Charles Bukowski: words to live by

                                       Follow Dan Benbow on Twitter                                 

                                 more Bukowski on Truth and Beauty:

                                      Charles Bukowski: "Born into This"

                              Charles Bukowski's "The Laughing Heart"

                            Charles Bukowski: So You Want to Be a Writer?

                                 Charles Bukowski Gets Life-Affirming

Charles Bukowski's apocalyptic vision: "Dinosauria, We"

Charles Bukowski was an antibody to American Optimism.

Through 50 years of poetry and prose, Bukowski focused most of his attention on quotidian matters—drinking, sex, work life—from the vantage point of someone on the margins of society. Though there were exceptions, such as “The Laughing Heart,” a poem that touches on self-empowerment, Bukowski generally portrayed life in blunt terms as sad, painful, and unforgiving. Resistance was futile; inscribed on his headstone were the words “DON’T TRY.”

The frequent razor strop beatings Bukowski suffered at his father’s hand as a teenager may in part explain this grim fatalism, but much of it was rooted in the personal observations he made over several decades spent in downscale areas of Los Angeles. Not only were human beings often needlessly cruel to one another, but the unprivileged masses were beaten down by a dehumanizing economic system which controlled postmodern life. We were all prisoners to the system, to bills and debt and full-time employment, an unnatural condition which made true freedom and human fulfillment elusive.

This larger framework of hypercapitalism’s spiritual poverty was often communicated through the microcosm of Bukowski’s firsthand experiences. Though he wasn’t known as a political writer, in the poem “Dinosauria, We” Bukowski brought the personal and political together.

The first thing one notices about the poem is its lack of order. Like life in Bukowski’s view, this poem is messy. The free verse spills out—there is no first stanza, second stanza, etc.—with no punctuation until the two periods at the end. It’s a shapeless poem which reads like a dirge.

From the opening lines (“Born like this/Into this/As the chalk faces smile/As Mrs. Death laughs/As the elevators break/As political landscapes dissolve/As the supermarket bag boy holds a college degree/As the oily fish spit out their oily prey”) the reader is dropped into a

rapidly decaying world, the “Into this.” Bukowski also seems to suggest (with the words “Born like this”) that human beings are inherently corrupt, complicit in the horrors around them.

The next section continues the “Born like this/into this” refrain, but ramps up the despair by showing how humans project their pain onto others, which only reinforces the sadness of life (“Into these carefully mad wars/Into bars where people no longer speak to each other/Into fist fights that end as shootings and knifings”).

About a third of the way into the poem, Bukowski explores some of the ways in which the deck is stacked against us (“Born into this/Into hospitals which are so expensive that it’s cheaper to die/Into lawyers who charge so much it’s cheaper to plead guilty/Into a country where the jails are full and the madhouses closed/Into a place where the masses elevate fools into rich heroes”).

The final “Born into this” refrain shifts the emphasis of the poem from the larger, impersonal forces that poison our world to the effects of these forces on the individual (“Dying because of this/Muted because of this/Castrated/Debauched/Disinherited/Because of this/Fooled by this/Used by this/Pissed on by this/Made crazy and sick by this/Made violent/Made inhuman/By this”).

Struggling to cope with the madness of the universe, humans lapse into self-destruction (“The heart is blackened/The fingers reach for the throat/The gun/The knife/The bomb/The fingers reach toward an unresponsive god/The fingers reach for the bottle/The pill/The powder”).

While “the rich and the chosen…watch from space platforms,” the forces of self-destruction that afflict common people manifest in the outer world, which careens toward apocalypse (“We are born into this sorrowful deadliness/We are born into a government 60 years in debt/That soon will be unable to even pay the interest on that debt/And the banks will burn/Money will be useless/There will be open and unpunished murder in the streets/It will be guns and roving mobs/Land will be useless/Food will become a diminishing return/Nuclear power will be taken over by the many/Explosions will continually shake the earth/Radiated robot men will stalk each other”).

The inner rot becomes the outer rot, changing our whole physical landscape (“The sun will not be seen and it will always be night/Trees will die/All vegetation will die/Radiated men will eat the flesh of radiated men/The sea will be poisoned/The lakes and rivers will vanish/Rain will be the new gold”).

