Bluebird by Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski "Bluebird."

I don’t know how I stumbled on this poem but I loved it. Not necessarily because it relates to me, it doesn’t. Not at all. I think I can’t stop reading and listening to it because I love honesty. I love brutal, real, raw honesty. For that reason this poem is simply amazing to me.

“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

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