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The Roominghouse Madrigals: Early Selected Poems, 1946-1966 QUOTES

The Roominghouse Madrigals: Early Selected Poems, 1946-1966 QUOTES

1 " The dead do not need
aspirin or
sorrow,
I suppose.
but they might need
rain.
not shoes
but a place to
walk.
not cigarettes,
they tell us,
but a place to
burn.
or we're told:
space and a place to
fly
might be the
same.
the dead don't need
me.
nor do the
living.
but the dead might need
each
other.
in fact, the dead might need
everything we
need
and
we need so much
if we only knew
what it
was.
it is
probably
everything
and we will all
probably die
trying to get
it
or die
because we
don't get
it.
I hope
you will understand
when I am dead
I got
as much
as
possible. "

― Charles Bukowski , The Roominghouse Madrigals: Early Selected Poems, 1946-1966

2 " you've got to know when to let a woman go if you want to keep her,and if you don't want to keep her you let her go anyhow so it's always a process of letting go, one way or the other. "

― Charles Bukowski , The Roominghouse Madrigals: Early Selected Poems, 1946-1966

3 " the rent is a little higher here
but so far I've been able to
pay it
and that's a miracle too
like still maybe being sane
while thinking of guns and sidewalks
and old ladies in libraries. "

― Charles Bukowski , The Roominghouse Madrigals: Early Selected Poems, 1946-1966

4 " so it's always a process of letting go, one way or another "

― Charles Bukowski , The Roominghouse Madrigals: Early Selected Poems, 1946-1966

5 " Our disappointment sits between us. "

― Charles Bukowski , The Roominghouse Madrigals: Early Selected Poems, 1946-1966

6 " and love was lightning and remembrance "

― Charles Bukowski , The Roominghouse Madrigals: Early Selected Poems, 1946-1966

7 " Tell him to seek the stars and he will kill himself with climbing. "

― Charles Bukowski , The Roominghouse Madrigals: Early Selected Poems, 1946-1966

8 " ¿Qué es un cuerpo sino un hombre
atrapado interiormente
durante un breve espacio de tiempo? "

― Charles Bukowski , The Roominghouse Madrigals: Early Selected Poems, 1946-1966

9 " I want so much that is not here and do not know
where to go. "

― Charles Bukowski , The Roominghouse Madrigals: Early Selected Poems, 1946-1966

10 " people run from rain but
sit
in bathtubs full of
water. "

― Charles Bukowski , The Roominghouse Madrigals: Early Selected Poems, 1946-1966

11 " Beware
Those Who
Are ALWAYS
READING
BOOKS "

― Charles Bukowski , The Roominghouse Madrigals: Early Selected Poems, 1946-1966

12 " and I laugh, I can still laugh, who can't laugh when the whole thing
is so ridiculous
that only the insane, the clowns, the half-wits, the cheaters, the whores, the horseplayers, the bankrobbers, the poets ... are interesting? "

― Charles Bukowski , The Roominghouse Madrigals: Early Selected Poems, 1946-1966

13 " i am with the roots
of flowers
entwined, entombed
sending up my passionate blossoms
as a flight of rockets
and argument;
wine churls my throat,
above me
feet walk upon my brain, monkies fall from the sky
clutching photographs
of the planets,
but i seek only music
and the leisure
of my pain "

― Charles Bukowski , The Roominghouse Madrigals: Early Selected Poems, 1946-1966

14 " There is no hurry. Time means nothing
to you. "

― Charles Bukowski , The Roominghouse Madrigals: Early Selected Poems, 1946-1966

15 " That moment - to this ...
may be years in the way they measure,
but it's only one sentence back in my mind -
there are so many days
when living stops and pulls up and sits
and waits like a train on the rails.
I pass the hotel at 8
and at 5; there are cats in the alleys
and bottles and bums,
and I look up at the window and think,
I no longer know where you are,
and I walk on and wonder where
the living goes
when it stops. "

― Charles Bukowski , The Roominghouse Madrigals: Early Selected Poems, 1946-1966

16 " in the cupboard sits my bottle
like a dwarf waiting to scratch out my prayers.
I drink and cough like some idiot at a symphony,
sunlight and maddened birds are everywhere,
the phone rings gamboling its sound
against the odds of the crooked sea;
I drink deeply and evenly now,
I drink to paradise
and death
and the lie of love. "

― Charles Bukowski , The Roominghouse Madrigals: Early Selected Poems, 1946-1966

17 " Angels,
we have grown apart. "

― Charles Bukowski , The Roominghouse Madrigals: Early Selected Poems, 1946-1966

18 " you are
yesterday's
bouquet so sadly
raided "

― Charles Bukowski , The Roominghouse Madrigals: Early Selected Poems, 1946-1966

19 " Love is not a candle burning down. Life is. And love and life are not the same or else Love, having choice, nobody would ever die. "

― Charles Bukowski , The Roominghouse Madrigals: Early Selected Poems, 1946-1966

20 " I will put on my shoes and shirt
and get out of here - it'll
be better for
all of us. "

― Charles Bukowski , The Roominghouse Madrigals: Early Selected Poems, 1946-1966