eBook - ePub

The Pleasures of the Damned

Name: The Pleasures of the Damned
ISBN: 9780061749520

Poems, 1951-1993

Charles Bukowski,

576 pages
English
ePUB (mobile friendly)
Available on iOS & Android

eBook - ePub

The Pleasures of the Damned

Poems, 1951-1993

Charles Bukowski,

About this book

“The Walt Whitman of Los Angeles.”—Joyce Carol Oates, bestselling author

“He brought everybody down to earth, even the angels.”—Leonard Cohen, songwriter

The Pleasures of the Damned features selected later poetry of Charles Bukowski, America’s most influential poet.

To his legions of fans, Charles Bukowski was—and remains—a counterculture icon. A hard-drinking wild man of literature, a stubborn outsider to the poetry world, he struck a chord with generations of readers, writing raw, tough poetry about booze, work, and women, that spoke to his fans as “real” and, like the work of the Beats, even dangerous.

The Pleasures of the Damned is a selection of the best works of Bukowski’s later years, edited by John Martin of Black Sparrow Press, including the last of his new, never-before-published poems.

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Yes, you can access The Pleasures of the Damned by Charles Bukowski in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Literature & American Drama. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

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Topic

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Index

the mockingbird

the mockingbird had been following the cat

all summer

mocking mocking mocking

teasing and cocksure;

the cat crawled under rockers on porches

tail flashing

and said something angry to the mockingbird

which I didn’t understand.

yesterday the cat walked calmly up the driveway

with the mockingbird alive in its mouth,

wings fanned, beautiful wings fanned and flopping,

feathers parted like a woman’s legs,

and the bird was no longer mocking,

it was asking, it was praying

but the cat

striding down through centuries

would not listen.

I saw it crawl under a yellow car

with the bird

to bargain it to another place.

summer was over.

something’s knocking at the door

a great white light dawns across the

continent

as we fawn over our failed traditions,

often kill to preserve them

or sometimes kill just to kill.

it doesn’t seem to matter: the answers dangle just

out of reach,

out of hand, out of mind.

the leaders of the past were insufficient,

the leaders of the present are unprepared.

we curl up tightly in our beds at night and wait.

it is a waiting without hope, more like

a prayer for unmerited grace.

it all looks more and more like the same old

movie.

the actors are different but the plot’s the same:

senseless.

we should have known, watching our fathers.

we should have known, watching our mothers.

they did not know, they too were not prepared to

teach.

we were too naive to ignore their

counsel

and now we have embraced their

ignorance as our

own.

we are them, multiplied.

we are their unpaid debts.

we are bankrupt

in money and

in spirit.

there are a few exceptions, of course, but these teeter on the

edge

and will

at any moment

tumble down to join the rest

of us,

the raving, the battered, the blind and the sadly

corrupt.

a great white light dawns across the

continent,

the flowers open blindly in the stinking wind,

as grotesque and ultimately

unlivable

our 21st century

struggles to beborn.

his wife, the painter

There are sketches on the walls of men and women and ducks,

and outside a large green bus swerves through traffic like

insanity sprung from a waving line; Turgenev, Turgenev,

says the radio, and Jane Austen, Jane Austen, too.

“I am going to do her portrait on the 28th, while you are at work.”

He is just this edge of fat and he walks constantly, he

fritters; they have him; they are eating him hollow like

a webbed fly, and his eyes are red-suckled with anger-fear.

He feels the hatred and discard of the world, sharper than

his razor, and his gut-feel hangs like a wet polyp; and he

self-decisions himself defeated trying to shake his hung beard from razor in water (like life), not warm enough.

Daumier. Rue Transnonain, le 15 Avril, 1843. (Lithograph.) Paris,

Bibliothe`que Nationale.

“She has a face unlike that of any woman I have ever known.”

“What is it? A love affair?”

“Silly. I can’t love a woman. Besides, she’s pregnant.”

I can paint—a flower eaten by a snake; that sunlight is a

lie; and that markets smell of shoes and naked boys clothed,

and under everything some river, some beat, some twist that

clambers along the edge of my temple and bites nip-dizzy…

men drive cars and paint their houses,

but they are mad; men sit in barber chairs; buy hats.

Corot. Recollection of Mortefontaine.

Paris, Louvre

“I must write Kaiser, though I think he’s a homosexual.”

“Are you still reading Freud?”

“Page 299.”

She made a little hat and he fastened two snaps under one

arm, reaching up from the bed like a long feeler from the

snail, and she went to church, and he thought now I h’ve

time and the dog.

About church: the trouble with a mask is it

never changes.

So rude the flowers that grow and do not grow beautiful.

So magic the chair on the patio that does not hold legs

and belly and arm and neck and mouth that bites into the

wind like the end of a tunnel.

He turned in bed and thought: I am searching for some

segment in the air. It floats about the people’s heads.

