How to be a great writer By: Charles Bukowski
you’ve got to fuck a great many women
beautiful women
and write a few decent love poems.
and don’t worry about age
and/or freshly-arrived talents.
just drink more beer
more and more beer
and attend the racetrack at least once a
week
and win
if possible
learning to win is hard -
any slob can be a good loser.
and don’t forget your Brahms
and your Bach and your
beer.
don’t overexercise.
sleep until noon.
avoid paying credit cards
or paying for anything on
time.
remember that there isn’t a piece of ass
in this world over $50
(in 1977).
and if you have the ability to love
love yourself first
but always be aware of the possibility of
total defeat
whether the reason for that defeat
seems right or wrong -
an early taste of death is not necessarily
a bad thing.
stay out of churches and bars and museums,
and like the spider be
patient -
time is everybody’s cross,
plus
exile
defeat
treachery
all that dross.
stay with the beer.
beer is continuous blood.
a continuous lover.
get a large typewriter
and as the footsteps go up and down
outside your window
hit that thing
hit it hard
make it a heavyweight fight
make it the bull when he first charges in
and remember the old dogs
who fought so well:
Hemingway, Celine, Dostoevsky, Hamsun.
If you think they didn’t go crazy
in tiny rooms
just like you’re doing now
without women
without food
without hope
then you’re not ready.
drink more beer.
there’s time.
and if there’s not
that’s all right
too.
Hey. Do you mind if I tell you a story? One you might not have heard. All the elements in your body were forged many many millions of years ago in the heart of a faraway star that exploded and died. That explosion scattered those elements across the desolations of deep space. After so, so many millions of years, these elements came together to form new stars and new planets. And on and on it went. The elements came together and burst apart, forming shoes and ships and sealing wax and cabbages and kings. Until, eventually, they came together to make you. You are unique in the universe. There is only one Merry Galel. And there will never be another. Getting rid of that existence isn’t a sacrifice, it’s a waste!
‘Cause this is what you’ve waited for A chance to even up the score And as these shadows fall on me now I will somehow, yeah
‘Cause I’m picking up the message, Lord And I’m closer than I’ve ever been before So if you have something to say Say it to me now, just say it to me now, now Oh, oh, oh
Message →
There’s a message left here from the past.If you allow it in you can see it. Or hear it. Or fucking taste it. It’s as subtle as a cats meow, a barely heard whisper that you were to busy to hear the…
Post reblogged from frank ocean with 4,049 notes
trying to imagine in advance what i was never intended to know.
There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;
And frogs in the pools, singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white,Robins will wear their feathery fire,
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,
If mankind perished utterly;And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.
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