The gods wait to delight in you

I love Bukowski. I love him so much. I'm reading his poetry to make myself feel better (since I own everything that's been published by him, anthology wise. I don't care much for his novels). I have no real reason to feel down, but I suppose that's just the nature of the beast sometimes. 

Anyway, I found a couple that I'm reading over and over and over, and I'm going to share them.

you can die now.

you can die as

people were meant to

die;

great,

victorious,

being the music,

hearing the music, 

roaring,

roaring,

roaring.

Just wonderful. And then there's this one, which has long been a personal favorite of mine:

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.

Those last three lines are solid gold. They make the entire piece shine.

Here's another, which is another poem that I've read so many times that I know it by heart:

I want to

let her know

though

that all the nights 

sleeping

beside her

even the useless 

arguments

were things

ever splendid

and the hard 

words

I ever feared to

say

can now be

said:

I love

you.

And then we come to the last of his that I'll be posting, and it isn't really so much a poem as it is an open letter (an open letter NOW. It once had a recipient, but it's no longer solely theirs). There's some debate about whether or not the very first line of this is actually Bukowski's, but for me, that's not even the sum total of what this piece is worth. He wrote the other things, to the absolute best of my digging, and that's what I care about. 

My dear, 

Find what you love and let it kill you. Let it drain you of your all. Let it cling onto your back and weigh you down into eventual nothingness. Let it kill you and let it devour your remains. 

For all things will kill you, both slowly and fastly, but it's much better to be killed by a lover.

Falsely yours, 

Charles Bukowski