Charles Bukowski

[σα(ρε)μαλι]

Henry Charles Bukowski, (born Heinrich Karl Bukowski; August 16, 1920 – March 9, 1994) was an American poet, novelist and short story writer. His writing was influenced by the social, cultural and economic ambience of his home city of Los Angeles. It is marked by an emphasis on the ordinary lives of poor Americans, the act of writing, alcohol, relationships with women and the drudgery of work. Bukowski wrote thousands of poems, hundreds of short stories and six novels, eventually publishing over sixty books. In 1986 Time called Bukowski a "laureate of American lowlife". Regarding Bukowski's enduring popular appeal, Adam Kirsch of The New Yorker wrote, "the secret of Bukowski’s appeal. . . [is that] he combines the confessional poet’s promise of intimacy with the larger-than-life aplomb of a pulp-fiction hero."


Charles Bukowski (born Heinrich Karl Bukowski)

Poems published in Translatum:

— 16-bit Intel 8088 chip
— Blue Moon, oh bleweeww mooooon how I adore you!
— Μy father
— Μy father and the bum
— Nothing is as effective as defeat
— The Crunch
— The red Porsche
— Throwing away the alarm clock
— The Laughing Heart


Index of world poetry

[σα(ρε)μαλι]

Charles Bukowski: Blue Moon, oh bleweeww mooooon how I adore you!

I care for you, darling, I love you,
the only reason I fucked L. is because you fucked
Z. and then I fucked R. and you fucked N.
and because you fucked N. I had to fuck
Y. But I think of you constantly, I feel you
here in my belly like a baby, love I'd call it,
no matter what happens I'd call it love, and so
you fucked C. and then before I could move
you fucked W., so then I had to fuck D. But
I want you to know that I love you, I think of you
constantly, I don't think I've ever loved anybody
like I love you.

bow wow bow wow wow
bow wow bow wow wow.

Από τη συλλογή:
Play the Piano Drunk
Like a Percussion Instrument Until The Fingers Begin To Bleed a Bit

[σα(ρε)μαλι]

Charles Bukowski: Nothing is as effective as defeat

always carry a notebook with you
wherever you go, he said,
and don't drink too much, drinking dulls
the sensibilities,
attend readings, note breath pauses,
and when you read
always understate
underplay, the crowd is smarter than you
might think,
and when you write something
put it in a drawer for two weeks,
then take it out and look
at it, and revise, revise,
REVISE again and again,
tighten lines like bolts holding the span
of a 5 mile bridge,
and keep a notebook by your bed,
you will get thoughts during the night
and these thoughts will vanish and be wasted
unless you notate them.
and don't drink, any fool can
drink, we are men of
letters.


for a guy who couldn't write at all
he was about like the rest
of them: he could sure
talk about
it.

Από τη συλλογή:
Play the Piano Drunk
Like a Percussion Instrument Until The Fingers Begin To Bleed a Bit

16-bit Intel 8088 chip
     
with an Apple Macintosh
you can't run Radio Shack programs
in its disc drive.
nor can a Commodore 64
drive read a file
you have created on an
IBM Personal Computer.
both Kaypro and Osborne computers use
the CP/M operating system
but can't read each other's
handwriting
for they format (write
on) discs in different
ways.
the Tandy 2000 runs MS-DOS but
can't use most programs produced for
the IBM Personal Computer
unless certain
bits and bytes are
altered
but the wind still blows over
Savannah
and in the Spring
the turkey buzzard struts and
flounces before his
hens.

Aileron Vol. 6 No. 1 - 1985
You Get So Alone At Times That It Just Makes Sense - page 103 (1986)

[stathis]

Μπάρμαν, άλλο ένα στην κυρία από μένα!
:)

[billberg23]

Kι' από μένα, στην σειρά μου!

[stathis]

Ψάχνοντας ένα άλλο ποίημα του Μπουκόφσκι, έπεσα στο παρακάτω. Ίσως ακολουθήσουν κι άλλα.

My father

was a truly amazing man
he pretended to be
rich
even though we lived on beans and mush and weenies
when we sat down to eat, he said,
“not everybody can eat like this.”

and because he wanted to be rich or because he actually
thought he was rich
he always voted Republican
and he voted for Hoover against Roosevelt
and he lost
and then he voted for Alf Landon against Roosevelt
and he lost again
saying, “I don’t know what this world is coming to,
now we’ve got that god damned Red in there again
and the Russians will be in our backyard next!”

I think it was my father who made me decide to
become a bum.
I decided that if a man like that wants to be rich
then I want to be poor.

and I became a bum.
I lived on nickles and dimes and in cheap rooms and
on park benches.
I thought maybe the bums knew something.
but I found out that most of the bums wanted to be
rich too.
they had just failed at that.

so caught between my father and the bums
I had no place to go
and I went there fast and slow.
never voted Republican
never voted.

buried him
like an oddity of the earth
like a hundred thousand oddities
like millions of other oddities,
wasted.

[stathis]

Με αφορμή τον πατέρα και πάλι...

Μy father and the bum

my father believed in work.
he was proud to have a
job.
sometimes he didn't have a
job and then he was very
ashamed.
he'd be so ashamed that he'd
leave the house in the morning
and then come back in the evening
so the neighbors wouldn't
know.

me,
I liked the man next door:
he just sat in a chair in
his back yard and threw darts
at some circles he had painted
on the side of his garage.
in Los Angeles in 1930
he had a wisdom that
Goethe, Hegel, Kierkegaard,
Nietzsche, Freud,
Jaspers, Heidegger and
Toynbee would find hard
to deny.

[stathis]

Επιτέλους, το βρήκα. :))
Αν και δεν έχω διαβάσει πάρα πολλά ποιήματα του Μπουκόφσκι μέχρι στιγμής, αυτό είναι ίσως το απόλυτα αγαπημένο μου, για εντελώς προσωπικούς λόγους.

