10:55 p.m. This is part of journal entry.
my damned life dangling on the hook.
I don't see anybody else out there
every day except the employees.
Saroyan lost this ass at the track,
And it's really not a matter of the
money unless you run out of it.
I had a gambler friend once who said,
I don't care if I win or lose,
I have more respect for the money.
I've had very little of it
I know what a park bench is, and
There are only two things wrong with
money: too much or too little.
I suppose there's always something out
there we want to torment ourselves with.
And at the track you get the feel of the other people,
Darkness, and how easy they toss
The racetrack crowd is the
world brought down to size,
Life grinding against death
we are just seeking a reprieve,
A moment out of the glare.
of my cigarette just hit one of
My fingers as I was musing
brought me out of this Sartre state!
Hell, we need humor, we need to laugh.
I used to do everything more, except write.
Now, I am writing and writing and writing,
The older I get the more I write,
"Bukowski is dead," and then I will be
Truly discovered and hung from
stinking bright lampposts.
Immortality is the stupid
You see what the race tracks
does? It makes the lines roll.
The last bluebird singing.
Anything Is ay sounds fine because
Too many are too careful.
Convention strips them of their fire.
I feel better now, up here on this second
floor with the Macintosh.
And Mahler is on the radio,
he glides with such ease,
one needs that sometimes.
Then he sends in the long power
Mahler, I borrow from you and
I drink too much but I can't write too much,
It just keeps coming and I call for more and it
arrives and mixes with Mahler.
Some times I deliberately
go to sleep or look at your 9 cats
Or sit with your wife on the
You're either at the track
And then I stop, put on the brakes,
Some people have written that my writing
There's a small balcony here,
I can see the lights of the cars on
They never stop, that roll of lights,
We're all going to die, all of us,
That alone should make us love each
We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities,
We are eaten up by nothing.
You've made this a wondrous night.
Don stop you son of a bitch! don't stop!