Charles Bukowski Archives - Page 4 of 4 - Trisha Sugarek, Author, Playwright & Poet

An Ode to Our Cats….Hank and me

In this two part post, I write about the love of cats. I know, I know! You either hate ’em or love ’em. Both camps are die-hards. You can’t live with one or you can’t live without one, or two, or three! For all of Charles Bukowski’s hard living, boozing, philandering, drunken brawls and genius writing, he was a complete softie when it came to cats….even cats that weren’t his own. He inspired me to write this ode to my dear old Shadow who died and to my new cat, ‘Wild Thang’. In part two I feature his poetry about his cats.

An Ode to our Cats….Hank and me

she was a feral kitten in the back alley

hiding under the deck

she crept out one day while I sat in the

sun, reading and

the first time I picked Shadow up

she shit all over me, so afraid

she was of any human

Next time, she didn’t shit on me and

slowly we became friends

for the next sixteen years

she was one hundred and twelve

when she died Continue reading “An Ode to Our Cats….Hank and me”

Lean Back Into It!

If you were here with me, seeing me devour Bukowski’s observations, wisdom, sarcasm, and cutting wit, you would know what a great effort I am making not to write too much about him too often. You would witness my restraint when what I really want to do is climb up on the tallest building and shout to the world: ‘YOU’VE GOT TO READ THIS GUY. YOUR LIVES WON’T BE WORTH DIDDLY-SQUAT WITHOUT HIS WISDOM, HIS TRUTHS, HIS TAKE ON THIS HARSH, WONDERFUL, UNFORGIVING, PASSIONATE LIFE!!!!

Why can’t we learn this stuff when we’re in our thirties? Hell! I’d have settled for having some damn wisdom at forty. Not until seven years ago did it all come clear….did I SEE! But, I’m a stubborn, old gal and evidently a slow learner. Life knocked me around again and again, with a grand slam TKO, until I GOT IT!

So here’s the latest in my series from Charles Bukowski.
Read it slow.
Stop and think about it.
Then read it again.

to lean back into it ©

like in a chair the color of the sun
as you listen to lazy piano music
and the aircraft overheard are not
at war.
where the last drink is as good as
the first
and you realized that the promises
you made yourself were
kept.
that’s plenty.
that last; about the promises.
what’s not so good is that the few
friends you had are
dead and they seem
irreplaceable.
as for women, you didn’t know enough
early enough
and you knew enough
too late.
and if more self-analysis is allowed: it’s
nice that you turned out well-
honed.
that you arrived late
and remained generally
capable.
outside of that, not much to say
except you can leave without
regret.
until then, a bit more amusement,
a bit more endurance,
leaning back
into it.

like the dog who got across
the busy street;
not all of it was good
luck.

I really don’t have anything more to say…..he says it all….doesn’t he??

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Interview with Charles Bukowski with yours truly. Click here
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DON’T MISS UPCOMING BLOGS featuring INTERVIEWS with other best-selling AUTHORS! “The Writer’s Corner”

I have had a wonderful response from other authors and will feature an interview once a month . These authors have already responded and you can read their interviews by clicking on their name:: Ann Purser, Susan Elia MacNeal, Mark Childress, Rhys Bowen, Dean Koontz, Sheryl Woods, Jo-Ann Mapson, Jeffrey Deaver, Elizabeth Gilbert, Amber Winckler, Karen Robards, Robert McCammon, Sue Grafton, Caroline Leavitt, Heidi Jon Schmidt, Walter Mosley, Loretta Chase, Nora Roberts, Raymond Benson and many others.

So come along with me; we shall sneak into these writers’ special places, be a fly on the wall and watch them create! July features Rhys Bowen. Sue Grafton is August’s author with a bonus chat with Cathy Lamb. and September will feature Tasha Alexander. Jeffrey Deaver is October’s author and slick mystery writer, Andrew Grant will join us this winter. Loretta Chase will be featured later this year. Raymond Benson is my January author.
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Don’t Throw That Away!!

I know! I’m nagging my fellow writers about this. But, I need to convince you that no matter how much you hate what you’ve written (on any given day), and how much crap you might think it is (on any given day) and how much you might despise and doubt yourself (on any given day). DON’T THROW ANYTHING that you’ve written AWAY!

Put it out of sight so it won’t haunt you. Throw it in a drawer that you never open. I promise you, in a month, a year or even in several years you will bring it out, dust it off, edit and add to it and wonder why you ever hated it. It could be a short story that blossoms into a novel. It could be a few lines that turns into poetry.

I love what Charles Bukowski said on this subject; about pulling the ‘crap’ writing out of a box, filling it’s cavities, giving eye and ear examinations and………

my atomic stockpile by Charles Bukowski

I cleaned my place the other day
first time in ten years
and found 100 rejected poems:
I fastened them all to a clipboard
(much bad reading).

now I will clean their teeth
fill their cavities
give them eye and ear examinations
weigh them
offer blood transfusions
then send them out again into the
sick world of posey.
either that
or I must burn down your cities,
rape your women,
murder your men,
enslave your children.

every time I clean my room
the world trembles in the balance.
that’s why I only do it once every
ten years.

