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Bukowski’s Advice to Young Writers
Just be yourself
Go ahead, change your name to Hank.
Dunk your head in the toilet bowl,
you know, the one you just shit in,
see what nuggets of truth
really taste like.
How drunk are you? Not enough.
I’m not talking about beer here,
this type of drunk cannot be found in bottles.
It’s an almost unattainable madness.
When it comes, you drink to escape it,
such incessant music
becomes ugly noise,
a nagging, motherly voice,
saying this is beautiful,
and this is beautiful,
and this, and this, and this,
until beauty itself is a kind of tinnitus.
Sure, you think you can write it down,
until the very thought
of writing feels like arthritis,
a cramp of the soul,
your very bowels flooded with words.
Are you me? Yes. Same as I am you,
and every bedraggled pot pisser
stumbling off the sidewalk
kissing the windshields
of parked police cars,
somewhere, somewhere, somewhere.
No, you ain’t me, kid.
Fucking quit it.
Slap a woman around today,
see where it gets you.
