burkowski on writers
https://write.as/hypocritepoet/burkowski-on-writers/edit/meta
and if you have the ability to love love yourself first
I love reading Burkowski after a couple of drinks. He's dirty and gross and bold in a way that few writers are without being unreadable. Even so, he is not for the faint of heart. Simple, but sometimes crude.
This poem certainly needed the first 3rd chopped, but I like the rest of it:
and if you have the ability to love love yourself first
but always be aware of the possibility of total defeat whether the reason for that defeat seems right or wrong -
an early taste of death is not necessarily a bad thing.
stay out of churches and bars and museums, and like the spider be patient - time is everybody's cross, plus exile defeat treachery
all that dross.
stay with the beer.
beer is continuous blood.
a continuous lover.
get a large typewriter and as the footsteps go up and down outside your window
hit that thing hit it hard
make it a heavyweight fight
make it the bull when he first charges in
and remember the old dogs who fought so well: Hemingway, Celine, Dostoevsky, Hamsun.
If you think they didn't go crazy in tiny rooms just like you're doing now
without women without food without hope
then you're not ready.
drink more beer. there's time. and if there's not that's all right too.