I think that the
world should be full of cats and full of rain, that's all, just
cats and
rain, rain and cats, very nice, good
night.
Charles Bukowski, from Betting on the Muse: Poems & Stories.
Bukowski has the reputation of being curmudgeonly and hard, but not all of his poems are like that. It would be nice if someone published a compilation of his more upbeat work."Most people are dead long before they are buried, that’s why funerals are so sad. Most people quit too easy, they accept the short end, they compete for small prizes and become small. I don’t expect everybody to be a genius but I never guessed that so many would rush to idiocy with such aplomb." ~Charles Bukowski
"The problem was you had to keep choosing between one evil or another, and no matter what you chose, they sliced a little bit more off you, until there was nothing left. At the age of 25 most people were finished. A whole god-damned nation of assholes driving automobiles, eating, having babies, doing everything in the worst way possible, like voting for the presidential candidates who reminded them most of themselves. I had no interests. I had no interest in anything. I had no idea how I was going to escape. At least the others had some taste for life. They seemed to understand something that I didn't understand. Maybe I was lacking. It was possible. I often felt inferior. I just wanted to get away from them. But there was no place to go." ~Charles Bukowski
