Charles Bukowski, "In Defense Of A Certain Type Of Poetry", from Portions From A Wine-Stained Notebook

"The middle-heads and English teachers talk continually from a rather absent and disabled platform of life.  Yet, their drivel, like a continuing rain, drowns almost everybody.  I hope that these few words from the corner barstool have gotten through to some--that our seemingly unsuccessful lives and ways and poesy are chosen ways.  We are, most of us, neither killers or fakes.  But someday we will write down the word so beautifully, o, so perfect and real, that all you monkeys will come out of your gardens and begin to be enough for me to look

upon

that which makes the
face and body and love of you

and

I will not twitch in my damned
rented cot
for hours of
spasm and pain and horror


I die and pray for you and
myself


if I could wish all you
bent dead bastards
the tiny inch of my life left
I would plunge it into you
and
sleep forever."