Throwing away the alarm clock

My father always said, "early to
bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise".

it was lights out at 8 p.m. in our
house and we were up at dawn to
the smell of coffee, frying bacon and scrambled eggs.

my father followed this general
routine for a lifetime and died
young, broke, and, I think, not too wise.

taking note, I rejected his advice
and it became to me, late to bed and late to rise.

now, I'm not saying I've conquered
the world but I've avoided
numberless early traffic jams,
bypassed some common pitfalls
and have met some strange,
wonderful people

one of whom was myself - someone my father never knew.

[Αλ.]

Με αφορμή τον πατέρα και πάλι...

Μy father and the bum
sometimes he didn't have a
job and then he was very
ashamed.
he'd be so ashamed that he'd
leave the house in the morning
and then come back in the evening
so the neighbors wouldn't
know.

Εδώ ο Γαλλικός κινηματογράφος συναντά τον Bukwoski ή και το αντίθετο, αν μαζί με το  neighbours προσθέσεις και το family...

[stathis]

Εδώ ο Γαλλικός κινηματογράφος συναντά τον Bukwoski ή και το αντίθετο, αν μαζί με το  neighbours προσθέσεις και το family...

Ρε Βατ, ίδρωσα να καταλάβω σε τι αναφέρεσαι! Τι ψυχαναγκασμός κι αυτός με το μυστήριο... :)

Σοβαρά τώρα, έκανα κι εγώ την ίδια σκέψη με σένα, αν και θα ήταν πιο ακριβές να πούμε ότι η ζωή αντιγράφει την τέχνη.

Υποσημείωση στα παραπάνω:
Ο Βατ αναφέρεται στην απίστευτη ιστορία του Jean-Claude Romand, η οποία έχει εμπνεύσει τρεις κινηματογραφικές ταινίες (αν και, απ' όσο ξέρω, μόνο το  L' adversaire και το  L' emploi du temps έχουν παιχτεί στην Ελλάδα).

[user4]

and have met some strange,
wonderful people

one of whom was myself - someone my father never knew.

Υπέροχο, Στάθη, ευχαριστώ...

[Αλ.]

Ρε Βατ, ίδρωσα να καταλάβω σε τι αναφέρεσαι! Τι ψυχαναγκασμός κι αυτός με το μυστήριο... :)

Ήταν ιδανικά σκηνοθετημένο το μήνυμά μου για να σας δώσει πάσα να ξεδιπλώσετε τις γνώσεις σας...
Η γενική αναφορά στον γαλλικό κινηματογράφο έγινε γιατί δεν υπήρχε μια ταινία μόνο...
Ακόμα και ο Ελεύθερος ωραρίου (L' emploi du temps) -περιμένω τα σχόλια των γαλλομαθών περί της απόδοσης του τίτλου- έχει περισσότερες εκδοχές.
Με βάση τις πληροφορίες από τη wikipedia ο πρωταγωνιστής αυτής της πρακτικής χαρακτηρίζεται ως impostor...για τον οποίο είχαμε συζητήσει ξανά
εδώ, όπου φαινόταν να υπάρχει διάσταση στην έννοια της λέξης ανάμεσα στην καθημερινή και την επιστημονική της χρήση...

[Frederique]

Charles Bukowski: the red porsche

it feels good
to be driven about in a red
porsche
by a woman better-
read than I
am.
it feels good
to be driven about in a red
porsche
by a woman who can explain
things about
classical
music to
me.

it feels good
to be driven about in a red
porsche
by a woman who buys
things for my refrigerator
and my
kitchen:
cherries, plums, lettuce, celery,
green onions, brown onions,
eggs, muffins, long
chilis, brown sugar,
wine vinegar, pompeian olive oil
and red
radishes.

I like being driven about
in a red porsche
while I smoke cigarettes in
gentle languor.


I'm lucky. I've always been
lucky:
even when I was starving to death
the bands were playing for
me.
but the red porsche is very nice
and she is
too, and
I've learned to feel good when
I feel good.


it's better to be driven around in a
red porsche
than to own
one. the luck of the fool is
inviolate.

Από τη συλλογή:
Play the Piano Drunk
Like a Percussion Instrument Until The Fingers Begin To Bleed a Bit

[crystal]

Charles Bukowski, The Crunch

too much too little

too fat
too thin
or nobody.

laughter or
tears

haters
lovers

strangers with faces like
the backs of
thumb tacks

armies running through
streets of blood
waving winebottles
bayoneting and fucking
virgins.

an old guy in a cheap room
with a photograph of M. Monroe.

there is a loneliness in this world so great
that you can see it in the slow movement of
the hands of a clock

people so tired
mutilated
either by love or no love.

people just are not good to each other
one on one.

the rich are not good to the rich
the poor are not good to the poor.

we are afraid.

our educational system tells us
that we can all be
big-ass winners

it hasn't told us
about the gutters
or the suicides.

or the terror of one person
aching in one place
alone

untouched
unspoken to

watering a plant.

people are not good to each other.
people are not good to each other.
people are not good to each other.

I suppose they never will be.
I don't ask them to be.

but sometimes I think about
it.

the beads will swing
the clouds will cloud
and the killer will behead the child
like taking a bite out of an ice cream cone.

too much
too little

too fat
too thin
or nobody

more haters than lovers.

people are not good to each other.
perhaps if they were
our deaths would not be so sad.

meanwhile I look at young girls
stems
flowers of chance.

there must be a way.

surely there must be a way that we have not yet
though of.

who put this brain inside of me?

it cries
it demands
it says that there is a chance.

it will not say
"no."


This poem was published in Love is a Dog From Hell.