3 Poems.

(1.)may my heart always be open to little

birds who are the secrets of living

whatever they sing is better than to know

and if men should not hear them men are old

may my mind stroll about hungry

and fearless and thirsty and supple

and even if it’s sunday may i be wrong

for whenever men are right they are not young

and may myself do nothing usefully

and love yourself so more than truly

there’s never been quite such a fool who could fail

pulling all the sky over him with one smile

may my heart always be open to little by e.e. cummings.


(2.)I get many phonecalls now.
They are all alike.
"are you Charles Bukowski,
the writer?"
"yes," I tell them.
and they tell me
that they understand my
writing,
and some of them are writers
or want to be writers
and they have dull and
horrible jobs
and they can't face the room
the apartment
the walls
that night --
they want somebody to talk
to,
and they can't believe
that I can't help them
that I don't know the words.
they can't believe
that often now
I double up in my room
grab my gut
and say
"Jesus Jesus Jesus, not
again!"
they can't believe
that the loveless people
the streets
the loneliness
the walls
are mine too.
and when I hang up the phone
they think I have held back my
secret.

I don't write out of
knowledge.
when the phone rings
I too would like to hear words
that might ease
some of this.

that's why my number's
listed.

462-0614 by Charles Bukowski


(3.)Be ahead of all departure, as if it were already

behind you, like the winter which is almost over.

For among winters there is one so endlessly winter,

that, wintering through it, may your heart survive.

Be forever dead in Eurydice—, singing ascent,

praising ascent, returning to pure relation.

Here, among the disappearing, be, in the realm
of decline,

be the ringing glass that shatters even as it sounds.

Be—and yet know Not-being’s condition,

the infinite ground of your innermost movement,

that you may bring it to completion but this one time.

To that which is used-up, as to nature’s abundant

dumb and mute supply, the unsayable sums,

joyfully add yourself and the result destroy.

Excerpt from Sonnets to Orpheus XIII by Rainer Maria Rilke