be writing about my neighborhood and the many musical and literary happenings that go on around there. I am very excited.

Do not fret as I will still have my "15 Minutes." I will post a link on here to my P.I. blog when I am off and running so feel free to check it out.

Poetry and Prose...

"Future"

Laying down my head
on a slab of concrete pillows
still and
motionless

with fear and anger
blistering in the sun of
a thousand fireflies surrounding
the clouded air.

All alone.

dreaded anger lingers the mind
where do I turn, who do I
turn to?

The beer bottle is my genie bottle.
suffocated breaths as I take gulp by gulp
I stare drunk eyed at the emptied demon rum

"Where are my three wishes"?

Charles Bukowski Mondays

found poems

By Charles Bukowski

I know I shouldn't write so many poems
but
it's a form of self-entertainment which
AMAZINGLY
I am paid for.
I live alone in this large house with 2
cats (there were 3, one died)
and at a my age it's realistic to assume that
I might also die
one of these a.m. nights
after writing 10 or 12 poems
and that's where the laugh
comes in:
before I bed down I place the new
poems
neatly in the center of my desk so that
when the stink gets bad
and the neighbors complain or
when my girlfriend phones and the phone goes
unanswered

the poems will be found.
not that my death will be tragic or
important

(I will be out of
here)

but the poems themselves will
let them know

(those carping little
critics)

that I was good until the end
or maybe even
better.

Poetry and Prose...

"Normal"

Normality opens the mind
severs the body
soils the soul

Blurred vision viewing cannons
spewing dust in spurts
Normalcy is a disease

Hording the inner workings of
the machine
a disease conscious

contagious

live crazy.

Poetry and Prose...

"Improvisation"

Coming out swinging like antlers
on parade
Muscling its way through
the crowd

Booze Hounds, Run Downs
Whores
All were surrounded by light
Nothing comes, nothing goes

The Whore
She sure came deep throating
The Run Down
Hounds with booze in their
Hands