the ashes, scattered
all your fucked-up lovers and
their suicide poems,
but i was never into bleeding for the sake of art
i was never into bukowski or
any of those bullshit philosophers
the shame is not in cowardice,
but in disguising it as empty aggression
the fear is not of sorrow, but of
staining it with addiction
the truth is that a drowning man will
always pull you under with him,
if only for the company
Charles Bukowski was poet, novelist, and short story writer who was noted for his direct expression of the ordinary lives of poor Americans, the act of writing, alcohol, relationships with women, and the drudgery of work. He began publishing extensively in small literary magazines and with small presses in the early 1940s and did not achieve a wide readership until the 1960s. When he was 49, Black Sparrow Press publisher John Martin offered to put him on a modest salary if he quit his post office job in order to write full-time. SWithin a month he finished his 1st novel, "Post Office." Shortly after he finished his 6th and last novel, "Pulp," he died of leukenia in 1994 at 73, but thousands of his poems continued to be published posthumously until 2007, when Ecco press released "The People Look Like Flowers at Last."
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