In the 1990s I was introduced to a fellow poet on the ‘poetry reading circuit’ through-out Los Angeles bookstores that worshipped Charles Bukowski. I forgot his name but he was always encouraging the poets to drink CB. I don’t like all his work, but his deep dive into savage, visceral imagery, and his iconoclastic irreverence does inspire.
I put this book in my own Christmas stocking this year. It’s a slightly psychotic ride for sure.
Did you know he had a real beef with Faulkner? Some of it I get, but still. Found that interesting.
It got me back to some of my innermost honest thoughts about society and myself.
Halfway in, I wrote this on a plane:
*I hear CB’s voice crying out:
Let’s stop BS-ing each other that we are Friends or that we actually have over 1,000 Friends. Followers aren’t Friends nor do true Leaders care about the number of Followers they have. Jesus barely had 12 when he walked down here, maybe 15 if you count his Mother and a few of the ladies. And Likes don’t mean that you even Like one another either. It’s all BS.
He’d also probably say: I hate you and your dumb narcissistic posts and rants and most of your lives are full of lies to all. You post and lie, post and lie. And you actually think most people care.
Bragging about everything and nothing. Because that’s what you vacuous people do – you brag. Today you just brag with images and posts, and most of you can’t articulate it in words anymore.
Bragging about how smart you are, how funny and clever and witty you think you are, all the while licking your lips in hopes of fame and vainglory while the clock is ticking and ticking. That’s what he’d say.
He’d say: stop complaining so much about your lives. Life is hard and get over it. Yes, even when everything’s not going your way and things are crap. Don’t you know that’s where the grit turns into good ol’ genius for next generations. Not at your local Starbucks and pilates classes. Not at your silly wine tastings. Ask him, he barely ate when he wrote some of his greatest work…and lived in a shack.
Put away this fake and phony obsequious nature of being all things to all people. It makes his stomach churn.
I think Bukowski would buck at and puke over the filters, the photo-op lies, and the vanity of it all. He’d probably remind us of our fate of wrinkles, death, and future illnesses.
He’d definitely say we are all full of sh*t. And tell us to stop it.
He’s right.
*all italics are my thoughts, not CB direct quotes. But I think he’d agree.
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