Charles Bukowski — Ignis Fatuus

Ignis Fatuus The only solitude is sleep or death We were not clever enough Kind to others and cruel to self When self ask for mercy and was denied The holiest privacy remains waiting on us And all that was misunderstood or abandoned Will come together Let my failure be your fortune This that was broken in careless error Let it be known that to know your own death is to die twice Once really And then hardly at all Let it be known that there is nothing as ugly in all its tangents As the human beast A trick set against the blood of your soul Let it be known that solitude is the only mercy And the only lover Let it be known that a man need not be Christ to be crucified Let it be known that a man can be crucified each day Each moment Each breath To sleep and awake and be tormented again Let it be known that a man can die and die and die and die and still feel the pain And know he his dead and still feel the pain And know there is nothing he can do and still feel the pain Let it be known Let it be known that the temples are nothing And the bells are nothing And fame is nothing And victory is nothing And sex is nothing And that solitude brings madness And the crowd brings madness And drinks and eats the body like a tiger That there is no voice to speak with, no ear to hear Let it be known that there will be other men such as I Lifted from the lion's mouth Burned down by false loves Tricked by kindness Misled by intellect Dizzied by posey Sacrificed for profit Used as cheap labor And these will be the kindest of happenings compared to what will enter the eye and ear and the brain and seep to the innards to begin their death-work I pity all such brothers of mine who will follow me in the centuries Unable to love because there is nothing to love Unable to kill because there is nothing alive Forever hanging and bleeding and dizzied by the beast-human The walls, the gardens, the sun, the flowers, the kisses, the flags, the seas, the animals, the food, the liquors, the paintings, the symphonies All uselessness Let it be known that most men love when they can see And they see each other And they love this because they see very little Let it be known that I am bitter and damned and tired and useless Let it be known when the final hope goes, there remains but a staring at the dance and a watching of the feeble intercourse of the idiots with very little note-taking Let it be known that I am dead but there is no anger Let it be known that most men are dead many years before burial Let it be known that many men die in childhood, that many men are born dead Although their parts move and they make sound and grow and advance into adult behavior and do things in civilization Let it be known that these men never existed and that their funerals were extreme farce And also the dead tears for the already dead Let it be known that the worms themselves were nearer to truth in that they did not cry Let it be known that birth is not holy That death is not holy That life is not holy Let it be known that I have bled without crowns That I will bleed in a moment That I will bleed forever, red, red, red And the hawks will dance within my bones and rejoice Let it be known that I do not die for man's sins But that I die for what man is, and for what I almost was They, too little of anything And myself lifted enough too see the horror To sicken and go mad and wilt Do not take this personal what I say about life altogether Or man altogether Unless on another plane, you consider yourself a defender of life and man Which is only another natural weakness of the species Like a rat guarding its nest And for which I cannot hold you Totally to blame The only solitude is death But not this death Not this death Not this death