Bukowski Poetry Quotes & Sayings

Some men never
die
and some men never
live
but we're all alive
tonight. — Charles Bukowski

There's nothing worse in the world than a poetry recital. — Charles Bukowski

When you're young
a pair of
female
high-heeled shoes
just sitting
alone
in the closet
can fire your
bones;
when you're old
it's just
a pair of shoes
without
anybody
in them
and
just as
well. — Charles Bukowski

To die with your boots on while writing poetry is not as glorious as riding a horse down Broadway with a stick of dynamite in your teeth, — Charles Bukowski

Days like this, like your day today.
maybe the rain on the window trying to
get through to you. What do you see today?
what is it? where are you?
the best days are sometimes the first,
sometimes the middle and even sometimes the last — Charles Bukowski

She slammed the door and
was gone.
I looked at the closed door
and at the doorknob
and strangely
I didn't feel
alone. — Charles Bukowski

And when you write a poem within the accepted poem-form, making it sound like a poem because a poem is a poem is a poem, you are saying "good morning" in that poem, and well, your morals are straight and you have not said SHIT, but wouldn't it be wonderful if you could ... instead of sweating out the correct image, the precise phrase, the turn of a thought ... simply sit down and write the god damned thing, throwing on the color and sound, shaking us alive with the force, the blackbirds, the wheat fields, the ear in the hand of the whore, sun, sun, sun, SUN!; let's make poetry the way we make love; let's make poetry and leave the laws and the rules and the morals to the churches and the politicians; let's make poetry the way we tilt the head back for the good liquor; let a drunken bum make his flame, and some day, Robert, I'll think of you, pretty and difficult, measuring vowels and adverbs, making rules instead of poetry. — Charles Bukowski

It's hot tonight and half the neighborhood is drunk. the other half is dead. if I have any advice about writing poetry it's - don't. I'm going to send out for some fried chicken. — Charles Bukowski

I remember your
saying: "make it
or break it."
neither happened and
it
won't. — Charles Bukowski

She wasn't very
interesting
but few people
are. — Charles Bukowski

Careful poetry and careful people live only long enough to die safely. — Charles Bukowski

Regret is mostly caused by not having
done anything. — Charles Bukowski

The reason so much bad poetry is written is that it is written as poetry instead of concept. And the reason the public doesn't understand poetry is that there is nothing to understand, and the reason most poets write it is that they think they understand. Nothing is to be understood or "regained." It is simply to be written. By someone. Sometime. And not too often. — Charles Bukowski

I found the best thing
I could do
was just to type away
at my own work
and let the dying
die
as they always have. — Charles Bukowski

Having nothing to struggle
against
they have nothing to struggle
for. — Charles Bukowski

To me Art (poetry) is a continuous and continuing process and that when a man fails to write good poetry he fails to live fully or well. — Charles Bukowski

I wait on my fix:
I am a poetry junkie. — Charles Bukowski

When Whitman wrote, "I sing the body electric"
I know what he
meant
I know what he
wanted:
to be completely alive every moment
in spite of the inevitable.
we can't cheat death but we can make it
work so hard
that when it does take
us
it will have known a victory just as
perfect as
ours — Charles Bukowski

I'm only interested in poetry. — Charles Bukowski

Poetry is what happens when nothing else can. — Charles Bukowski

You're afraid of the audience, aren't you?"
"Yes, but it's not stagefright. It's that I'm there as the geek. They like to watch me eat my shit. But it pays the light bill and takes me to the racetrack. I don't have any excuses about why I do it. — Charles Bukowski

But as God said,
crossing his legs,
I see where I have made plenty of poets
but not so very much
poetry. — Charles Bukowski

I am a series of small victories and large defeats. — Charles Bukowski

One can never be sure whether it's good poetry or bad acid — Charles Bukowski

It is so dark now with the sadness of
people
they were tricked, they were taught to expect the
ultimate when nothing is
promised
now young girls weep alone in small rooms
old men angrily swing their canes at
visions as
ladies comb their hair as
ants search for survival
history surrounds us
and our lives
slink away
in
shame. — Charles Bukowski

the gods seldom
give
but so quickly
take. — Charles Bukowski

Bad poetry is caused by people who sit down and think, Now I am going to write a Poem. — Charles Bukowski

A man can be old and a fool
many are
a man can be young and wise
few are — Charles Bukowski

What my character is or how many jails I have lounged in, or wards or walls or wassails, how many lonely-heart poetry readings I have dodged, is beside the point. A man's soul or lack of it will be evident with what he can carve upon a white sheet of paper. — Charles Bukowski