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This is a very funny (ironic) man and that’s why I am so drawn to him, in spite of his drunken, sexist, bigoted, misogynistic ways. Would I want him living in my house? God, NO! But would I like to go away with him for awhile to an island or a cabin in the mountains where we could drink, write, talk, yell, swear, debate, philosophize, and BE HONEST!! HELL, YES!!
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DON’T MISS UPCOMING BLOGS. INTERVIEWS with other best-selling AUTHORS! A SERIES, “The Writer’s Corner”

I have had a wonderful response from other authors and will feature an interview once a month . I have invited such luminaries as: Ann Purser, Susan Elia MacNeal, Mark Childress, Rhys Bowen, Dean Koontz, Sheryl Woods, Jo-Ann Mapson, Jeffrey Deaver, Elizabeth Gilbert, Amber Winckler, Robert McCammon, Sue Grafton, Walter Mosley, Nora Roberts, and many others.

So come along with me; we shall sneak into these writers’ special places, be a fly on the wall and watch them create! Mark Childress was our April author. Robert McCammon is scheduled for May. Caroline Leavitt is June‘s author. July features Rhys Bowen. Sue Grafton is August’s author and September will feature Tasha Alexander. Slick mystery writer, Andrew Grant will join us this winter.
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To receive my posts sign up for my Go to the home page; On the right side you’ll see a box where you can enter your email address. Click on “join my blog”. You need to confirm in an email from ‘Writer at Play’ . Thanks!

If You’re Younger than Sixty, Read This!

Mortality, death was a vague concept when I was young…..now it is a harsh truth…my days are numbered so every day has such importance. When I was young I could piss away days, weeks, months, in toxic jobs, toxic relationships, and never regretted that lost time. Never gave time a thought. After all I had plenty more where that came from. Now at seventy-one, I feel an anxiousness that I won’t get everything done….won’t get everything written….won’t finish the writing I want to do.

They say, ‘Youth is wasted on the young’….. so true because the young waste time and energy and life, just as I did, on the trivial, the mundane, the unimportant. I wish I could reach out and shake them and tell them, “Wake up! Fulfill your dreams and goals today! Before you know whats happened, you’ll be in your seventies and desperate for more time.”

You might be saying about now, “Hey, Trish. What brought on this rant? Are you sick?
Are you dying? Are you crazy? No? Then you must be reading more of Charles Bukowski. ” GUILTY as charged!!

My message is this: Begin writing, jump out of a plane, float the Amazon, climb a mountain, go fishing in Montana, buy that motorcycle or boat you always wanted, write a poem, have a child, hug your parents, start writing, go to Argentina without knowing another soul, walk the Appalachian Trail, sit in a park and watch the world go by…in Lisbon, rescue a dog or cat, say a prayer that you live long enough to fulfill your dreams!
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Small Talk (with Death) © Charles Bukowski

all right, while we are gently celebrating tonight
and while crazy classical music leaps at me from
my small radio, I light a fresh cigar
and realize that I am still very much alive and that
the 21st century is almost upon me!

I walk softly now toward 5 a.m. this dark night
my 5 cats have been in and out, looking after me,
I have petted them, spoken to them, they
are full of their own private fears wrought by previous
centuries of cruelty and abuse
but I think that they love me as much as they can,
anyhow, what I am trying to say here
is that writing is just as exciting and mad and
just as big a gamble for me as it ever was, because Death
after all these years
walks around in the room with me now and speaks softly,
asking, do you still think that you are a genuine writer?
are you pleased with what you’ve done?
listen, let me have one of those cigars.

help yourself, motherf—-, I say.

Death lights up and we sit quietly for a time.
I can feel him here with me.

don’t you long for the ferocity
of youth? He finally asks.

not so much, I say.
but don’t you regret those things
that have been lost?

not at all, I say.

don’t you miss, He asks slyly, the young girls
climbing through your window?

all they brought was bad news, I tell him.
but the illusion, He says, don’t you miss the illusion?

hell, yes, don’t you? I ask.

I have no illusions, He says sadly.

sorry, I forgot about that, I say, then walk
to the window
unafraid and strangely satisfied
to watch the warm dawn unfold.

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Start your month off right!! DON’T MISS UPCOMING BLOGS. INTERVIEWS with other best-selling AUTHORS! A SERIES, “The Writer’s Corner”

I have had a wonderful response from other authors and will feature an interview with one of them once a month . I have invited such luminaries as: Ann Purser, Susan Elia MacNeal, Maya Angelou, Mark Childress, Rhys Bowen, Dean Koontz, Sheryl Woods, Jo-Ann Mapson, Jeffrey Deaver, Elizabeth Gilbert, Amber Winckler, Robert McCammon, Sue Grafton, Walter Mosley, Nora Roberts, and many others.

