The Pleasures of the Damned - Charles Bukowski [80]
nighttime wives and wines;
the crowded jails,
the commonplace unemployed,
dying grass, 2-bit fires;
men old enough to love the grave.
These things, and others, in content
show life swinging on a rotten axis.
But they’ve left us a bit of music
and a spiked show in the corner,
a jigger of scotch, a blue necktie,
a small volume of poems by Rimbaud,
a horse running as if the devil were
twisting his tail
over bluegrass and screaming, and then,
love again
like a streetcar turning the corner
on time
the city waiting,
the wine and the flowers,
the water walking across the lake
and summer and winter and summer and summer
and winter again.
alphabetical index of poem titles
about competition (sifting through the madness…)
about pain (War All the Time
about the PEN conference (You Get So Alone at Times That It Just Makes Sense)
advice for some young man in the year 2064 A.D. (uncollected)
afternoons into night (uncollected)
again (Betting on the Muse)
American Flag Shirt, the (The People Look Like Flowers at Last)
an empire of coins (Betting on the Muse)
angel who pushed his wheelchair, the (What Matters Most Is How Well You Walk Through the Fire)
area of pause, the (The Last Night of the Earth Poems)
art (play the piano drunk…)
bad fix (Dangling in the Tournefortia)
bakers of 1935, the (What Matters Most Is How Well You Walk Through the Fire)
bang bang (Mockingbird Wish Me Luck)
barfly (The Flash of Lightning Behind the Mountain)
batting slump (Open All Night)
beagle (The Night Torn Mad with Footsteps)
Beast, The (The Rooming house Madrigals)
beautiful lady, the (Bone Palace Ballet)
big one, the (Bone Palace Ballet)
big time loser (Open All Night)
birds, the (The Flash of Lightning Behind the Mountain)
blue (Come On In!)
blue beads and bones (What Matters Most Is How Well You Walk Through the Fire)
bluebird, the (The Last Night of the Earth Poems)
bow wow love (uncollected)
boy and his dog, a (What Matters Most Is How Well You Walk Through the Fire) 247 Bruckner (2) (Open All Night)
burning of the dream, the (Septuagenarian Stew)
butterflies (What Matters Most Is How Well You Walk Through the Fire)
cancer (Come On In!)
car wash (The Last Night of the Earth Poems)
Carson McCullers (The Night Torn Mad with Footsteps)
clean well-lighted place, a (Slouching Toward Nirvana)
close encounters of another kind (play the piano drunk…)
closing time (Come On In!)
coffee and babies (uncollected)
colored birds, the (Mockingbird Wish Me Luck)
come on in! (Come On In!)
commerce (sifting through the madness…)
crime does pay (The Flash of Lightning Behind the Mountain)
crucifix in a deathhand (Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame)
crunch, the (Love Is a Dog from Hell)
dark night poem (uncollected)
day the epileptic spoke, the (War All the Time)
Death Wants More Death (The Rooming house Madrigals)
Democracy (The Flash of Lightning Behind the Mountain)
Destroying Beauty (The Rooming house Madrigals)
Dinosauria, we (The Last Night of the Earth Poems)
downtown (What Matters Most Is How Well You Walk Through the Fire)
dreaming (uncollected)
drowning, the (uncollected)
drying out (Dangling in the Tournefortia)
eating my senior citizen’s dinner at the Sizzler (War All the Time)
eat your heart out (Love Is a Dog from Hell)
egg, the (play the piano drunk…)
–1883 (You Get So Alone at Times That It Just Makes Sense)131 elephants in the zoo (uncollected)
elephants of Vietnam, the (The People Look Like Flowers at Last)
eulogy (The Night Torn Mad with Footsteps)
eulogy to a hell of a dame (War All the Time)
face of a political candidate on a street billboard (play the piano drunk…)
finish (The Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over the Hills)
first poem back (The Flash of Lightning Behind the Mountain)
fisherman, the (Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame)
fooling Marie (the poem) (Come On In!)
for Jane (The Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over the Hills)
for Jane: with all the love I had, which was not enough: (The Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over the Hills)