I should think that many of our poets, the honest ones, will confess to having no manifesto. It is a painful confession but the art of poetry carries its own powers without having to break them down into critical listings. I do not mean that poetry should be raffish and irresponsible clown tossing off words into the void. But the very feeling of a good poem carries its own reason for being ... Art is its own excuse, and it's either Art or it's something else. It's either a poem or a piece of cheese. — Charles Bukowski

when we were kids
laying around the lawn
on our
bellies

we often talked
about
how
we'd like to
die

and
we all
agreed on the
same
thing;

we'd all
like to die
fucking

(although
none of us
had
done any
fucking)

and now
that
we are hardly
kids
any longer

we think more
about
how
not to
die

and
although
we're
ready

most of
us
would
prefer to
do it
alone

under the
sheets

now
that

most of
us

have fucked
our lives
away. — Charles Bukowski

If I bet on humanity, I'd never cash a ticket. — Charles Bukowski

The best part was
pulling down the
shades
stuffing the doorbell
with rags
putting the phone
in the
refrigerator
and going to bed
for 3 or 4
days. and the next best
part
was
nobody ever
missed
me. — Charles Bukowski

It got so bad that Al thought
maybe it was
him
so he went to a shrink
and asked
and the shrink said,
"you're one of the sanest men
I've ever met."
poor Al.
that made him feel
worse
than ever. — Charles Bukowski

crawled like a blind slug into the
web — Charles Bukowski

I know that some night
in some bedroom
soon
my fingers will
rift
through
soft clean
hair

songs such as no radio
plays

all sadness, grinning
into flow. — Charles Bukowski

I see a bright
portion
under the overhead light
that shades into
darkness
and then into darker
darkness
and I can't see beyond that. — Charles Bukowski

She likes that and I like it too because to/make a thing true all you've/got to do is believe — Charles Bukowski

girls
please give your
bodies and your
lives
to
the young men
who
deserve them

besides
there is
no way
I would welcome
the
intolerable
dull
senseless hell
you would bring
me

and
I wish you
luck
in bed
and
out

but not
in
mine

thank
you. — Charles Bukowski

The worst thing," he told me,
"is bitterness, people end up so
bitter. — Charles Bukowski

There are so many days
when living stops and pulls up and sits
and waits like a train on the rails. — Charles Bukowski

I didn't know who to
believe
but
one thing I do
know: when a man is
living
many claim relationships
that are hardly
so
and after he dies, well,
then it's everybody's
party. — Charles Bukowski

I was compared to Charles Bukowski yesterday. It was the best and worst compliment I've ever gotten. — Rosa Sophia

you say you often feel this madness. what do you do when it comes upon you?
I write poetry.
is poetry madness?
non-poetry is madness.
what is madness?
madness is ugliness.
what is ugly?
to each man, something different. — Charles Bukowski

I write poetry, worry, smile,
laugh
sleep
continue for a while
just like most of us
just like all of us;
sometimes I want to hug all
Mankind on earth
and say,
god damn all this that they've brought down upon us,
we are brave and good
even though we are selfish
and kill each other and
kill ourselves,
we are the people
born to kill and die and weep in dark rooms
and love in dark rooms,
and wait, and
wait and wait and wait.
we are the people.
we are nothing
more. — Charles Bukowski

The world is better without
them.
only the plants and the animals are
true comrades.
I drink to them and with
them. — Charles Bukowski

Ya got cigarettes?" she asks. "Yes," I say,
"I got cigarettes." "Matches?" she asks.
"Enough to burn Rome." "Whiskey?"
"Enough whiskey for a Mississippi River
of pain." "You drunk?" "Not yet. — Charles Bukowski

I feel no grief for being called something
which
I am not;
in fact, it's enthralling, somehow, like a good
back rub — Charles Bukowski

it's so easy to be a poet
and so hard to be
a man. — Charles Bukowski

One doesn't even think of
the liver
and if the liver
doesn't think of
us, that's
fine. — Charles Bukowski

Sometimes all we need to be able to continue alone
are the dead
rattling the walls
that close us in. — Charles Bukowski

Beware women grown
old
who were never
anything but
young — Charles Bukowski

as long as there are
human beings about
there is never going to be
any peace
for any individual
upon this earth (or
anywhere else
they might
escape to).

all you can do
is maybe grab
ten lucky minutes
here
or maybe an hour
there.

something
is working toward you
right now, and
I mean you
and nobody but
you. — Charles Bukowski

I care for you, darling, I love you,
the only reason I fucked L. is because you fucked
Z. and then I fucked R. and you fucked N.
and because you fucked N. I had to fuck
Y. But I think of you constantly, I feel you
here in my belly like a baby, love I'd call it,
no matter what happens I'd call it love, and so
you fucked C. and then before I could move
you fucked W., so I had to fuck D. But
I want you to know that I love you, I think of you
constantly, I don't think I've ever loved anybody
like I love you. — Charles Bukowski

