writer’s block by Charles Bukowski

Today’s poem is about something that plagues me more than I’d like…

 
writer’s block
Charles Bukowski

 
the typewriter sits silent, it’s as if you’ve
been betrayed, it’s as if a murder has
occurred.
yet words still run through your brain:
“the Spanish bird sings!”
what can
that mean?
at least it’s a ripple, even if unusable.

when will the keys
beat into the
paper
again?
it’s so very easy to die long before the
fact of it.

I look at the machine resting under its black
cover; an unpaid gas bill sleeps on top of
it.

there is a small refrigerator in the
room, it makes the only audible sound
here.

I open it and look inside:
it’s empty.

I sit back down in the chair and wait; then I
decide to fool the
typewriter.

I write this
now
with a ballpoint
pen
in a red
notebook;
I am sneaking up on a poem;
there will soon be something for that
frigging
typewriter
to do!

there is a French expression, “without
literature
life is hell.”

the glory and power of that!

now let the Spanish bird sing!

Charles Bukowski reading dinosauria, we

Back when I was a bachelorette, living solo in my happenin’ pad somewhere in the middle of Nowhere, Massachusetts, I spent a lot of time indulging myself in my love of poetry.  One of the poets that I read A LOT during that time is a poet that I’ve talked about in this blog before.  Charles Bukowski.  I will always be in debt to my brother for introducing me to his work and now, maybe, hopefully, I am sharing him with someone else for the first time.

dinosauria, we is one of my absolute favorites.  I first stumbled across it while watching the Bukowski documentary – Born Into This.

I hope that this poem gets you totally revved up for this beautiful December weekend.

Haunts of a Dirty Old Man tour in LA: http://www.7daysinla.com/haunts-dirty-old-man-charles-bukowskis-los-angeles-2012-01-21

More Charles Bukowski

A few years ago, there was a night where I felt very, very lonely.  In an attempt to do something, I hopped into the car and drove down to Borders with the intention of just browsing.  Before calling it a night, and not feeling any better, I swung by the poetry section and looked through the Bukowski books.  While looking, I found it quite fitting to find a collection entitled You Get so Alone at Times that it Just Makes Sense.

So, for the second time in my life, I turned to a book of Bukowski poems for comfort, understanding, and, hopefully, peace.  Here are some of the poems from this collection.

friends within the darkness

I can remember starving in a
small room in a strange city
shades pulled down, listening to
classical music
I was young I was so young that it hurt like a knife
inside
because there was no alternative except to hide as long
as possible –
not in a self-pity but with dismay at my limited chance:
trying to connect.

the old composers – Mozart, Bach, Beethoven,
Brahms were the only ones who spoke to me and
they were dead.

finally, starved and beaten, I had to go into
the streets to be interviewed for low-paying and
monotonous
jobs
by strange men behind desks
men would take my hours
break them
piss on them.

now I work for the editors the readers the
critics

but still hang around and drink with
Mozart, Bach, Brahms, and the
Bee
some buddies
some men
sometimes all we need to be able to continue alone
are the dead
rattling the walls
that close us in.

drive through hell

the people are weary, unhappy and frustrated, the people are
bitter and vengeful, the people are deluded and fearful, the
people are angry and uninventive
and I drive among them  on the freeway as they project
what is left of themselves in the manner of their driving –
some more hateful, more thwarted than others –
some don’t like to be passed, some attempt, to keep others
from passing
– some attempt to block lane changes
– some hate cars of the newer, more expensive model
– others in these cars hate the older cars.

the freeway is a circus of cheap and petty emotions, it’s
humanity on the move, most of them coming from some place
they
hated and going to another place they hate just as much or
more.
the freeways are a lesson in what we have become and
most of the crashes and deaths are the collision
of incomplete beings, of pitiful and demented
lives.

when I drive the freeways I see the soul of humanity of
my city and it’s ugly, ugly, ugly: the living have choked the
heart
away.

Buy this book on Amazon.