Ultimately, the dark forces unleashed by capitalist greed and the crooked timber of humanity will cause the extinction of the human race (“The rotting bodies of men and animals will stink in the dark wind/The last few survivors will be overtaken by new and hideous diseases/And the space platforms will be destroyed by attrition/The petering out of supplies/The natural effect of general decay”).

One might expect an elegiac tone to accompany the end of human civilization at the poem’s close, but Bukowski offers serenity as the rest of the cosmos looks on indifferently to the flamed-out drama on the little blue ball (“And there will be the most beautiful silence never heard/Born out of that./The sun still hidden there/Awaiting the next chapter.)

***

The threat of nuclear annihilation hung over the human race during the Cold War (see: the

final scene in the film adaptation of “The Planet of the Apes”), but “Dinosauria, We” was published in 1992, three years after the Berlin Wall fell, in the final book of poetry published in Bukowski’s lifetime (“The Last Night of the Earth Poems”).

Seventy years of life in 20th Century America had convinced Bukowski that the American Dream was a grotesque illusion for most; “Dinosauria, We” appears to be an angry poet’s final howl of despair at human folly. Like the dinosaurs, human beings would become extinct. Unlike the dinosaurs, which were wiped out by a cataclysmic event outside of their control, human beings would die slowly, over many years, by their own hand.

The details of this dark vision were hyperbolic and metaphorical, but the increasingly grim climate change reports which have come out in the twenty years since Bukowski’s death hint that the main message of his alarmist cry may have been sober and prophetic.

           

                                               more Bukowski on Truth and Beauty:

                                                     Charles Bukowski: "Born into This" (full documentary)

                                             Charles Bukowski's "The Laughing Heart"

                                      Charles Bukowski: So You Want to Be a Writer?

                                                Charles Bukowski Gets Life-Affirming

Charles Bukowski's "The Laughing Heart"

This video combines two of my favorite artists:  

Charles Bukowski and Tom Waits. 

your life is your life

don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.

be on the watch.

there are ways out.

there is a light somewhere.

it may not be much light but

it beats the darkness.

be on the watch.

the gods will offer you chances.

know them.

take them.

you can’t beat death but

you can beat death in life, sometimes.

and the more often you learn to do it,

the more light there will be.

your life is your life.

know it while you have it.

you are marvelous

the gods wait to delight

in you.

***

 more Bukowski on "Truth and Beauty"

Charles Bukowski:  "Born into This" (full documentary)

Charles Bukowski: So You Want to Be a Writer?

Charles Bukowski gets life-affirming

Patti Smith: The Real Deal

I first came to appreciate Patti Smith five years ago through her debut release, "Horses," a seminal album from the golden age of rock music that had somehow eluded me. 

From the opening line ("Jesus died for somebody's sins, but not mine") I was hooked. I loved the way the opening track transitioned from a simple ballad to raunchy, fly-away rock, and ultimately to "Gloria." The rest of "Horses" was blessed with reggae inflections, soft, spare piano backing hypnotic verse, shades of punk and the street poetry of Lou Reed, and the undistilled rebel spirit of rock 'n' roll.  

For several years, "Horses" was my sole reference point for Patti Smith. Smith the human being was a blank slate until her National Book Award-winning autobiography "Just Kids" came out in 2010. I didn't jump at first, since I had already read more than my share of rock biographies, but when it became clear that "Just Kids" wasn't about shooting, snorting, and backstage antics, I bought a copy. As I read, I was intrigued by the number of timeless artists Smith rubbed elbows with in Manhattan in the late '60s and early-to-mid '70s and the Chelsea Hotel anecdotes, including an episode where a young Johnny Winter (who turned 70 last month) paced around a room nervously with superstitions of his imminent passing after the successive deaths of Jimi, Janis, and the Lizard King.

Though some artists are reluctant to discuss their roots, giving the false impression that they possessed magical powers from an early age, Smith's book went into detail about her influences, from Dylan to Jim Morrison to Arthur Rimbaud to Jackson Pollock. It was clear that she was first and foremost a fan and practitioner of art in multiple mediums; gaining notoriety in music was almost accidental.    

