The Pleasures of the Damned - Charles Bukowski [1]
riots
those marvelous lunches
The Look
the big one
the genius
about the PEN conference
what a man I was
Scarlet
like a flower in the rain
a killer
prayer in bad weather
melancholia
eat your heart out
I made a mistake
she comes from somewhere
The High-Rise of the New World
car wash
Van Gogh
the railroad yard
the girls at the green hotel
in other words
Destroying Beauty
peace
afternoons into night
we ain’t got no money, honey, but we got rain
marina
Trollius and trellises
beagle
coffee and babies
magical mystery tour
the last generation
about competition
a radio with guts
the egg
a killer gets ready
in the center of the action
poetry
notes upon the flaxen aspect
the fisherman
the 1930s
the burning of the dream
sit and endure
Goldfish
finish
dreaming
my special craving
A Love Poem
one writer’s funeral
the wine of forever
the pile-up
my big night on the town
close encounters of another kind
drying out
scene from 1940
the area of pause
I know you
relentless as the tarantula
the replacements
to lean back into it
eating my senior citizen’s dinner at the Sizzler
it’s strange
The Beast
woman on the street
lost in San Pedro
Manx
the history of a tough motherfucker
bad fix
one for the old boy
my cats
Death Wants More Death
the lisp
on being 20
meanwhile
the world’s greatest loser
human nature
the trash men
a gold pocket watch
talking to my mailbox…
I liked him
one for the shoeshine man
the proud thin dying
shot of red-eye
about pain
hot
who in the hell is Tom Jones?
the price
I’m in love
the girls
the ladies of summer
to night
shoes
hug the dark
face of a political candidate on a street billboard
white dog
on going out to get the mail
spring swan
how is your heart?
closing time
racetrack parking lot at the end of the day
there
Dinosauria, we
mind and heart
TB
crime does pay
the orderly
the nurses
cancer
first poem back
tired in the afterdusk
again
so now?
blue
a summation
sun coming down
twilight musings
my last winter
like a dolphin
the bluebird
if we take—
alphabetical index of poem titles
About the Author
Other Books by Charles Bukowski
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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