This is likely my favorite collection by Charles Bukowski. A man made famous for his vulgarity and debauchery—thI am exactly what I am supposed to be.
This is likely my favorite collection by Charles Bukowski. A man made famous for his vulgarity and debauchery—though to cling to such things misses the point and heart of his poetry—The Last Night of the Earth Poems removes the caustic armor and lets the tender heart beat out prose without fear, without need for deflection. While it is often the boozing and whoring and bitterness of Bukowski that is spoken of, particularly in college dorms, I've always felt that his abrasive nature was a mask for a fragile soul wincing away from pain, that there was something beautiful and passionate lurking beneath the gutters. Last Night was Bukowski's final collection written while alive and his awareness of inevitable demise creeps into the pages and allows him to speak more freely and passionately than ever before. A fitting collection to be revisiting as I sit silently with my beer, awaiting the next family funeral, awaiting the sharp daggers of held-back tears and gut-clenching awareness of mortality while a man I love and respect breaths through a tube in a nearby hospital with mere days left. Poetry keeps us eternal, keeps our conquests and regrets, our loves and shames alive and on display for all to learn from and imbibe like a fine wine to satisfy the soul and abate our nerves through the knowledge that we all share the same fate and fears and pains. The Last Night of the Earth is a splendid array of all things Bukowski, from his bitter wit to his most impassioned confessions, and is certainly a collection any fan should have at their fingertips.
Confession waiting for death like a cat that will jump on the bed
I am so very sorry for my wife
she will see this stiff white body shake it once, then maybe again
“Hank!”
Hank won’t answer.
it’s not my death that worries me, it’s my wife left with this pile of nothing.
I want to let her know though that all the nights sleeping beside her
even the useless arguments were things ever splendid
and the hard words I ever feared to say can now be said:
I love you.
This collection is nearly painful to read at times. Bukowski offers a reflection on his life that is often funny, bitter and, in this collection, very heartbreaking. The ever-famous Bukowski poem Bluebird is found here (I've never felt much for this poem and wonder about its fame, it feels so detached from his typical style and reminds me of some of his extreme early works that I also didn't care much for as they felt as if he was overtly playing too much at 'being poetic' than simply letting the poetry flow freely as he argues for in many of his fine poems about the art of being a poet), as well as the awe-inspiring Dinosauria, We (you can listen to Bukowski read that poem himself here) and many others. There are angry tirades against false poets, hostile statements towards humanity, yet always a tenderness lurking beneath that reminds us of the importance of being good to one another, of appreciating the life we have, or keeping true to ourselves and striving towards our wildest dreams lest we become another fake and phony that Bukowski so detested. Let yourself be stricken with poverty and debauchery, he would say, as long as it was who you are and you stayed true to yourself. There are powerful statements of the ways literature can move us, memories of being driven to the heights of excitement and passion from Knut Hamsun's Hunger or Huxley's Point Counter Point, the pride in betraying his parents wishes and joining the obscene masses of writers (a absolutely fantastic account of this is found in Them and Us). There are humorous poems on feeling out of touch with the forward-moving world such as in Hemingway Never Did This which recounts accidentally deleting a poem from his computer, or the regret that fame came too late in life to make much use of it as in Creative Writing Class . More heartbreaking is his awareness of death and his testimonies to the agonies of old age. 'young or old, good or bad, I don't think anything dies as slow and as hard as a writer,' wrote Bukowski. It truly hurts to read a tired and dying Bukoswki, but it fills the heart to the point of beautiful overflow.
Are You Drinking? washed-up, on shore, the old yellow notebook out again I write from the bed as I did last year. will see the doctor, Monday. "yes, doctor, weak legs, vertigo, head- aches and my back hurts." "are you drinking?" he will ask. "are you getting your exercise, your vitamins?" I think that I am just ill with life, the same stale yet fluctuating factors. even at the track I watch the horses run by and it seems meaningless. I leave early after buying tickets on the remaining races. "taking off?" asks the motel clerk. "yes, it's boring," I tell him. "If you think it's boring out there," he tells me, "you oughta be back here." so here I am propped up against my pillows again just an old guy just an old writer with a yellow notebook. something is walking across the floor toward me. oh, it's just my cat this time.
The Last Night of the Earth Poems is a perfect Bukowski collection that contains all the joys from his range of poetry but keeps to the most heartfelt of messages. While it isn't an ideal introduction to his work, it is certainly a necessity for anyone who holds any love for the man in their heart. Painful as it may be, this is truly brilliant and a perfect examination of a life as it was lived. 4.5/5
'So this is the beginning / not the / end.'
Dinosauria, We Born like this Into this As the chalk faces smile As Mrs. Death laughs As the elevators break As political landscapes dissolve As the supermarket bag boy holds a college degree As the oily fish spit out their oily prey As the sun is masked We are Born like this Into this Into these carefully mad wars Into the sight of broken factory windows of emptiness Into bars where people no longer speak to each other Into fist fights that end as shootings and knifings Born into this Into hospitals which are so expensive that it's cheaper to die Into lawyers who charge so much it's cheaper to plead guilty Into a country where the jails are full and the madhouses closed Into a place where the masses elevate fools into rich heroes Born into this Walking and living through this Dying because of this Muted because of this Castrated Debauched Disinherited Because of this Fooled by this Used by this Pissed on by this Made crazy and sick by this Made violent Made inhuman By this The heart is blackened The fingers reach for the throat The gun The knife The bomb The fingers reach toward an unresponsive god The fingers reach for the bottle The pill The powder We are born into this sorrowful deadliness We are born into a government 60 years in debt That soon will be unable to even pay the interest on that debt And the banks will burn Money will be useless There will be open and unpunished murder in the streets It will be guns and roving mobs Land will be useless Food will become a diminishing return Nuclear power will be taken over by the many Explosions will continually shake the earth Radiated robot men will stalk each other The rich and the chosen will watch from space platforms Dante's Inferno will be made to look like a children's playground The sun will not be seen and it will always be night Trees will die All vegetation will die Radiated men will eat the flesh of radiated men The sea will be poisoned The lakes and rivers will vanish Rain will be the new gold The rotting bodies of men and animals will stink in the dark wind The last few survivors will be overtaken by new and hideous diseases And the space platforms will be destroyed by attrition The petering out of supplies The natural effect of general decay And there will be the most beautiful silence never heard Born out of that. The sun still hidden there Awaiting the next chapter....more
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