We’re all going to die, all of us, what a circus!
That alone should make us love each other but it doesn’t. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities, we are eaten up by nothing.
CHARLES BUKOWSKI
6
LAST NIGHT OF THE EARTH
A friend recently asked me, “If you had to recommend the most spiritually inspiring and fulfilling book you’ve ever read, what would it be?”
“Christ,” I replied, “how does one even begin to answer that?” I figured I’d give it a shot, though, so I started milling over some of my favorites like Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism by Chögyam Trungpa, Talks with Ramana Maharshi by Ramana Maharshi, Be Here Now by Ram Dass, A Brief History of Everything by Ken Wilber, and The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying by Sogyal Rinpoche. I realized pretty quickly that there was no end to this list, so I opted for the easy way out and conceded that I couldn’t possibly name just one.
Later that evening, while lying in bed reading the final book Charles Bukowski wrote before he died, The Last Night of the Earth Poems, I thought about my friend’s question again and was surprised that none of Bukowski’s works had come to mind while I was mulling over my possible answers. Bukowski is my favorite writer and has been for many years, and while some would probably disagree with me, I find much of his work to be extremely spiritual.
I’ll never forget the first Bukowski book I read: Post Office. It was a funny, sad, and relentless story about a hard-drinking, racetrack-betting man who was stuck at a shitty job with the US Postal Service. I laughed, I cringed, I felt disgusted, I was inspired (not so much by the bleak story, but by the honesty with which it was written), and at the end of the roughly three hours it took me to devour it, what I remember feeling the most was alive. That’s pretty much how my relationship with Bukowski’s works has been ever since—one of being shaken alive by his raw, ragged, and darkly humorous writing.
As I lay in bed reading The Last Night of the Earth Poems—a book in which Bukowski is preoccupied with death because he knows it’s close—I really took to heart the depth of what he’d made me feel throughout the years. I thought about all the mornings when, hungover, I’d thumb through the pages of his books and find some semblance of peace in the miserable experiences he wrote about, helping me feel a little bit less alone. I also thought about the sober times I’d read his work, feeling gratitude for no longer losing my life to hangovers or to dragging my ass to work or the liquor store or the bar—situations Bukowski so vividly writes about. I also thought about his pain, his struggles, his small victories, his self-loathing, and finally, his Zen—because yes, even Bukowski had a bit of Zen about him, which he displayed most prominently in poems like “Warm Light.” (I’d planned on sharing excerpts from this and a few of his other poems in this chapter, but getting permission to do so from another publisher can be a very pricey thing, and my pockets just aren’t that deep. So my suggestion is to buy yourself a copy of any and all of Bukowski’s books, but particularly The Last Night of the Earth Poems.) However, Bukowski never claimed to be spiritual or religious. In fact, in his writing and interviews, he made it quite clear that he didn’t buy into the traditional God concept. Take, for example, the following quote from an interview he did with LIFE magazine in 1988:
For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who can’t readily accept the God formula, the big answers don’t remain stone-written. We adjust to new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not be a command nor faith a dictum. I am my own god. We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our educational system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.1
This quote embodies spirituality because it’s Bukowski expressing his truth as he experienced it in the moment. Sure, it may not sound traditionally spiritual in nature, but he made it very clear that he was in touch with his insides—his Everything Mind—in a real and raw way. And that is a huge part of what spirituality is all about. Bukowski even managed to evoke another spiritual master, His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, when he said, “Love need not be a command nor faith a dictum,” which is reminiscent of His Holiness’s statement, “Love and Compassion are the true religions to me. But to develop this, we do not need to believe in any religion.”
And I can’t forget to mention the punk-rock ethics (things like “Question everything” and “Do it yourself”—which are deeply spiritual to me) that Bukowski covered in that quote, when he said, “We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our educational system,” which I couldn’t agree with more. For the most part, unlearning the majority of bullshit we’ve been fed by many churches and much of organized religion as a whole (not to say it’s all bad, because it’s certainly not), state, and the educational system is one of the greatest gifts we can give ourselves, as it affords us the opportunity to live unbiased by mainstream propaganda and control. We do not need to be a robotic part of their agenda, pledging allegiance to capitalism, consumerism, and greed, greed, greed . . . but I’m getting a bit off topic.
Bukowski gives of himself completely, with unfiltered vulnerability. How many of us can honestly say we’re able to do that, to become completely honest with ourselves, even if only while writing in a journal, let alone while being interviewed by a national magazine? Sure, Bukowski had scumbag tendencies—he was a hard-drinking womanizer among other things. I’m not advocating that he’s the poster boy for positive inspiration, but he was willing to acknowledge the shitty things he did. He owned that. For example, in his poem “oh, I was a ladies’ man!” Bukowski blatantly calls out his earlier womanizing ways. (Another poem I’d planned to excerpt for you here, until I saw the cost. Did I mention you should buy The Last Night of the Earth Poems yet?)
Bukowski’s unflinching honesty with himself has certainly inspired me to get honest in my own life and spiritual practice. I understand that taking a look at the unsavory parts of ourselves is never fun (and also doesn’t need to be done in the self-loathing way Bukowski often chose), but I believe we could all take a page from Bukowski’s books in becoming more honest and raw with ourselves, our motives, our intentions, and where we’re really at in life.
Most of us are afraid to let some things inside of us out. Maybe we’re afraid of what others will think, maybe we’re afraid of failure, or hell, maybe we’re even afraid of success. Whatever the case may be, Bukowski candidly shares with us his experience of keeping things locked inside. In this excerpt from his poem “the bluebird,” (okay, I splurged a bit for you, dear reader) he writes:
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.2
Well, there’s a bluebird in my heart, too. One that I’ve kept hidden for much of my life. But thanks to the inspiration of Bukowski, complemented by other spiritual teachers and practices, today my bluebird is a little freer than it was yesterday. And that freedom continues to grow a bit with each passing day.
So, what is the most spiritually inspiring and fulfilling book I’ve ever read? Well, I still don’t have an answer, but what I can say is that The Last Night of the Earth Poems, as well as much of Bukowski’s other writing, is definitely up there. The fucking Zen of Bukowski . . . who’d have thought?