So come along with me; we shall sneak into these writers’ special places, be a fly on the wall and watch them create! Mark Childress is our April author. Robert McCammon is scheduled for May. Caroline Leavitt is June‘s author. July features Rhys Bowen. Sue Grafton is August’s author and September will feature Tasha Alexander. Slick mystery writer, Andrew Grant will join us this winter. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

You live to write, You stop! You Die!

I have been obsessed with Charles Bukowski for weeks now. I sort of randomly discovered him, fell in love, ordered his book of poems, ‘The Pleasures of the Damned’ and now I’m his forever! (March 14th)

One day, much to my amazement, I found tucked away in my very messy bookcase, a movie based on Bukowski’s life starring Matt Dillon. I’m ashamed to say that a friend had given me the DVD as a gift and I never bothered to watch it. (in my pre-Bukowski days) “Factotum” is a disturbing and fascinating look into Bukowski’s early years as an alcoholic, unknown writer who was frequently homeless as he went from job to job, from bar to bar, from woman to woman, from job to job, from bar to……

Bukowski writes about the raw, and sometimes ugly, world in which he lived. A world that you and I may never experience, a world of the downtrodden, poor, weak, drunk, and doped up, (and what polite society would call) losers.
The saving grace of this man was the PURE TRUTH in which he wrote!

This book reads like an autobiography of his life…all in prose. I was struck by this piece in particular . Bukowski knew exactly who and what he was.

the old fart, he used his literary reputation
to reel them in one at a time,
each younger than the last.
he liked to meet them for luncheon and wine
and he’d talk and listen to them talk.
whatever wife or girlfriend he had at the moment
was made to understand that this sort of thing made him
feel ‘young again’.
and when the luncheons become more than luncheons
the young ladies vied to bed down with
this
literary
genius.
in between he continued to write,
and late at night in his favorite bar
he liked to talk about writing and his amorous adventures.
actually, he was just a drunk who liked young ladies,
writing itself and talking about writing.
it wasn’t a bad life.
it was certainly more interesting than what most men were doing.
at one time he was probably the most famous writer in the world.
many tried to write like he did
drink like he did
act like he did
but he was the original.
then life began to catch up with him.
he began to age quickly
his large bulk began to wither.
he was growing old before his time.
finally it got to where he couldn’t write anymore.
“it just wouldn’t come” and the psychiatrists couldn’t do anything
for him but only made it worse.
then he took his own cure, early one morning,
alone
just as his father had done
many years before.

a writer who can’t write any
more is dead
anyhow.
he knew that.
he knew that what he was killing
was already dead.

and then the critics
and the hangers-on
and the publicists
and his heirs
moved in like vultures.
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‘Everything you need to know about life are in these pages by Bukowski. He knew when it was all over. He was used up; he had given all that he could, he had nothing more to say. So he left……the screen door slapping softly shut behind him.’ ~~T.Sugarek
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Start your month off right!! DON’T MISS UPCOMING BLOGS. INTERVIEWS with other best-selling AUTHORS! A NEW SERIES, “The Writer’s Corner”

So come along with me; we shall sneak into these writers’ special places, be a fly on the wall and watch them create! Mark Childress is our April author. Robert McCammon is scheduled for May. Caroline Leavitt is June‘s author. July features Rhys Bowen. Sue Grafton is August’s author and September will feature Tasha Alexander. Slick mystery writer, Andrew Grant will join us this winter.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Don’t Miss it! an Interview with Charles Bukowski on Tuesday

I would give much to interview great authors like Steinbeck, Bronte, Hemingway, Austen, Twain, London, Service, Chekov, Shakespeare. But at the top of my bucket list would be Henry Charles Bukowski {1920-1994}. So I asked myself would it be so very strange or inappropriate to imagine what it might have been like and then write an interview with “Hank” Bukowski?

Imagine that I am sitting with him, in a corner booth, in some neighborhood dive. Old die-hard drunks sit up at the bar and……………………
March 19th, Tuesday, don’t miss my interview with Henry Charles Bukowski.

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‘You begin saving the world by saving one man at a time; all else is grandiose romanticism or politics.’ ~~Bukowski
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Start your month off right!! DON’T MISS UPCOMING BLOGS. INTERVIEWS with other best-selling AUTHORS! A NEW SERIES, “The Writer’s Corner”

I have had a wonderful response from other authors and will feature an interview once a month . I have invited such luminaries as: Ann Purser, Susan Elia MacNeal, Maya Angelou, Mark Childress, Rhys Bowen, Dean Koontz, Sheryl Woods, Jo-Ann Mapson, Jeffrey Deaver, Elizabeth Gilbert, Amber Winckler, Robert McCammon, Walter Mosley, Nora Roberts, and many others.

So come along with me; we shall sneak into these writers’ special places, be a fly on the wall and watch them create! Mark Childress is our April author. Robert McCammon is scheduled for May. Caroline Leavitt is June‘s author. July features Rhys Bowen. Sue Grafton is August’s author and September will feature Tasha Alexander. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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