I believe that to be the world's greatest living
writer
there must be something
terribly wrong with you.
I don't even want to be the world's greatest
dead writer.
just being dead would be fair
enough. — Charles Bukowski

We are burning like a chicken wing left on the grill of an outdoor barbecue
we are unwanted and burning we are burning and unwanted
we are
an unwanted
burning
as we sizzle and fry
to the bone
the coals of Dante's 'Inferno' spit and sputter beneath
us
and
above the sky is an open hand
and
the words of wise men are useless
it's not a nice world, a nice world it's
not ... — Charles Bukowski

To create art means
to be crazy alone
forever. — Charles Bukowski

Christmas poem to a man in jail
hello Bill Abbott:
I appreciate your passing around my books in
jail there, my poems and stories.
if I can lighten the load for some of those guys with
my books, fine.
but literature, you know, is difficult for the
average man to assimilate (and for the unaverage man too);
I don't like most poetry, for example,
so I write mine the way I like to read it. — Charles Bukowski

I paid, got up, walked
to the door, opened
it.
I heard the man
say, "that guy's
nuts."
out on the street I
walked north
feeling
curiously
honored. — Charles Bukowski

That your power of command
with simple language was
one of the magnificent things of
our century.
(from the poem: result) — Charles Bukowski

I run with the hunted. — Charles Bukowski

There is something about writing poetry that brings a man close to the cliff's edge. — Charles Bukowski

We must bring
our own light
to the
darkness. — Charles Bukowski

I do think that poetry is important though, if you don't strive at it, if you don't fill it full of stars and falseness. — Charles Bukowski

It does seem
the more we drink
the better the words
go. — Charles Bukowski

That which interests most people leaves me without any interest at all. This includes a list of things such as: social dancing, riding roller coasters, going to zoos, picnics, movies, planetariums, watching tv, baseball games; going to funerals, weddings, parties, basketball games, auto races, poetry readings, museums, rallies, demonstrations, protests, children's plays, adult plays ... I am not interested in beaches, swimming, skiing, Christmas, New Year's, the 4th of July, rock music, world history, space exploration, pet dogs, soccer, cathedrals and great works of Art. How can a man who is interested in almost nothing write about anything? Well, I do. I write and I write about what's left over: a stray dog walking down the street, a wife murdering her husband, the thoughts and feelings of a rapist as he bites into a hamburger sandwich; life in the factory, life in the streets and rooms of the poor and mutilated and the insane, crap like that, I write a lot of crap like that — Charles Bukowski

The place trembled with sound. I didn't need to do anything. They would do it all. But you had to be careful. Drunk as they were they could immediately detect any false gesture, any false word. You could never underestimate an audience. They had paid to get in; they had paid for drinks; they intended to get something and if you didn't give it to them they'd run you right into the ocean. — Charles Bukowski

there's nothing to
discuss
there's nothing to
remember
there's nothing to
forget

it's sad
and
it's not
sad

seems the
most sensible
thing
a person can
do
is
sit
with drink in
hand
as the walls
wave
their goodbye
smiles

one comes through
it
all
with a certain
amount of
efficiency and
bravery
then
leaves

some accept
the possibility of
God
to help them
get
through

others
take it
staight on

and to these

I drink
tonight. — Charles Bukowski

The centuries are sprinkled with rare magic
with divine creatures
who help us get past the common and extraordinary ills that beset us — Charles Bukowski

Ah, christ, what a CREW:
more
poetry, always more
POETRY — Charles Bukowski

Brush your teeth with gasoline.
Sleep all day and climb trees at night.
Be a monk and drink buckshot and beer.
Hold your head under water and play the violin.
Do a belly dance before pink candles.
Kill your dog.
Run for mayor.
Live in a barrel.
Break your head with a hatchet.
Plant tulips in the rain.

But don't write any more poetry. — Charles Bukowski

sometimes it's hard to know
what to
do. — Charles Bukowski

the gods play no
favorites. — Charles Bukowski

I always felt it would
pass.
I listened to the charges against me
knowing some of them to be true
but certainly not
important enough
to become the target of
violence, envy,
vengeance.
I thought it would surely
pass. — Charles Bukowski

You chippy hunk of shit,/don't bad mouth me! I'm/the toughest guy in town, you don't know/who the hell you're in this room/with! — Charles Bukowski

Homosexuals are delicate and bad poetry is delicate and [Allen] Ginsberg turned the tables by making homosexual poetry strong poetry, almost manly poetry; but in the long run, the homo will remain the homo and not the poet. — Charles Bukowski

and gamblers are dry and empty souls, their hearts have been sucked dry, there's no music in their walk, they are colorless and condemned. — Charles Bukowski

Most people are much better at saying things in letters than in conversation, and some people can write artistic, inventive letters, but when they try a poem or story or novel they become pretentious. — Charles Bukowski