and it seemed to me, that every night turns out to be a little bit more like Bukowski.” –MM

Some notes from Bukowski‘s notes of a dirty old man

“I hope that these selections help you. If you want to send me money, o.k. Or if you want to hate me, o.k. too. If I were the village blacksmith you wouldn’t fuck with me. But I am just an old guy with some dirty stories. Writing for a newspaper, which, like me, might die tomorrow morning.

It’s all very strange. Just think, if they hadn’t airbrushed the cock and balls off the Christ child, you wouldn’t be reading this. So, be happy.”

“I get very tired of the precious intellects who must speak diamonds every time they open their mouths…that’s why I stayed away from people for so long, and now that I am meeting people, I find that I must return to my cave.”

“(by the way . . . I realize I switch from present to past tense, and if you don’t like it . . . ram a nipple up your scrotum. –printer: leave this in.)”

“I hated to look for a job. each drunken and starvation moment contained some type of easy meaning for me.”

“cities are built to kill people.”

“next thing I knew I was sitting in a nice room in east Kansas City listening to the manager beat up the maid because she’d failed to sell me a piece of her ass. it was real and peaceful and sane again.”

“and I was out of New York, almost alive.”

“a writer who has to go INTO the streets is a writer who does not know the streets.”

“WHEN YOU LEAVE YOUR TYPEWRITER YOU LEAVE YOUR MACHINE GUN AND THE RATS COME POURING THROUGH.”

“you just can’t give a man a new government like a new hat and expect a different man inside that hat.”

“but before you kill something make sure you have something better to replace it with; something better than political opportunist slamming hate horseshit in the public park.”

“for Christ’s sake, if they legalized pot half the people would stop smoking it.”

“you don’t learn anything or see anything unless you vibrate.”

“the boys screaming for your sacrifice in the public parks are usually the furthest away when the shooting begins.”

“5,000 dollars worth of crazy birds, all different shapes and colors, tasting the confusion of freedom.”

“if meggy had lived close enough I could have ended the whole torture easily enough, herself at my place breathing in the fine lilting flare of my poets eyes, the pantherpiss stride, pants torn at the knees with 2:30 a.m. falls–comparing me with, say, Stephen Spender–I would turn and say in not very articulate English:

‘baby, in a couple of minutes I’m going to rip off your goddamned panties and show you some turkey neck you’ll remember all the way to the graveside. I have a vast and curved penis, like a sickle, and many a gutted pussy has gasped come upon my callous and roach-smeared rug. first let me finish this drink.’

then you drink down a tall water glass of straight whiskey, smash the glass against the wall, muttering ‘Villon ate fried titty for breakfast,’ pause to light a cigarette and when you turn your problems will be solved–it will leave out the front door. if it remains it deserves what it gets. and so do you.”

“I have a special ring-system that must work before I will pick up my phone. I am not a snob; it is simply that I am not interested with what most people have to say, or what they want to do–mostly with my time.”

“So, be happy.”