On Love

Charles Bukowski, Abel Debritto

• Publisher: Canongate Books
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781782117308
• eBook ISBN: 9781782117292
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: American Poetry
• Index: Literature

Charles Bukowski was a man of intensely felt passions. In On Love, we see Bukowski reckoning with the complications of love and desire, as well as its exaltations. Alternating between the tough and the tender, the romantic and the gritty, Bukowski exposes the myriad faces of love in the poems collected here-its selfishness and its narcissism, its randomness, its mystery and its misery, and, ultimately, its true joyfulness, endurance, and redemptive power.

Whether writing about his daughter, his lover, or his work, Bukowski is fiercely honest and reflective, using love as a prism to look at the world and to view his own vulnerable place in it. 'My love is a hummingbird sitting that quiet moment on the bough,' he writes. 'As the same cat crouches.'

Memorably moving and, at times, hilarious, On Love reveals Bukowski at his most candid and affecting.

mine

She lays like a lump.

I can feel the great empty mountain

of her head

but she is alive. She yawns and

scratches her nose and

pulls up the covers.

Soon I will kiss her goodnight

and we will sleep.

And far away is Scotland

and under the ground the

gophers run.

I hear engines in the night

and through the sky a white

hand whirls:

goodnight, dear, goodnight.

layover

Making love in the sun, in the morning sun

in a hotel room

above the alley

where poor men poke for bottles;

making love in the sun

making love by a carpet redder than our blood,

making love while the boys sell headlines

and Cadillacs,

making love by a photograph of Paris

and an open pack of Chesterfields,

making love while other men—poor

fools—

work.

That moment—to this . . .

may be years in the way they measure,

but it’s only one sentence back in my mind—

there are so many days

when living stops and pulls up and sits

and waits like a train on the rails.

I pass the hotel at 8

and at 5; there are cats in the alleys

and bottles and bums,

and I look up at the window and think,

I no longer know where you are,

and I walk on and wonder where

the living goes

when it stops.

the day I kicked a bankroll out the window

and, I said, you can take your rich aunts and uncles

and grandfathers and fathers

and all their lousy oil

and their seven lakes

and their wild turkey

and buffalo

and the whole state of Texas,

meaning, your crow-blasts

and your Saturday night boardwalks,

and your 2-bit library

and your crooked councilmen

and your pansy artists—

you can take all these

and your weekly newspaper

and your famous tornadoes

and your filthy floods

and all your yowling cats

and your subscription to Life,

and shove them, baby,

shove them.

I can handle a pick and ax again (I think)

and I can pick up

25 bucks for a 4-rounder (maybe);

sure, I’m 38

but a little dye can pinch the gray

out of my hair;

and I can still write a poem (sometimes),

don’t forget that, and even if

they don’t pay off,

it’s better than waiting for death and oil,

and shooting wild turkey,

and waiting for the world

to begin.

all right, bum, she said,

get out.

what? I said.

get out. you’ve thrown your

last tantrum.

I’m tired of your damned tantrums:

you’re always acting ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• mine
• Sources
• Acknowledgments