When it rains on the trees it sits between the branches

warmer and more blood-real than the dove.

Orozco. Christ Destroying the Cross.

Hanover, Dartmouth College, Baker Library.

He burned away in sleep.

on the sidewalk and in the sun

I have seen an old man around town recently

carrying an enormous pack.

he uses a walking stick

and moves up and down the streets

with this pack strapped to his back.

I keep seeing him.

if he’d only throw that pack away, I think,

he’d have a chance, not much of a chance

but a chance.

and he’s in a tough district—east Hollywood.

they aren’t going to give him a

dry bone in east Hollywood.

he is lost. with that pack.

on the sidewalk and in the sun.

god almighty, old man, I think, throw away that

pack.

then I drive on, thinking of my own

problems.

the last time I saw him he was not walking.

it was ten thirty a.m. on north Bronson and hot, very hot, and he sat on a little ledge, bent,

the pack still strapped to his back.

I slowed down to look at his face.

I had seen one or two other men in my life

with looks on their faces like

that.

I speeded up and turned on the

radio.

I knew that look.

I would never see him again.

the elephants of Vietnam

first they used to, he told me,

gun and bomb the elephants,

you could hear their screams over all the other sounds;

but you flew high to bomb the people,

you never saw it,

just a little flash from way up

but with the elephants

you could watch it happen

and hear how they screamed;

I’d tell my buddies, listen, you guys

stop that,

but they just laughed

as the elephants scattered

throwing up their trunks (if they weren’t blown off )

opening their mouths

wide and

kicking their dumb c...

Cover
Title Page
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Chapter 90
Chapter 91
Chapter 92
Chapter 93
Chapter 94
Chapter 95
Chapter 96
Chapter 97
Chapter 98
Chapter 99
Chapter 100
Chapter 101
Chapter 102
Chapter 103
Chapter 104
Chapter 105
Chapter 106
Chapter 107
Chapter 108
Chapter 109
Chapter 110
Chapter 111
Chapter 112
Chapter 113
Chapter 114
Chapter 115
Chapter 116
Chapter 117
Chapter 118
Chapter 119
Chapter 120
Chapter 121
Chapter 122
Chapter 123
Chapter 124
Chapter 125
Chapter 126
Chapter 127
Chapter 128
Chapter 129
Chapter 130
Chapter 131
Chapter 132
Chapter 133
Chapter 134
Chapter 135
Chapter 136
Chapter 137
Chapter 138
Chapter 139
Chapter 140
Chapter 141
Chapter 142
Chapter 143
Chapter 144
Chapter 145
Chapter 146
Chapter 147
Chapter 148
Chapter 149
Chapter 150
Chapter 151
Chapter 152
Chapter 153
Chapter 154
Chapter 155
Chapter 156
Chapter 157
Chapter 158
Chapter 159
Chapter 160
Chapter 161
Chapter 162
Chapter 163
Chapter 164
Chapter 165
Chapter 166
Chapter 167
Chapter 168
Chapter 169
Chapter 170
Chapter 171
Chapter 172
Chapter 173
Chapter 174
Chapter 175
Chapter 176
Chapter 177
Chapter 178
Chapter 179
Chapter 180
Chapter 181
Chapter 182
Chapter 183
Chapter 184
Chapter 185
Chapter 186
Chapter 187
Chapter 188
Chapter 189
Chapter 190
Chapter 191
Chapter 192
Chapter 193
Chapter 194
Chapter 195
Chapter 196
Chapter 197
Chapter 198
Chapter 199
Chapter 200
Chapter 201
Chapter 202
Chapter 203
Chapter 204
Chapter 205
Chapter 206
Chapter 207
Chapter 208
Chapter 209
Chapter 210
Chapter 211
Chapter 212
Chapter 213
Chapter 214
Chapter 215
Chapter 216
Chapter 217
Chapter 218
Chapter 219
Chapter 220
Chapter 221
Chapter 222
Chapter 223
Chapter 224
Chapter 225
Chapter 226
Chapter 227
Chapter 228
Chapter 229
Chapter 230
Chapter 231
Chapter 232
Chapter 233
Chapter 234
Chapter 235
Chapter 236
Chapter 237
Chapter 238
Chapter 239
Chapter 240
Chapter 241
Chapter 242
Chapter 243
Chapter 244
Chapter 245
Chapter 246
Chapter 247
Chapter 248
Chapter 249
Chapter 250
Chapter 251
Chapter 252
Chapter 253
Chapter 254
Chapter 255
Chapter 256
Chapter 257
Chapter 258
Chapter 259
Chapter 260
Chapter 261
Chapter 262
Chapter 263
Chapter 264
Chapter 265
Chapter 266
Chapter 267
Chapter 268
Chapter 269
Chapter 270
Chapter 271
Chapter 272
Chapter 273
Chapter 274
About the Author
By Charles Bukowski
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher