Sunday, August 14, 2011

The caged bird sings



I've long had a bit of a weakness for the works of Charles Bukowski, and have quoted him before a few times, both here and on The Barstool (which I suppose might seem to be the more natural home for them). But I can't now recall how I happened to stumble upon this nice little animation a few weeks back, for his poem Bluebird. [Oh, no, I can - but that perhaps is a post for another time. I was looking for something by Tom Waits, and discovered a YouTube video of Waits reading another Bukowski poem. That woke me up to the possibility of there being some Bukowski-related stuff on YouTube and I did a bit more searching...]



Bluebird

there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say, stay in there, I'm not going
to let anybody see
you.

there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I pour whiskey on him and inhale
cigarette smoke
and the whores and the bartenders
and the grocery clerks
never know that
he's
in there.


there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say,
stay down, do you want to mess
me up?
you want to screw up the
works?
you want to blow my book sales in
Europe?

there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too clever, I only let him out
at night sometimes
when everybody's asleep.
I say, I know that you're there,
so don't be
sad.
then I put him back,
but he's singing a little
in there, I haven't quite let him
die
and we sleep together like
that
with our
secret pact
and it's nice enough to
make a man
weep, but I don't
weep, do
you?

Charles Bukowski  (1920-1994)

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Another odd happy coincidence. I was looking at, I believe, one of your sidebars a few weeks back and saw a list with Bukowski on it. I immediately wanted to try and force him into a conversation and into one of your posts, but thought I'd wait until it occurred naturally. Ding!

Great poem, well done video. Really like this piece a lot. I can see where it would really speak to you Froog. Weird to say that about someone I have never met, but just from your writing, I think this poem kinda fits.

What I wanted to previously force into conversation was my favorite Bukowski piece and excellent accompanying video of what appears to be Bukowski walking in his crappy L.A. neighborhood.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRc6mHS9PjE

Anonymous said...

Gotta leave one more. I, uh, kinda agree with him:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAhrr7JNlhk&feature=related

I believe he was a drunk 'til the end. 73 years.

Anonymous said...

I lied... one more... for the misanthropes

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHRcKjvX1xE&feature=related

Bukowski, gotta love him.

Anonymous said...

Oh snap.... had the urge to track down a few more Bukowskiisms and stumbled upon this gem... one I think you will particulary like Froog.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=va1t6a0zCkQ&feature=fvwrel

Froog said...

A quick search will turn up quite a few Bukowski references on both blogs, HF.

This is cruel taunting that I return to after my holiday - all these intriguing links to investigate, but an unworkably slow Internet connection! I can't even check e-mail at the moment. Very frustrating.

I hope things will get better again in a day or two.