"poets rhyme their loneliness, musicians starve as always and the novelists miss the mark, but not the pelican, the gull; pelicans dip and dive, rise, shaking shocked half-dead radioactive fish from their beaks; indeed, indeed, the waters wash the rocks with slime; and on Wall St. the market staggers like a lost drunk looking for his key"

From the poem "The Sun Wields Mercy" appearing in The Roominghouse Madrigals: Early Selected Poems 1946-1966.

"I keep practicing death and as the worms writhe in agony of waiting I might as well have another drink, and I am thinking I am there: and I cross my legs in the patio of some Mexico City hotel in 1997 and the birds come down to pick out my eyes and the birds fly away and I no longer see them."

From the poem "Practice" appearing in The Roominghouse Madrigals: Early Selected Poems 1946-1966. 

I find it eerie that he was so close in the prediction of his death year. He died in 1994, just three years off Hank!

"there were a lot of good people sleeping in the streets. They weren't fools, they just didn't fit into the needed machinery of the moment. And those needs kept altering. It was a grim set-up and if you found yourself sleeping in your own bed at night, that alone was a precious victory over the forces."

From PULP [his last novel].

"a man tends to lie less when he is starving and trembling at the edge of madness -- that is, most of the time."

From the poem "a musical difference" appearing in The Flash of Lightning Behind the Mountain: New Poems.

"it's when you're on the row that you notice that everything is owned and that there are locks on everything. this is the way a democracy works: you get what you can, try to keep that and add to it if possible."

 . . .from the poem "Trashcan Lives" appearing in You Get So Alone at Times That It Just Makes Sense.

"Talking of death is like talking of money - we neither know the price or the worth"

From the poem "Eat" appearing in The Roominghouse Madrigals: Early Selected Poems 1946-1966.

Inaugural Post

"Don't Try" 

Photo from visit to Bukowski's grave in summer of 2010

pictured are his novels & a couple of his poetry books

 

Story behind the quote: from http://bukowski.net/dont_try.php
A lot of people wonder what "Don't Try" means on Bukowski's grave marker. The answer can be found in an interview with Linda Bukowski in the May-August 2005 issue of the San Pedro zine The Rise and the Fall of the Harbor Area.
 
The interview was conducted by Pedro local, Mike Watt, bass player for the Minutemen. 
___________________________________________________________________________________
Watt: What's the story: "Don't Try"? Is it from that piece he wrote?

Linda: See those big volumes of books? [Points to bookshelf] They're called Who's Who In America. It's everybody, artists, scientists, whatever. So he was in there and they asked him to do a little thing about the books he's written and duh, duh, duh, duh, duh. At the very end they say, is there anything you wanna say, you know, what is your philosophy of life, and some people would write a huge long thing. A dissertation, and some people would just go on and on. And Hank just put, "Don't Try." Now, for you, what do you think that means?

Watt: Well for me it always meant like be natural. 

Linda: Yeah, yeah.

Watt: Not like...being lazy! 

Linda: Yeah, I get so many different ideas from people that don't understand what that means. Well, "Don't Try? Just be a slacker? lay back?" And I'm no! Don't try, do. Because if you're spending your time trying something, you're not doing it..."DON'T TRY."