Bukowski and a Life of Art

It's never too late to start anything

“The Laughing Heart” by Charles Bukowski

your life is your life
don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.
be on the watch.
there are ways out.
there is 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.

This poem is an unexpected find from a person who is usually not spiritual or optimistic. Charles Bukowski (1920 – 1994) is the ultimate iconoclast poet, aiming to take down religion and affirm life. The reference to “the gods” is the closest that he dabbles with the divine, giving credence to not one deity, but perhaps whichever of a person’s choosing. However, Bukowski was a people’s poet, a bard for the everyperson, blue collared, beer drinking. He is perhaps a relic of his era, but one who also gives voice to it. He is like the painter, Edward Hopper (1882 – 1967) whose work peered into the lives of everyday people, but giving them Olympic proportions. Bukowski made his life as a writer later in his life, at the age of 49, after working life bleeding job at the post office. But this begun a life of successful writing and publishing. For him writing was an act of waiting to capture an idea, not trying to make the idea happen. I’m not too sure that I could adopt this practice since it is perhaps both too idle and too violent. Rather, I would want to tend to my work, as a gardener tends to their garden, as ceramicist touches on their work until it receives shape.