Bukowski and Poetry.

I have been reading poetry again. Not for anything but for me. It is good for the soul. We trust our poets to make life more bearable by illuminating our secret thoughts, hopes and desires. Or at least giving them better language. I have been reading Bukowski's "The Flash of Lightning behind the mountain" Check it out. Also Ranier Maria Rilke's "letters to a young poet" and "Possibility of Being". Here is a Bukowski.


be cool, fool

You have to accept this
reality
wether you
sit at a punch press all day or
wether you
work in a coal mine or
wether you come home
exhausted from a cardboard box factory
to find
3 kids bouncing dirty tennis balls
against the walls of a
2 room flat as
your fat wife sleeps while
the dinner burns
away.

you have to accept this
reality
which includes enough nations with
enough nuclear stockpiles to
blow away the very center of the
earth
and to finally liberate
the Devil
Himself
with his
spewing red fire of liquid
doom

you have to accept this reality
as the madhouse walls
bulge
break
and the terrified insane
flood our
ugly streets

you have to accept terrible
reality.