Smith's relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe was the heart of "Just Kids." They were

lovers and creative partners who met in Manhattan, young people scraping by on a shoestring budget hoping to make it, vibrating off the rich cultural milieu they'd stepped into. Intertwined with their romance was a deep, enduring friendship. According to Smith, when their physical relationship ended (because Mapplethorpe had come out), there was no major blowup or dramatic distancing. They adjusted to the change in status and remained lifelong friends until Mapplethorpe died of complications from AIDS in 1989.

"Just Kids" gave me a good feeling about Patti Smith the person; the casual interview below (courtesy of dangerous minds.net) from 2009 built on and filled out this instinct. I don't always concern myself with who great artists are or were on a personal level—I'm still in awe of Jimmy Page, though he voted for Margaret Thatcher—but strength of character helps (Hendrix's sweet, humble nature elevated his accomplishments in my mind). Where many great artists are disconnected because they're too deep in their imagination or in a state of arrested development due to the perks that come with their exulted status, Patti Smith comes off as a mensch—a thoughtful, unpretentious person who happens to be famous. Bill Kelly elicits her motivations for coming to New York as a young woman and her life once she got there, in addition to her transformations from drawing to writing to performance recitation to fronting a rock band.

All of the above, plus Smith's closeness to her family, her political conscience (e.g. her outspoken views on the shocking criminality of the Bush Administration at 10:45 of Part II), and her raw and incandescent stage presence shine in "Dream of Life," a full-length documentary from 2008. 

Rather than use the film as a marketing vehicle, with a formulaic linear narrative, "Dream of Life" director Steven Sebring provides a quick synopsis of Patti Smith's life in the beginning, and then follows her around with a camera, free-form like. 

Smith is a personable companion whose values and sensibility are out in the open. The little girl inside the 60-something woman comes out through her curiosity, her free-spiritedness, her interface with the world around her. She lived in the unsexy city of Detroit for 16 years and spends much of the movie in a modest room cluttered with knickknacks and keepsakes, rather than vacuum-sealed in a mansion. As her story unfolds organically, more artistic (and life) influences are name-checked, including the Beats, Walt Whitman, Edgar Allen Poe, Mickey Spillane, Sylvia Plath, Charles Baudelaire, and Hank Williams, Sr.

Above all, Smith has deep bonds with her parents and her children, holds the memory of the departed close to her heart, and always seems aware of who she is and where she came from—she is a heady artist who remains, refreshingly, forever earthbound.

"Do not go gentle into that good night"

The other day at lunch a friend mentioned the imminent passing of a relative who was coming up on 100 years old. 

From this unfortunate news we branched off to a discussion of aging and mortality. My friend said he didn't want to live to be that old, considering the low quality of life for most nonagenarians.

I respected his view--one I've heard many times before--and offered my own, namely the theory that for most of us, our physical erosion is so gradual that we can adapt to working with less. Old age is a long way out in the future; barring an unforeseen illness, I see myself sticking around as long as I can.

Which brought to mind one of my favorite poems these past several decades, a poem that followed me from a dramatic reading in college prep English to a prominent pushpinned spot on my dot.com era cubicle wall to this very moment.

Ladies and gentlemen, Dylan Thomas.

Do not go gentle into that good night

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Charles Bukowski: So You Want to Be a Writer?

This Bukowski poem contains the best, truest advice on writing I've ever seen.

So you want to be a writer?

if it doesn't come bursting out of you
in spite of everything, 
don't do it.
unless it comes unasked out of your
heart and your mind and your mouth 
and your gut,
don't do it. 
if you have to sit for hours
staring at your computer screen
or hunched over your
typewriter
searching for words,
don't do it.

if you're doing it for money or 

fame, 

don't do it.

if you're doing it because you want
women in your bed,
don't do it.
if you have to sit there and
rewrite it again and again,
don't do it.
if it's hard work just thinking about doing it,
don't do it.
if you're trying to write like somebody
else,
forget about it.

if you have to wait for it to roar out of 

you, 

then wait patiently. 

if it never does roar out of you, 

do something else. 

if you first have to read it to your wife 

or your girlfriend or your boyfriend 

or your parents or to anybody at all, 

you're not ready. 

don't be like so many writers, 

don't be like so many thousands of 

people who call themselves writers, 

don't be dull and boring and 

pretentious, don't be consumed with self- 

love. 

the libraries of the world have 

yawned themselves to 

sleep 

over your kind. 

don't add to that. 

don't do it. 

unless it comes out of 

your soul like a rocket, 

unless being still would 

drive you to madness or 

suicide or murder, 

don't do it. 

unless the sun inside you is 

burning your gut, 

don't do it. 

when it is truly time, 

and if you have been chosen, 

it will do it by 

itself and it will keep on doing it 

until you die or it dies in you. 

there is no other way. 

and there never was.

