Thread: So You Want To Be A Writer- by Charles Bukowski

Charles Bulowski once wrote that "love is a piece of paper torn into bits" .. well, this poem is a piece of work but I'm not listening to it.

Charles Bukowski mastered it, mastered spilling guts, emotions, thoughts and in your face reality. By far he is amazement to me. I too write out of emotion, out of madness, desperation, and when it will murder me to hold it inside. True genius! I keep saying "favorite" today, but again I shall by adding, my favorite poem is "Your Catfish Friend. It is gentle compared to some of his others, but I honestly enjoy most all of his work including To The Whore Who Stole My Poems, hello, how are you?, a smile to remember. Beauty, brutal happiness and sadness all at its best. ~

"Your Catfish Friend"
If I were to live my life
in catfish forms
in scaffolds of skin and whiskers
at the bottom of a pond
and you were to come by
one evening
when the moon was shining
down into my dark home
and stand there at the edge
of my affection
and think, "It's beautiful
here by this pond. I wish
somebody loved me,"
I'd love you and be your catfish
friend and drive such lonely
thoughts from your mind
and suddenly you would be
at peace,
and ask yourself, "I wonder
if there are any catfish
in this pond? It seems like
a perfect place for them."

He is awe inspiring...something every writer should aim for. He took the english language and made it his own. I love how he manipulates grammar, although I think it's just a result of his drunkeness at times. Supposedly, he would knock poems or stories out on the first try, then put them in an envelope and send them away without editing.
His words about being a writer, about the desperation, pain, poverty, and general dispair, and that he was a writer only because he couldn't help it, he HAD to do it, hit me in places I didn't know where there.
Have you seen the documentary about him? Or the Matt Dillon Factotum movie? They're both hilarious. The documentary is depressing at times, uncomfortable at others when he goes off into his screaming fits.

Anyways...Bukowski is the man. He's the anti-Kafka, yet just as poignant and social commentatingly brilliant.