Within a Sky Full of Earth

The first time I met Bukowski's words I guess I was sixteen. They came in friendly hand through the title South of No North (1973). A book of short damned stories, filled with sex, alcohol and, of course, dirty words. We laughed a lot and we enjoyed the flux of images that immediately flew inside our brains. We didn't really knew what was that.
Then arrived Women (1978), a novel. We were a bit older at that time and we thought, that's a guy who knows out to live, he was still alive by that time. The life he was living we got it from the 1987 film Barfly where Mickey Rourke replaces Henry Chinaski the fictional presence of Charles Bukowski in his books. That was twenty years ago. Wanting to be like Chinaski/Bukowski in his boosted crafted heart, I never got close to such achievement, but along the puzzles that crossed my mind his words were always there buzzing like a melody. And if you hear them well it's not dark, it's not barfly or even dirty, it's an escape to a different life of lucidity and truth. An open sky.

Gamblers all

sometimes you climb out of bed in the morning and you think,
I'm not going to make it, but you laugh inside
remembering all the times you've felt that way, and
you walk to the bathroom, do your toilet, see that face
in the mirror, oh my oh my oh my, but you comb your hair anyway,
get into your street clothes, feed the cats, fetch the
newspaper of horror, place it on the coffee table, kiss your
wife goodbye, and then you are backing the car out into life itself,
like millions of others you enter the arena once more.

you are on the freeway threading through traffic now,
moving both towards something and towards nothing at all as you punch
the radio on and get Mozart, which is something, and you will somehow
get through the slow days and the busy days and the dull
days and the hateful days and the rare days, all both so delightful
and so disappointing because
we are all so alike and so different.

you find the turn-off, drive through the most dangerous
part of town, feel momentarily wonderful as Mozart works
his way into your brain and slides down along your bones and
out through your shoes.

it's been a tough fight worth fighting
as we all drive along
betting on another day.
©2001 Linda Lee Bukowski

In Bloom's life we want to talk about Bukowski. We want to make readings about his work. We want to translate his words to chinese and portuguese, the official languages of Macau, and publish them. We want to bring back Henry Chinasky to this South of no North, where he belongs.