Yesterday was Charles Bukowski’s birthday (which I would have missed if Tony Pierce didn’t point it out). He would have been 85. He was America’s greatest poet despite spending the overwhelming majority of his life drunk at the track. Here’s one of my favorite Bukowski poems:

born to lose I was sitting in my cell and all the guys were tattooed BORN TO LOSE BORN TO DIE all of them were able to roll a cigarette with one hand if I mentioned Wallace Stevens or even Pablo Neruda to them they’d think me crazy. I named my cellmates in my mind: that one was Kafka that one was Dostoevsky that one was Blake that one was Celine and that one was Mickey Spillane. I didn’t like Mickey Spillane. sure enough that night at lights out Mickey and I had a fight over who got the top bunk the way it ended neither of us got the top bunk we both got the hole. after I got out of solitary I made an appointment with the warden. I told him I was a writer a sensitive and gifted soul and that I wanted to work in the library he gave me two more days in the hole. when I got out I worked in the shoe factory. I worked with Van Gogh, Schopenhauer, Dante,   Robert Frost and Karl Marx. they put Spillane in license plates.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 17th, 2005 at 9:59 am and is filed under Random. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.