crime does pay (The Flash of Lightning Behind the Mountain)
crucifix in a deathhand (Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame)
crunch, the (Love Is a Dog from Hell)
dark night poem (uncollected)
day the epileptic spoke, the (War All the Time)
Death Wants More Death (The Rooming house Madrigals)
Democracy (The Flash of Lightning Behind the Mountain)
Destroying Beauty (The Rooming house Madrigals)
Dinosauria, we (The Last Night of the Earth Poems)
downtown (What Matters Most Is How Well You Walk Through the Fire)
dreaming (uncollected)
drowning, the (uncollected)
drying out (Dangling in the Tournefortia)
eating my senior citizen’s dinner at the Sizzler (War All the Time)
eat your heart out (Love Is a Dog from Hell)
egg, the (play the piano drunk…)
–1883 (You Get So Alone at Times That It Just Makes Sense)131 elephants in the zoo (uncollected)
elephants of Vietnam, the (The People Look Like Flowers at Last)
eulogy (The Night Torn Mad with Footsteps)
eulogy to a hell of a dame (War All the Time)
face of a political candidate on a street billboard (play the piano drunk…)
finish (The Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over the Hills)
first poem back (The Flash of Lightning Behind the Mountain)
fisherman, the (Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame)
fooling Marie (the poem) (Come On In!)
for Jane (The Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over the Hills)
for Jane: with all the love I had, which was not enough: (The Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over the Hills)
for they had things to say (The People Look Like Flowers at Last)
free 25-page booklet, a (Mockingbird Wish Me Luck)
fun house (Mockingbird Wish Me Luck)
future congressman, a (The People Look Like Flowers at Last)
Genius of the Crowd, The (The Rooming house Madrigals)
genius, the (The Last Night of the Earth Poems)
German bar (What Matters Most Is How Well You Walk Through the Fire)
girl in a mini skirt reading the Bible outside my window (Mockingbird Wish Me Luck)
girl on the escalator (The Night Torn Mad with Footsteps)
girl outside the supermarket, the (uncollected)
girls and the birds, the (Septuagenarian Stew)
girls at the green hotel, the (Love Is a Dog from Hell)
girls, the (Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame)
gold in your eye (Septuagenarian Stew)
gold pocket watch, a (Love Is a Dog from Hell)
Goldfish (The Rooming house Madrigals)
grass (Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame)
great escape, the (sifting through the madness…)
great writer, a (The People Look Like Flowers at Last)
ha ha ha ha ha, ha ha (Mockingbird Wish Me Luck)
harbor freeway south (The Night Torn Mad with Footsteps)
harder you try, the (The People Look Like Flowers at Last)
hell is a lonely place (Septuagenarian Stew)
hello, how are you? (The Night Torn Mad with Footsteps)
High-Rise of the New World, The (The Rooming house Madrigals)
history of a tough motherfucker, the (War All the Time)
his wife, the painter (The Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over the Hills)
hot (Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame)
how is your heart? (You Get So Alone at Times That It Just Makes Sense)
hug the dark (play the plano drunk…)
human nature (The Flash of Lightning Behind the Mountain)
I am eaten by butterflies (The Rooming house Madrigals)
ice for the eagles (The Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over the Hills)
I know you (Bone Palace Ballet)
I liked him (play the piano drunk…)
I made a mistake (Love Is a Dog from Hell)
I’m in love (play the piano drunk…)
if we take—(Mockingbird Wish Me Luck)
in a neighborhood of murder (Love Is a Dog from Hell)
in other words (Bone Palace Ballet)
in the center of the action (Bone Palace Ballet)
in the lobby (What Matters Most Is How Well You Walk Through the Fire)
it is not much (The People Look Like Flowers at Last)
it’s strange (Dangling in the Tournefortia)
I was glad (Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame)
Japanese Wife, The (The Rooming house Madrigals)
junk (play the piano drunk…)
killer, a (Love Is a Dog from Hell)
killer gets ready, a (play the piano drunk…)
ladies of summer, the (play the piano drunk…)
lady in red, the (Dangling in the Tournefortia)
last days of the suicide kid, the (Mockingbird Wish Me Luck)
last generation, the (War All the Time)
liberated woman and liberated man (Open All Night)
life of the king (What Matters Most Is How Well You Walk Through the Fire)
like a cherry seed in the throat (What Matters Most Is How Well You Walk Through the Fire)
like a dolphin (sifting through the madness…)
like a flower in the rain (Love Is a Dog from Hell)
lisp, the (Dangling in the Tournefortia)
literary discussion, a (The Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over the Hills)
little girls hissed, the (Come On In!)
