Storm for the Living and the Dead

Uncollected and Unpublished Poems

Charles Bukowski

• Publisher: Ecco
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9780062656520
• eBook ISBN: 9780062656537
• Subtopic: Classics

A timeless selection of some of Charles Bukowski’s best unpublished and uncollected poems

Charles Bukowski was a prolific writer who produced countless short stories, novels, and poems that have reached beyond their time and place to speak to generations of readers all over the world. Many of his poems remain little known since they appeared in small magazines but were never collected, and a large number of them have yet to be published.

In Storm for the Living and the Dead, Abel Debritto has curated a collection of rare and never- before-seen material—poems from obscure, hard-to-find magazines, as well as from libraries and private collections all over the country. In doing so, Debritto has captured the essence of Bukowski’s inimitable poetic style—tough and hilarious but ringing with humanity. Storm for the Living and the Dead is a gift for any devotee of the Dirty Old Man of American letters.

1/2/93 8:43 PM

 

Dear New York Quarterly:

I am a native Albino who lives with a mother with a wooden

leg and a father who shoots up. I have a parrot, Cagney, who

says, “Yankee Doodle Dandy!” each time he excretes, which is

4 or 5 times a day. I once saw J. D. Salinger. Enclosed are my

Flying Saucer Poems. I have an 18-year-old sister with a body

like you’ve never seen. Nude photos enclosed. In case my

poems are rejected, these photos are to be returned. In case of

acceptance, I or my sister can be reached at 642-696-6969.

                                                                           sincerely yours,

                                                                                            Byron Keats

musings

the temple of my doorway is

locked.

I only agree with my critics when they are

wrong.

my father was blind in one eye, deaf in one ear

and wrong in one life.

United States postage stamps are the ugliest

in the world.

Hemingway’s characters were consistently

grim, which meant they tried too

hard.

mornings are the worst, noons are a little

better and the nights are best.

by the time you are ready to sleep you

are feeling best of all.

constant sewage spills just strengthen my

convictions.

the best thing about Immanuel Kant was

his name.

to live well is a matter of definition.

God is an invention of Man; Woman, of the

Devil.

only boring people get bored.

lonely people are avoided because they are

lonely and they are lonely because they are

avoided.

people who prefer to be alone have some

damn good reasons for it.

people who prefer to be alone and lonely people

cannot be put in the same room together.

if you tape a coconut to your ass under your pants,

you can walk around like that for two weeks before

anybody asks you about that.

the best book is the one you’ve never read; the

best woman, the one you’ve never met.

if man were meant to fly he would have been

born with wings attached to his body.

I’ll admit that I have flown without them but it’s

an unnatural act, that’s why I keep asking the

stewardess for drinks.

if you sit in a dark room for some months you’ll

have some wonderful thoughts before you go

crazy.

there is hardly anything as sad as a run-over

cat.

the basis of Capitalism is to sell something for

far more than its worth.

the more you can do this, the richer you can

become.

everybody screws somebody else in a different

kind of way.

I screw you by writing words.

bliss only means forgetting for a while what is

to come.

Hell never stops it only pauses.

this is a pause.

enjoy it while you can.

storm for the living and the dead

you can’t beat me, the rain is coming through

the door and I’m at this computer while

listening to Rachmaninov on the radio,

the rain is coming right through the door,

flicks of it and I blow cigar smoke at it and

smile.

outside the door is a little balcony and there

is a chair there.

I sometimes sit in that chair when things go

bad here.

(damn the rain is coming down now!

great! beating down on my wooden chair

out there...

Table of contents

• cover
• title page
• disclaimer
• contents
• caught again at some impossible pass
• in this—
• why are all your poems personal?
• prayer for broken-handed lovers
• fast pace
• I think of Hemingway
• I was shit
• corrections of self, mostly after Whitman:
• the bumblebee
• warble in
• a trainride in hell
• same old thing, Shakespeare through Mailer—
• the rope of glass
• tough luck
• sometimes when I feel blue I listen to Mahler
• men’s crapper
• like a flyswatter
• take me out to the ball game
• I thought I was going to get some
• charity ward
• like that
• phone call from my 5-year-old daughter in Garden Grove
• the solar mass: soul: genesis and geotropism:
• hooked on horse
• fuck
• 2 immortal poems
• T.H.I.A.L.H.
• the lesbian
• a poem to myself
• fact
• blues song
• fat upon the land
• love song
• poem for Dante
• the conditions
• 29 chilled grapes
• burning in water, drowning in flame
• a cop-out to a possible immortality:
• well, now that Ezra has died . . .
• warts
• my new parents
• something about the action:
• 55 beds in the same direction
• b
• finger
• the thing
• Bob Dylan
• “Texsun”
• warm water bubbles
• a corny poem
• the ladies of the afternoon
• tongue-cut
• Venice, Calif., nov. 1977:
• mirror
• head jobs
• chili and beans
• go to your grave cleanly—
• kuv stuff mox out
• a long hot day at the track
• the letters of John Steinbeck
• and the trivial lives of royalty never excited me either . . .
• letter to a friend with a domestic problem:
• agnostic
• clones
• gnawed by dull crisis
• I been working on the railroad . . .
• the way it goes
• alone in a time of armies
• going modern
• it doesn’t always work
• I have this room
• a man for the centuries
• dear old dad
• peace and love
• the world of valets
• I live to write and now I’m dying
• rip it
• Henry Miller and Burroughs
• family tree
• being here
• the only life
• stomping at the Savoy
• the glory days
• congrats, Chinaski
• he went for the windmills, yes
• all my friends
• a reader writes
• ow said the cow to the fence that linked
• my America, 1936
• 1/2/93 8:43 PM
• musings
• storm for the living and the dead
• cover charge
• good stuff
• now
• quit before the sun
• #1
• song for this softly-sweeping sorrow . . .
• sources
• acknowledgments
• about the authors
• also by charles bukowski
• credits
• copyright
• about the publisher