So you want to be a writer?

Charles Bukowski.  Image from Wikimedia.

When I was a teenager, Charles Bukowski was one of my favorite writers.  Except for my closeted boy-craziness, I was a straight-edged kid; the vulgarity, elegance, and worldliness of Bukowski's writing appealed to me because it expressed ideas that were so far out of my ken he might as well have been Tolkien.  Nonetheless, his world was one I wanted to know, and his loneliness felt like my own.

I stumbled across his poem "so you want to be a writer?" this weekend, and it reminded me of how much I love him.  Here are a few lines.

don't be like so many writers,

don't be like so many thousands of

people who call themselves writers,

don't be dull and boring and

pretentious, don't be consumed with self-

love.

the libraries of the world have

yawned themselves to

sleep

over your kind.

don't add to that.

don't do it.

unless it comes out of

your soul like a rocket,

unless being still would

drive you to madness or

suicide or murder,

don't do it.

unless the sun inside you is

burning your gut,

don't do it.

when it is truly time,

and if you have been chosen,

it will do it by

itself and it will keep on doing it

until you die or it dies in you.

Bukowski makes me feel like a hack.  But I'm going to keep writing.  Because one of my favorite things to do is to "celebrate the stupidity of [my] endurance," as expressed in another of his poems, "A Not So Good Night in the San Pedro of the World":

I have no idea of what would be of

interest to you

but I doubt that you would be of

interest to me, so don’t get

superior.

in fact, come to think of it, you can

kiss my ass.

I continue to listen to the piano.

this will not be a memorable night in my

life

or yours.

let us celebrate the stupidity of our

endurance.

Here's Tom Waits reading Bukowski's poem "The laughing heart."  It is one of my favorite things on the vast Internet.

Click here for the video.

Thank you, you dirty old man. 

Image from praguerevue.com.