Three by Bukowski

All of these are from The Last Night of the Earth Poems by Charles Bukows­ki.

air and light and time and space

“–you know, I’ve either had a fam­i­ly, a job,
some­thing has always been in the
way
but now
I’ve sold my house, I’ve found this
place, a large stu­dio, you should see the space and
the light.
for the first time in my life I’m going to have
a place and the time to
cre­ate.”

no baby, if you’re going to cre­ate
you’re going to cre­ate whether you work
16 hours a day in a coal mine
or
you’re going to cre­ate in a small room with 3 chil­dren
while you’re on
wel­fare,
you’re going to cre­ate with part of your mind and your body blown
away,
you’re going to cre­ate blind
crip­pled
dement­ed,
you’re going to cre­ate with a cat crawl­ing up your
back while
the whole city trem­bles in earth­quake, bom­bard­ment,
flood and fire.

baby, air and light and time and space
have noth­ing to do with it
and don’t cre­ate any­thing
except maybe a longer life to find
new excus­es
for.

the blue­bird

there’s a blue­bird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I’m too tough for him,
I say, stay in there, I’m not going
to let any­body see
you.

there’s a blue­bird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I pour whiskey on him and inhale
cig­a­rette smoke
and the whores and the bar­tenders
and the gro­cery clerks
nev­er know that
he’s
in there.

there’s a blue­bird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I’m too tough for him,
I say,
stay down, do you want to mess
me up?
you want to screw up the
works?
you want to blow my book sales in
Europe?

there’s a blue­bird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I’m too clever, I only let him out
at night some­times
when every­body’s asleep.
I say, I know that you’re there,
so don’t be
sad.

then I put him back,
but he’s singing a lit­tle
in there, I haven’t quite let him
die
and we sleep togeth­er like
that
with our
secret pact
and it’s nice enough to
make a man
weep, but I don’t
weep, do
you?

poet­ry con­test

send as many poems as you wish, only
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cor­ner.
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man­u­scripts
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every effort
will be made to
judge all works with­in 90
days.
after care­ful screen­ing
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Elly May Moody,
gen­er­al edi­tor in charge.
please enclose ten dol­lars for
each poem sub­mit­ted.
a final grand prize of
sev­en­ty-five dol­lars will
be award­ed the win­ner
of the
Elly May Moody Gold­en Poet­ry
Award,
along with a scroll
signed by
Elly May Moody.
there will also be 2nd, 3rd and
4th prize scrolls
also signed by
Elly May Moody.
all deci­sions will be
final.
the prize win­ners will
appear in the Spring issue of
The Heart of Heav­en.
prize win­ners will also receive
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along with
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poet­ry,
The Place Where Win­ter
Died.