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Charles Bukowski gets life-affirming

It has been a few years since I've read Charles Bukowski. My most recent acquaintance was a second viewing of "Born into This," a powerful and personal documentary from 2003. Unlike some bio-mentaries, "Born into This" didn't change my view of the subject; it simply built on the existing edifice. 

I went into the first viewing seeing Bukowski as someone who'd been beaten down, a jaded, observant soul who chronicled graphic sex scenes and the bleak moment-to-moment life of an alcoholic. 

Some readers stop at Bukowski's damage, as if encountering the scene of a bad car accident, and turn away to lighter reading. 

But within the roughness, the rawness, there was a beauty, both in the simple language and rhythm of his voice, and in his brutal honesty. Bukowski wasn't trying to be clever with gratuitous wordplay, convoluted plotlines, or slow reveals. He respected the reader enough to give them a slice of life on the margins, straight up.

On the margins were a lot of down-and-out characters. A futility borne of hard living and shattered dreams (who can say which came first?) was pervasive; inscribed on his headstone are the words "DON'T TRY." Bukowski's poem "Dinosauria, We" reflects this fatalistic, nihilistic worldview:

Born like this
Into this
As the chalk faces smile
As Mrs. Death laughs
As the elevators break
As political landscapes dissolve
As the supermarket bag boy holds a college degree
As the oily fish spit out their oily prey
As the sun is masked
We are
Born like this
Into this
Into these carefully mad wars
Into the sight of broken factory windows of emptiness
Into bars where people no longer speak to each other
Into fist fights that end as shootings and knifings
Born into this
Into hospitals which are so expensive that it’s cheaper to die
Into lawyers who charge so much it’s cheaper to plead guilty
Into a country where the jails are full and the madhouses closed
Into a place where the masses elevate fools into rich heroes
Born into this
Walking and living through this
Dying because of this
Muted because of this
Castrated
Debauched
Disinherited
Because of this
Fooled by this
Used by this
Pissed on by this
Made crazy and sick by this
Made violent
Made inhuman
By this
The heart is blackened
The fingers reach for the throat
The gun
The knife
The bomb
The fingers reach toward an unresponsive god
The fingers reach for the bottle
The pill
The powder
We are born into this sorrowful deadliness
We are born into a government 60 years in debt
That soon will be unable to even pay the interest on that debt
And the banks will burn
Money will be useless
There will be open and unpunished murder in the streets
It will be guns and roving mobs
Land will be useless
Food will become a diminishing return
Nuclear power will be taken over by the many
Explosions will continually shake the earth
Radiated robot men will stalk each other
The rich and the chosen will watch from space platforms
Dante’s Inferno will be made to look like a children’s playground
The sun will not be seen and it will always be night
Trees will die
All vegetation will die
Radiated men will eat the flesh of radiated men
The sea will be poisoned
The lakes and rivers will vanish
Rain will be the new gold
The rotting bodies of men and animals will stink in the dark wind
The last few survivors will be overtaken by new and hideous diseases
And the space platforms will be destroyed by attrition
The petering out of supplies
The natural effect of general decay
And there will be the most beautiful silence never heard
Born out of that.
The sun still hidden there
Awaiting the next chapter.

---

Fixed with a certain sense of Bukowski's worldview, I was surprised to discover "The Laughing Heart," here read by Tom Waits, another artist who has spun tales about people who slip through the cracks. 

In the moment he created this poem, the often downbeat poet of the street saw a sliver of light, a way forward, through human agency:  

Your life is your life

Don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.

Be on the watch.

There are ways out.

There is a light somewhere.

It may not be much light but

It beats the darkness.

Be on the watch.

The gods will offer you chances.

Know them.

Take them.

You can’t beat death but

You can beat death in life, sometimes.

And the more often you learn to do it,

The more light there will be.

Your life is your life.

Know it while you have it.

You are marvelous

The gods wait to delight

In you.