loner, the (play the piano drunk…)
Look:, The (The Rooming house Madrigals)
lost in San Pedro (The Night Torn Mad with Footsteps)
Love Poem, A (War All the Time)
Mademoi selle from Armentières (What Matters Most Is How Well You Walk Through the Fire)
magical mystery tour (uncollected)
man mowing the lawn across the way from me (The People Look Like Flowers at Last)
Manx (Open All Night)
marina: (Mockingbird Wish Me Luck)
meanwhile (The Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over the Hills)
melancholia (Love Is a Dog from Hell)
metamorphosis (play the piano drunk…)
millionaires (Mockingbird Wish Me Luck)
mind and heart (Come On In!)
mockingbird, the (Mockingbird Wish Me Luck)
Mongolian coasts shining in light (The Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over the Hills)
my atomic stockpile (uncollected)
my big night on the town (sifting through the madness…)
my cats (Come On In!)
my failure (The Night Torn Mad with Footsteps)
my fate (uncollected)
my friend William (Mockingbird Wish Me Luck)
my last winter (The Flash of Lightning Behind the Mountain)
my life as a sitcom (sifting through the madness…)
my special craving (uncollected)
mystery leg (The Flash of Lightning Behind the Mountain)
my telephone (The Night Torn Mad with Footsteps)
night I saw George Raft in Vegas, the (What Matters Most Is How Well You Walk Through the Fire)
1930s, the (The People Look Like Flowers at Last)
no leaders, please (Come On In!)
no wonder (The Night Torn Mad with Footsteps)
notes upon the flaxen aspect: (Mockingbird Wish Me Luck)
notice (The Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over the Hills)
now (Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame)
now she’s free (Open All Night)
nurses, the (Septuagenarian Stew)
oh, yes (War All the Time)
on being 20 (War All the Time)
one for Sherwood Anderson (Dangling in the Tournefortia)
one for the old boy (War All the Time)
one for the shoeshine man (Love Is a Dog fro
m Hell)
one more good one (What Matters Most Is How Well You Walk Through the Fire)
one writer’s funeral (The Night Torn Mad with Footsteps)
on going out to get the mail (Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame)
on the sidewalk and in the sun (What Matters Most Is How Well You Walk Through the Fire)
orderly, the (Septuagearian Stew)
peace (The Last Night of the Earth Poems)
Phillipe’s 1950 (What Matters Most Is How Well You Walk Through the Fire)
pile-up, the (Betting on the Muse)
pleasures of the damned, the (Betting on the Muse)
poem for personnel managers: (The Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over the Hills)
poem is a city, a (The Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over the Hills)
poetry reading, the (Mockingbird Wish Me Luck)
poetry (The Last Night of the Earth Poems)
poop (The Flash of Lightning Behind the Mountain)
prayer in bad weather (Love Is a Dog from Hell)
price, the (Love Is a Dog from Hell)
proud thin dying, the (play the piano drunk…)
putrefaction (You Get So Alone at Times That It Just Makes Sense)
racetrack parking lot at the end of the day (The Night Torn Mad with Footsteps)
radio with guts, a (play the piano drunk…)
railroad yard, the (What Matters Most Is How Well You Walk Through the Fire)
relentless as the tarantula (You Get So Alone at Times That It Just Makes Sense)
replacements, the (The Last Night of the Earth Poems)
riots (sifting through the madness…)
safe (Bone Palace Ballet)
Scarlet (Love Is a Dog from Hell)
scene from 1940: (What Matters Most Is How Well You Walk Through the Fire)
