And all along he had a bluebird in his heart.

I’ve always liked poetry, on the sly. I didn’t keep it on the down-low for any good reason, I guess I just never considered myself particularly qualified or expert on the subject. I always thought you needed a bow-tie for that, to write with a feather, own a jazzy waistcoat, or something of that ilk. I also had a beach-based self-defense system to build, pigeons to bait and other such nonsense to spout. But the poems were always there – a quiet afterthought, a background hum, an end of the day while the world is sleeping thing.

In all the background noodling around the verses, I always came back to one poet in particular, Charles Bukowski. Mostly for the reasons that everyone else liked him – he gave you the truth, with both barrels, right into your face at point-blank range. A truth that is hard to put into words. A truth that is hard to put into anything. And his truth about the bars, the whores, the drink, the gambling, the poverty, the hunger and the suicidal depression, connected with me more than most for its fearlessness, its raw simplicity and its humour (he is a properly funny poet).

But while he was always there, keeping it, and keeping me, real, I was always careful about one thing - not to spend too much time with him. Seeing the world from his perspective gives a man something, sure, but you got be careful you don't get too much of it. If you’re not careful you end up celebrating the wrong stuff – you end up celebrating the underbelly, the darkness and the struggle. So I always kept Bukowski in his place and called on him in small, if essential, doses. 

That was until I came across one of the final poems he wrote towards the end of his life, when cancer was tearing through his need to keep up the ‘image’. When he no longer felt the need to hold anything back. He wrote a poem called Bluebird. It's enough to make a grown man weep. 

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?

Ain’t that great. All those years. All that drinking. All those drugs. All those whores. All those fist fights in back alleys. All that gambling. All that all. And all along he had a bluebird in his heart…

Comments

[jb]

http://www.ubu.com/sound/bukowski.html
You might like this!

[HarryC]

Love this post Paul. I'll have a look at some Bukowski.

[Colman]

Thanks, JB.

Thanks, Dad, just be careful - I don't want to hear of you developing a gambling habit.

[neil c]

Great stuff.
It could be that, in a way, you're suggesting to us that beneath the gruff and melee-embracing exterior, you too have a bluebird in your heart.

[Colman]

Could be, Neil, could be...

[Tom]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsc3ItAKSLc

[Tanya Richards]

I think slowly coming into contact with death scared him a little, allowing him to share, slightly, the existence of his bluebird. Hell, every man has a bluebird inside of them, you are not robots.

[Colman]

Tanya, I suspect you're right.