An Existential Life

Charles Bukowski

People with no morals often considered themselves more free, but mostly they lacked the ability to feel or love.

— Charles Bukowski (via onlylogan)

you must refuse to join them.
you must remain yourself.
you must open the curtains
or the blinds
or the windows
to the gentle light.
to joy.

— Charles Bukowski - a vote for the gentle light.

(Source: henrycharlesbukowski)

Lighting new cigarettes,
pouring more
drinks.

It has been a beautiful
fight.

Still
is.

— You Get So Alone at Time That it Just Makes Sense by Charles Bukowski

self-congratulatory nonsense as the
famous gather to applaud their seeming
greatness

you
wonder where
the real ones are

what
giant cave
hides them

as
the deathly talentless
bow to
accolades

as the fools are
fooled
again

you
wonder where
the real ones are

if there are
real ones.

this
self-congratulatory nonsense
has lasted
decades
and
with some exceptions

centuries.

this
is so dreary
is so absolutely pitiless

it churns the gut to
powder
shackles hope

it
makes little things
like
pulling up a shade
or
putting on your shoes
or
walking out on the street

more difficult
near
damnable

as
the famous gather to
applaud their
seeming
greatness

as
the fools are
fooled
again

humanity
you sick
motherfucker.

—

Charles Bukowski, Time is All Around: This.

We’re all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn’t. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities, we are eaten up by nothing.

— Charles Bukowski (via michellemacnamara)

(Source: artistandhuman)

life itself is not the miracle.
that pain should be so constant,
that’s the miracle.

— Charles Bukowski (The People Look Like Flowers At Last: New Poems)