scene in a tent outside the cotton fields of Bakersfield: (The Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over the Hills)
school days (What Matters Most Is How Well You Walk Through the Fire)
schoolyards of forever (The Night Torn Mad with Footsteps)
screw-game, the (The Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over the Hills)
2nd novel, the (Love Is a Dog from Hell)
secret laughter (Open All Night)
self-inflicted wounds (The Night Torn Mad with Footsteps)
sex (Love Is a Dog from Hell)
she comes from somewhere (What Matters Most Is How Well You Walk Through the Fire)
shit shits, the (uncollected)
shoelace, the (Mockingbird Wish Me Luck)
shoes (You Get So Alone at Times That It Just Makes Sense)
shot of red-eye (Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame)
shower, the (Mockingbird Wish Me Luck)
silly damned thing anyhow (The Flash of Lightning Behind the Mountain)
simple truth, the (sifting through the madness…)
sit and endure (The Night Torn Mad with Footsteps)
small talk (Slouching Toward Nirvana)
smile to remember, a (The Night Torn Mad with Footsteps)
smoking car, the (Mockingbird Wish Me Luck)
snow of Italy, the (The People Look Like Flowers at Last)
society should realize…(Bone Palace Ballet)
somebody (Mockingbird Wish Me Luck)
something about a woman (uncollected)
something for the touts, the nuns, the grocery clerks and you…(Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame)
something’s knocking at the door (Slouching Toward Nirvana)
song (You Get So Alone at Times That It Just Makes Sense)
so now? (Betting on the Muse)
souls of dead animals, the (play the piano drunk…)
spring swan (The Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over the Hills)
starve, go mad, or kill yourself (uncollected)
strangest sight you ever did see—, the (Love Is a Dog from Hell)
summation, a (The Flash of Lightning Behind the Mountain)
sun coming down (The People Look Like Flowers at Last)
Sunday lunch at the Holy Mission (What Matters Most Is How Well You Walk Through the Fire)
tabby cat (What Matters Most Is How Well You Walk Through the Fire)
talkers, the (Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame)
talking to my mailbox (War All the Time)
TB (The Night Torn Mad with Footsteps)
there (Bone Palace Ballet)
they, all of them, know (Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame)
those marvelous lunches (Betting on the Muse)
thoughts from a stone bench in Venice (uncollected)
threat to my immortality, a (Mockingbird Wish Me Luck)
3:16 and one half…(Mockingbird Wish Me Luck)
time to remember, a (The Night Torn Mad with Footsteps)
tired in the afterdusk (Septuagenarian Stew)
to lean back into it (What Matters Most Is How Well You Walk Through the Fire)
to night (Love Is a Dog from Hell)
tragedy of the leaves, the (Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame)
trash men, the (Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame)
trashcan lives (You Get So Alone at Times That It Just Makes Sense)
Trollius and trellises (The Last Night of the Earth Poems)
turnabout (Love Is a Dog from Hell)
twilight musings (Come On In!)
2 Outside, As Bones Break in My Kitchen (The Rooming house Madrigals)
upon reading an interview with a best-selling novelist in our metropolitan daily newspaper (sifting through the madness…)
vacancy (Mockingbird Wish Me Luck)
Van Gogh (What Matters Most Is How Well You Walk Through the Fire)
Verdi (uncollected)
veryest, the (uncollected)
was Li Po wrong? (Come On In!)
