Charles Bukowski was a pessimist; a drunk; a lonely, mostly sad man for most of his mostly sad life. His legacy: a poet.

I am not a poet. I am a reader, a critic, a consumer, and also, a mostly sad man. And, as I am all of these things, I see plenty of love; treacherous, true, toxic, unconditional, parasitical, whatever. But love. I was sick of it; or at least, I thought I was. Because, as aforementioned, I am lonely and sad and usually contain too much disquiet to do much about it.

So, why I bought this book of poems, I could not tell you. I purchased her, and sitting poolside nearly everyday one muggy summer week, I had read every one twice over.

Bukowski is not something you read and wholly enjoy because every page is beautiful. You enjoy it because most of the pages are not. Most of the pages are a cringe and a page turn or an eyebrow raise and a hidden smile– usually of amusement from his sheer audacity. But every few pages, there's a line, a paragraph, a poem that stands out to you. And for whatever reason that may be, it sings; loudly.

This is where I find beauty; in having to dig for it. I do not want to hear an opera while I'm walking down the street. I want to sit on my own for a while in a dark room and listen. I want to sit here for at least twenty percent of my allotted time before hearing a note, maybe a whisper or hum. Because then, it is resonant.

If you like to walk down your street and be handed sheets of music; clear, precise, stark notes at every turn, Charles Bukowski is not for you. Keep walking. And I will sit in my cell and listen and we will likely never cross paths– that's alright.

But, if you like the dark, you'll find love. Lot's of it. Love that I don't mind all that much.

an almost made up poem

I see you drinking at a fountain with tiny
blue hands, no, your hands are not tiny
they are small, and the fountain is in France
where you wrote me that last letter and
I answered and never heard from you again.
you used to write insane poems about
ANGELS AND GOD, all in upper case, and you knew famous artists and most of them were your lovers, and I wrote back, it’s all right, go ahead, enter their lives, I’m not jealous because we’ve never met. we got close once in New Orleans, one half block, but never met, never touched. so you went with the famous and wrote about the famous, and, of course, what you found out is that the famous are worried about their fame – not the beautiful young girl in bed with them, who gives them that, and then awakens in the morning to write upper case poems about ANGELS AND GOD. we know God is dead, they’ve told us, but listening to you I wasn’t sure. maybe it was the upper case. you were one of the best female poets and I told the publishers, editors, “print her, print her, she’s mad but she’s magic. there’s no lie in her fire.” I loved you like a man loves a woman he never touches, only writes to, keeps little photographs of. I would have loved you more if I had sat in a small room rolling a cigarette and listened to you piss in the bathroom, but that didn’t happen. your letters got sadder. your lovers betrayed you. kid, I wrote back, all lovers betray. it didn’t help. you said you had a crying bench and it was by a bridge and the bridge was over a river and you sat on the crying bench every night and wept for the lovers who had hurt and forgotten you. I wrote back but never heard again. a friend wrote me of your suicide 3 or 4 months after it happened. if I had met you I would probably have been unfair to you or you to me. it was best like this.

There is subtly in words unsaid and beauty in a brash nature. Bukowski evokes the feeling of raw. The feeling of fresh skin after a shed– something delicate and soft torn so, so quickly.

Bukowski fights with his Loves like he fights with the feeling of love. The philosophy of it. He is addled by his introspection. He knows himself so well, it's often he doesn't engage in affairs because he believes he knows how things will end, fueled by his predictions of past relations coming up true. A crippling self-awareness.

I'd like to highlight two lines. 'we know God is dead, they’ve told us, but listening to you I wasn’t sure.' 'I loved you like a man loves a woman he never touches, only writes to, keeps little photographs of. I would have loved you more if I had sat in a small room rolling a cigarette and listened to you piss in the bathroom, but that didn’t happen.'

Both evoke that feeling I spoke about; raw. The first of which makes me cry every time I read it, without fail. Bukowski idolizes her. The words she speaks, or writes, are godlike to him. Gospel, if you will. This is apparent in the beginning of the second quote I pulled as well. 'I loved you like a man loves a woman he never touches, only writes to, keeps little photographs of.' It seems, in these excerpts, she is to him, rather fittingly, an angel or a god.

This is greatly contrasted by the second half of the second quote, 'I would have loved you more if I had sat in a small room rolling a cigarette and listened to you piss in the bathroom, but that didn’t happen.' He wants normal. He wants coexistence. The juxtaposition is a clear example of his fight.

I analyze this like I analyze Shakespeare. And I love to analyze Shakespeare.

The contradiction, the complexities and moral dissonance. It's all so human. Charles Bukowski is a quiet lullaby and I am more than willing to sit in a dark, dark room and listen for it.

Love Is a Dog From Hell is my favorite collection of Charles Bukowski's poems. Is his work for everyone? Absolutely not. Is his work for me? Absolutely.