Synopses & Reviews
another comeback
climbing back up out of the ooze, out of
the thick black tar,
rising up again, a modern
Lazarus.
you're amazed at your good
fortune.
somehow you've had more
than your share of second
chances.
hell, accept it.
what you have, you have.
you walk and look in the bathroom
mirror
at an idiot's smile.
you know your luck.
some go down and never climb back up.
something is being kind to you.
you turn from the mirror and walk into the
world.
you find a chair, sit down, light a cigar.
back from a thousand wars
you look out from an open door into the silent
night.
Sibelius plays on the radio.
nothing has been lost or destroyed.
you blow smoke into the night,
tug at your right
ear.
baby, right now, you've got it
all.
Synopsis
learning the ropes
he was my guru.
he was a big man, bearded, self-assured.
he sat in one chair.
I sat in another.
we had been up together many days
and nights.
there had been an hour's heavy
silence.
then he leaned forward slightly
and whispered,
you don't have to worry about
worms when you die, Chinaski,
worms don't infest dead
bodies, it's a fairy tale.
that's good to know, I
said.
then we fell into another
hour's heavy
silence.
Synopsis
Charles Bukowski is one of America's best-known contemporary writers of poetry and prose. This is the fourth of five new books of unpublished poems from one of the country's most influential and most imitated poets.
About the Author
Charles Bukowski is one of America's best-known contemporary writers of poetry and prose and, many would claim, its most influential and imitated poet. He was born in 1920 in Andernach, Germany, to an American soldier father and a German mother, and brought to the United States at the age of two. He was raised in Los Angeles and lived there for over fifty years. He died in San Pedro, California on March 9, 1994, at the age of seventy-three, shortly after completing his last novel, Pulp.