How Is Your Heart? by Charles Bukowski
Crying jag tonight. Had a fight with my parents again. Over poetry, of all things.
How Is Your Heart?
Charles Bukowskiduring my worst times
on the park benches
in the jails
or living with
whores
I always had this certain
contentment—
I wouldn’t call it
happiness—
it was more of an inner
balance
that settled for
whatever was occuring
and it helped in the
factories
and when relationships
went wrong
with the
girls.it helped
through the
wars and the
hangovers
the backalley fights
the
hospitals.to awaken in a cheap room
in a strange city and
pull up the shade—
this was the craziest kind of
contentmentand to walk across the floor
to an old dresser with a
cracked mirror—
see myself, ugly,
grinning at it all.what matters most is
how well you
walk through the
fire.
billy423uk
I resonate a lot with this (except for the “ugly” part ;-D ). I didn’t have an easy life, but I’ve always been a buoyant personality. I grew up and lived through things that would’ve broken other people. Bukowski might not call it happiness, but I think I would. I’m a happy man.