A couple of Bukowskis

"The gods wait to delight in you"

THE LAUGHING HEART

By Charles Bukowski 

read by Tom O'Bedlam

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.

************************************

The Secret of My Endurance

read by Charles Bukowski

I still get letters in the mail, mostly from cracked-up

men in tiny rooms with factory jobs or no jobs who are

living with whores or no woman at all, no hope, just

booze and madness.

Most of their letters are on lined paper

written with an unsharpened pencil

or in ink

in tiny handwriting that slants to the

left

and the paper is often torn

usually halfway up the middle

and they say they like my stuff,

I've written from where it's at, and

they recognize that. truly, I've given them a second

chance, some recognition of where they're at.

it's true, I was there, worse off than most

of them.

but I wonder if they realize where their letters

arrive?

well, they are dropped into a box

behind a six-foot hedge with a long driveway leading

to a two car garage, rose garden, fruit trees,

animals, a beautiful woman, mortgage about half

paid after a year, a new car,

fireplace and a green rug two-inches thick

with a young boy to write my stuff now,

I keep him in a ten-foot cage with a

typewriter, feed him whiskey and raw whores,

belt him pretty good three or four times

a week.

I'm 59 years old now and the critics say

my stuff is getting better than ever.