Francis Berger
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Dreamlessly - A Fitting Non-Poem

8/31/2022

6 Comments

 
A fitting non-poem by one of my favorite "guilty pleasure" non-poets . . . 
Dreamlessly
                   - Charles Bukowski - from Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame

Old, grey-haired waitresses
in cafes at night
have given it up,
and as I walk down sidewalks of
light and look into windows
of nursing homes
I can see that it is no longer
with them.
I see people sitting on park benches
and I can see by the way they
sit and look
that it is gone.

I see people driving cars
and I see by the way
they drive their cars
that they neither love nor are
loved -

nor do they consider
sex. It is all forgotten
like an old movie.


I see people in department stores and
supermarkets
walking down aisles
buying things
and I can see by the way their clothing
fits them and by the way they walk
and by their faces and their eyes
that they care for nothing
and that nothing cares
for them.

I see a hundred people a day
who have given up
entirely.

If I go to the racetrack
or a sporting event
I can see thousands
that feel for nothing or
no one
and get no feeling
back.

Everywhere I see those who
crave nothing but
food, shelter, and
clothing; they concentrate
on that,

dreamlessly

I do not understand why these people do not
vanish
I do not understand why these people do not
expire
why the clouds
do not murder them
or why the dogs
do not murder them
or why the flowers and the children
do not murder them,
I do not understand.


I suppose they are murdered
yet I can’t adjust to the
fact of them
because they are so many.

Each day,
each night,
there are more of them
in the subways and
in the buildings and
in the parks

they feel no terror
at not loving
or at not
being loved

so many many many
of my fellow

creatures
6 Comments
Bookslinger
9/1/2022 01:28:45

That poor man. If you read his biography on Wikipedia, you can see a source of his brokenness - years of constant physical and emotional abuse from his WWI veteran (American of German extraction) father, the abuse enabled by his mother, plus being a child of the Great Depression.

Similar things played out with WWII vets and their children.

No wonder he identified with other suffering broken people.

Reply
Francis Berger
9/1/2022 22:01:37

@ Books - Bukowksi was an "interesting" character, to say the least.

Reply
Luke
9/1/2022 16:33:36

I used to make fun of any of my peers who were into bukowski, for all the obvious reasons. But this isn't a bad non poem.

Reply
Francis Berger
9/1/2022 22:05:17

@ Luke - Yeah, I know where you are coming from. I make fun of myself for liking some of his work.

In any case, if you'll indulge me, I'll share one of my favorite (and in my opinion, most ironic and funny) of his non-poems.

The Secret of My Endurance

I still get letters in the mail, mostly from cracked-up
Men in tiny rooms with factory jobs or no jobs who are
Living with whores or no woman at all, no hope, just
Booze and madness.
I get most of their letters on lined paper
Written with an unsharpened pencil or in ink
In tiny handwriting that slants to the left
And the paper is most often torn
Usually halfway up the middle
And they say they like my stuff,
I've written from where it's at,
They recognize it truly, I've given them some
Chance, some recognition of where it's at.
It's true, I was there, even worse off than most of them.
But I wonder if they realize where their letter arrives?
Well, it's dropped into a box on a wire fence
Behind a six-foot hedge and a long driveway
To a two car garage, rose garden, fruit trees,
Animals, a beautiful woman, mortgage about half
Paid after a years residence, a new car-
Two cars,
Fireplace and a green rug two-inches deep
With a young boy to write my stuff now,
I keep him in a ten-foot square cage with a
Typewriter, feed him whiskey and raw whores,
Belt buckle him pretty good three or four times a week.
I'm 60 years old now and the critics say
My stuff is getting better than ever.

Reply
Anthony Probst
9/2/2022 06:40:38

That would have been about 1980, as he was born in 1920. I first learned of him in the mid 1970s because the hipster contingent of the instructors at my junior college thought highly of him. A personal appearance was arranged for an evening at one of the college's lecture halls or the auditorium. (We were only an hour's drive from Los Angeles.) I wasn't interested so I didn't go, but I read about it later in the school's paper. At one point in the readings, discussions, and Q&A he said, "You people are so easy to fool, it's [adjective forgotten]." Afterwards he and some attendees repaired to a local watering hole where, according to the article, Bukowski wound up dancing on one of the tables. At the end of the term, the paper's editors published a list of mock prizes to be awarded. To one instructor it was "folk dancing lessons from Charles Bukowski."

Francis Berger
9/2/2022 07:35:55

@ Anthony Probst - Thanks for sharing that recollection and connection.

"You people are so easy to fool . . ." Ha! Ain't that the truth?

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