A Damned Pleasure

I'm reading The Pleasures the Damned, which is a huge volume of Charles Bukowski's poems (from 1951 through 1993).

I admire Bukowski's sense of observation,
The way he speaks about the old hobo on that bench
And about love, whores, sexe and Jane,
About the lost youth that he doesn't seem to miss
And the ripe old age that doesn’t seem to scare him
I admire his freedom to act as he pleases
And to speak as he thinks
And to think like no man speaks.
I admire the way he writes about the tiny details of life,
The ones we tend to miss
To make invisible though they’re not.
He makes them exist.
He gives them a chance.

He makes pessimism and morbidity humane
For life has a way of making us morbid and pessimist.
So many speak about life as it were wonderful
And eternal.
But he seems to understand
That the rich are doomed just as much as the poor,
If not more,
That old men on benches eventually disappear
That lovers die on us
Although their spirits tend live on for decades if we really loved them.
That being crazy is sane
And that being sane is foolish,
And he is one insane man.

His poetry lacks structure
But lack here is genius,
And his rhymes are too postmodern to even rhyme.
His poetry inspires me.
Blunt truth is inspiring.