What's your favorite poem by Charles Bukowski?

Question

I love "Hot." It's similar to the stuff I write here.

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/hot

Answer 1

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker

It would be one of these two:

Be Kind


we are always asked
to understand the other person's
viewpoint
no matter how
out-dated
foolish or
obnoxious.

one is asked
to view
their total error
their life-waste
with
kindliness,
especially if they are
aged.

but age is the total of
our doing.
they have aged
badly
because they have
lived
out of focus,
they have refused to
see.

not their fault?

whose fault?
mine?

I am asked to hide
my viewpoint
from them
for fear of their
fear.

age is no crime

but the shame
of a deliberately
wasted
life

among so many
deliberately
wasted
lives

is.



Alone With Everybody



the flesh covers the bone
and they put a mind
in there and
sometimes a soul,
and the women break
vases against the walls
and the men drink too
much
and nobody finds the
one
but keep
looking
crawling in and out
of beds.
flesh covers
the bone and the
flesh searches
for more than
flesh.

there's no chance
at all:
we are all trapped
by a singular
fate.

nobody ever finds
the one.

the city dumps fill
the junkyards fill
the madhouses fill
the hospitals fill
the graveyards fill

nothing else
fills.

Asker's Rating:

Asker's Comment:

Wow. These are good. All good choices here. I tend to like the poems with a little story to them. I think we'll someday realize Buk was the Frost of our day.

Answer 2

Now what was that other gals name?
She was hot

Answer 3

a smile to remember

we had goldfish and they circled around and around
in the bowl on the table near the heavy drapes
covering the picture window and
my mother, always smiling, wanting us all
to be happy, told me, "be happy Henry!"
and she was right: it's better to be happy if you
can
but my father continued to beat her and me several times a week while
raging inside his 6-foot-two frame because he couldn't
understand what was attacking him from within.

my mother, poor fish,
wanting to be happy, beaten two or three times a
week, telling me to be happy: "Henry, smile!
why don't you ever smile?"

and then she would smile, to show me how, and it was the
saddest smile I ever saw

one day the goldfish died, all five of them,
they floated on the water, on their sides, their
eyes still open,
and when my father got home he threw them to the cat
there on the kitchen floor and we watched as my mother
smiled

Answer 4

Freedom

he drank wine all night the night of the
28th. and he kept thinking of her:
the way she walked and talked and loved
the way she told him things that seemed true
but were not, and he knew the color of each
of her dresses
and her shoes---he knew the stock and curve of
each heel
as well as the leg shaped by it.

and she was out again when he came home, and
she'd come back with the special stink again,
and she did
she came in at 3 a.m. in the morning
filthy like a dung-eating swine
and
he took out the butcher knife
and she screamed
backing into the roominghouse wall
still pretty somehow
in spite of love's reek
and he finished the glass of wine.

that yellow dress
his favorite
and she screamed again.

and he took up the knife
and unhooked his belt
and tore away the cloth before her
and cut off his balls.
and carried them in his hands
like apricots
and flushed them down the
toilet bowl
and she kept screaming
as the room became red

GOD O GOD!
WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?

and he sat there holding 3 towels
between his legs
not caring now whether she left or
stayed
wore yellow or green or
anything at all.

and one hand holding and one hand
lifting he poured
another wine.

Answer 5

Are you kidding? Do you really like that poem? God Eddie, i think its trash. Poems others have selected are far better than what you have chosen...why do i get the feeling that you are in love with someone....Admit it Eddie, you have fallen in love or you wouldn't select that poem. Love makes you do crazy things..crazy Eddie..