“the laughing heart” by charles bukowski
read by tom waits
The Laughing Heart
Charles Bukowksi
your life is your life
don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.
be on the watch.
there are ways out.
there is a light somewhere.
it may not be much light but
it beats the darkness.
be on the watch.
the gods will offer you chances.
know them.
take them.
you can’t beat death but
you can beat death in life, sometimes.
and the more often you learn to do it,
the more light there will be.
your life is your life.
know it while you have it.
you are marvelous
the gods wait to delight
in you.
Sometimes I pick up poem after poem and in nothing can I find what I am looking for. Sometimes I need the effect produced by poetry, yet when I read all the words jumble together and I can’t connect or make sense of anything. Sometimes I look to poems already with me and I am reminded of how to make connections and I remember how I understand. Here are some I continually return to:
from Rick Kilpatrick’s “Languages Grow Among Stars”
It is trying to sink into death and being unable to sink into death. It is being and continuing to be.
from Susan Hansell’s ” … in 10 years she’ll wish she knew the answer to that mathematical question with the weights and the cubes … she’ll wish she could call me up and ask … ”
there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I’m too tough for him,
I say, stay in there, I’m not going
to let anybody see
you.
there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I pour whiskey on him and inhale
cigarette smoke
and the whores and the bartenders
and the grocery clerks
never know that
he’s
in there.
there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I’m too tough for him,
I say,
stay down, do you want to mess
me up?
you want to screw up the
works?
you want to blow my book sales in
Europe?
there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I’m too clever, I only let him out
at night sometimes
when everybody’s asleep.
I say, I know that you’re there,
so don’t be
sad.
then I put him back,
but he’s singing a little
in there, I haven’t quite let him
die
and we sleep together like
that
with our
secret pact
and it’s nice enough to
make a man
weep, but I don’t
weep, do
you?
In Charles Bukowski’s Factotum we follow Henry Chinaski across the country from job to job (Chinaski makes an art form of getting fired), city to city, and woman to woman. Simultaneously, I am repulsed by and drawn to Bukowski. I am revolted by his characters, their habits, their alcoholism, and the way they treat each other.
Why he interests me is more complex. There is a definite loveliness in his writing, his word choice, his syntax, his subtlety. But ultimately, the very reasons I am disgusted by him are what make his writing appealing. His characters and the things they do are embarrassingly honest. They are human beings living in this world and he shows us the things they must do to get by, and it isn’t always pretty. And it shouldn’t be. Poverty isn’t pretty, alcoholism isn’t pretty, and in a shocking departure from the norm, he does not try to glamorize any of it:
I went and sat on the edge of the bed and rolled a cigarette. I hadn’t wiped myself very well. When I got up to look for a beer there was a wet brown stain. I went into the bathroom and wiped myself again. Then I sat on the bed with my beer and waited for Jan to awaken (118-9).
And then in the space of a few lines Bukowski can so quickly and quietly create a connection between Chinaski and one of his many co-workers:
“My brother is rich,” said Maurice. “He has disowned me. He doesn’t like my drinking. He doesn’t like my painting.”
“But your brother never met Picasso.”
Maurice stood up and smiled.
“No, he never met Picasso.”
Maurice walked back down the aisle toward the front of the store, cigar smoke curling back over his shoulder. He had kept my book of matches (175).
An empathetic Chinaski actually consoles Maurice, shows him how though he may not have the things his brother has, he does have things his brother doesn’t. The two men may be drunks working menial jobs, but with that comes what enables them to be an artist, a writer. But Bukwoski keeps us rooted in reality by reminding us they are still who we think they are: Maurice steals the matches, a small action that tells us Maurice is that guy who never has a light unless he has just jacked one from someone else.
Bukowski forces the reader to judge his characters; he does, Chinaski does. Consequently, this forces us to think about them and leaves us wondering how different these people really are from us, from the people around us.
There were always men looking for jobs in America. There were always all these usable bodies. And I wanted to be a writer. Almost everybody was a writer. Not everybody thought they could be a dentist or an automobile mechanic but everybody knew they could be a writer. Of those fifty guys in the room, probably fifteen of them thought they were writers. Almost everybody used words and could write them down, i.e., almost everybody could be a writer. But most men, fortunately, aren’t writers, or even cab drivers, and some men – many men – unfortunately aren’t anything (166-7).
this poem was one of the first i ever read of bukowski’s and very different from what i had already come across. i find it gut wrenching because of how vivid, devastating and beautifully emotive it is. his words are simple yet his arrangement of them results in something powerful.
For Jane
225 days under grass
and you know more than I.
they have long taken your blood,
you are a dry stick in a basket.
is this how it works?
in this room
the hours of love
still make shadows.
when you left
you took almost
everything.
I kneel in the nights
before tigers
that will not let me be.
what you were
will not happen again.
the tigers have found me
and I do not care.
i am irritated by my own writing. i am like a violinist whose ear is true, but whose fingers refuse to reproduce precisely the sound he hears within. — gustave flaubert