we ain’t got no money, honey, but we got rain (The Last Night of the Earth Poems)
what a man I was (The Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over the Hills)
what? (What Matters Most Is How Well You Walk Through the Fire)
when Hugo Wolf went mad—(The Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over the Hills)
when you wait for the dawn to crawl through the screen like a burglar to take your life away (The Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over the Hills)
where was Jane? (The Night Torn Mad with Footsteps)
white dog (What Matters Most Is How Well You Walk Through the Fire)
who in the hell is Tom Jones? (Love Is a Dog from Hell)
who needs it? (sifting through the madness…)
wine of forever, the (You Get So Alone at Times That It Just Makes Sense)
woman on the street (Betting on the Muse)
world’s greatest loser, the (Mockingbird Wish Me Luck)
wrong way, the (The Night Torn Mad with Footsteps)
young lady who lives in Canoga Park, the (uncollected)
young man on the bus stop bench, the (What Matters Most Is How Well You Walk Through the Fire)
About the Author
CHARLES BUKOWSKI is one of America’s best-known contemporary writers of poetry and prose, and, many would claim, its most influential and imitated poet. He was born in Andernach, Germany, to an American soldier father and a German mother in 1920, and brought to the United States at the age of three. He was raised in Los Angeles and lived there for fifty years. He published his first story in 1944, when he was twenty-four, and began writing poetry at the age of thirty-five. He died in San Pedro, California, on March 9, 1994, at the age of seventy-three, shortly after completing his last novel, Pulp (1994).
During his lifetime he published more than forty-five books of poetry and prose, including the novels Post Office (1971), Ham on Rye (1982), and Hollywood (1989). Among his most recent books are the posthumous editions of What Matters Most Is How Well You Walk Through the Fire: New Poems (1999), Open All Night: New Poems (2000), Beerspit Night and Cursing: The Correspondence of Charles Bukowski and Sheri Martinelli,
1960–1967 (2001), Night Torn Mad with Footsteps: New Poems (2001), sifting through the madness for the word, the line, the way: new poems (2003), The Flash of Lightning Behind the Mountain (2004), Slouching Toward Nirvana (2005), Come On In! (2006), and The People Look Like Flowers at Last (2007).
All of his books have now been published in translation in more than a dozen languages and his worldwide popularity remains undiminished. In the years to come Ecco will publish additional volumes of previously uncollected poetry and letters.
Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.
also by CHARLES BUKOWSKI
The Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over the Hills (1969)
Post Office (1971)
Mockingbird Wish Me Luck (1972)
South of No North (1973)
Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame:
Selected Poems 1955–1973 (1974)
Factotum (1975)
Love Is a Dog from Hell (1977)
Women (1978)
play the piano drunk like a percussion instrument until the fingers begin to bleed a bit (1979)
Shakespeare Never Did This (1979)
Dangling in the Tournefortia (1981)
Ham on Rye (1982)
Bring Me Your Love (1983)
Hot Water Music (1983)
There’s No Business (1984)
War All the Time: Poems 1981–1984 (1984)
You Get So Alone at Times That It Just Makes Sense (1986)
The Movie: “Barfly” (1987)
The Roominghouse Madrigals: Early Selected Poems 1946–1966 (1988)
Hollywood (1989)
Septuagenarian Stew: Stories & Poems (1990)
The Last Night of the Earth Poems (1992)
Screams from the Balcony: Selected Letters 1960–1970 (1993)
Pulp (1994)
Living on Luck: Selected Letters 1960s–1970s (Volume 2) (1995)
Betting on the Muse: Poems & Stories (1996)
Bone Palace Ballet: New Poems (1997)
The Captain Is Out to Lunch and the Sailors Have Taken Over the Ship (1998)
Reach for the Sun: Selected Letters 1978–1994 (Volume 3) (1999)
What Matters Most Is How Well You Walk Through the Fire: New Poems (1999)
Open All Night: New Poems (2000)
Night Torn Mad with Footsteps: New Poems (2001)
Beerspit Night and Cursing: The Correspondence of Charles Bukowski and Sheri Martinelli 1960–1967 (2001)
sifting through the madness for the Word, the line, the way: new poems (2003)
The Flash of Lightning Behind the Mountain: New Poems (2004)