the elephant dreams
with you
now.
the curve of space
bends and
laughs.

Charles Bukowski
Splash

[ via partyhats / neverneverland / dirtyskydub ]

Born like this
Into this
As the chalk faces smile
As Mrs. Death laughs
As the elevators break
As political landscapes dissolve
As the supermarket bag boy holds a college degree
As the oily fish spit out their oily prey
As the sun is masked
We are
Born like this
Into this
Into these carefully mad wars
Into the sight of broken factory windows of emptiness
Into bars where people no longer speak to each other
Into fist fights that end as shootings and knifings
Born into this
Into hospitals which are so expensive that it’s cheaper to die
Into lawyers who charge so much it’s cheaper to plead guilty
Into a country where the jails are full and the madhouses closed
Into a place where the masses elevate fools into rich heroes
Born into this
Walking and living through this
Dying because of this
Muted because of this
Castrated
Debauched
Disinherited
Because of this
Fooled by this
Used by this
Pissed on by this
Made crazy and sick by this
Made violent
Made inhuman
By this
The heart is blackened
The fingers reach for the throat
The gun
The knife
The bomb
The fingers reach toward an unresponsive god
The fingers reach for the bottle
The pill
The powder
We are born into this sorrowful deadliness
We are born into a government 60 years in debt
That soon will be unable to even pay the interest on that debt
And the banks will burn
Money will be useless
There will be open and unpunished murder in the streets
It will be guns and roving mobs
Land will be useless
Food will become a diminishing return
Nuclear power will be taken over by the many
Explosions will continually shake the earth
Radiated robot men will stalk each other
The rich and the chosen will watch from space platforms
Dante’s Inferno will be made to look like a children’s playground
The sun will not be seen and it will always be night
Trees will die
All vegetation will die
Radiated men will eat the flesh of radiated men
The sea will be poisoned
The lakes and rivers will vanish
Rain will be the new gold
The rotting bodies of men and animals will stink in the dark wind
The last few survivors will be overtaken by new and hideous diseases
And the space platforms will be destroyed by attrition
The petering out of supplies
The natural effect of general decay
And there will be the most beautiful silence never heard
Born out of that.
The sun still hidden there
Awaiting the next chapter.

twentyfourbit:

MF Doom was so taken with the Charles Bukowski documentary Born Into This, he used it as a jumping off point for his new record and named the album Born Like This, the first line in Bukowski’s “Dinosauria, We.” In an interview with HipHopDX, Doom talks about how reading inspires his music and that he identifies with Bukowski as someone who is born to be a writer.

“I always read a book when I’m doing a record,” he said. “When I get stuck it gets my stuff going. Bukowski was for this record. I’m reading the Bukowski shit and getting into that dude and his plight and his whole mission as a writer… He really inspired me, just from how he just did his craft without worrying about [standards]. There’s no standards to what we do, we just do it.”

It’s a brilliant move for MF Doom to evoke Bukowski’s “Dinosauria, We” amid the current political and economic climate. I hadn’t read that poem in years, but looking at it now I realize how prescient it was:

We are born into a government 60 years in debt
That soon will be unable to even pay the interest on that debt
And the banks will burn

Bukowski’s foreboding talk about the doom (no pun intended) of human civilization isn’t really a harbinger of the actual events we’re faced with currently, but it eerily contains all the tone and substance we’ve come to expect from cable news. I can’t wait to hear MF Doom’s new record.

For his full interview with HipHopDX, click here.

hellovagina:

He tells us that his heart is drowning in vomit. Hell, all our hearts are drowning in vomit, in pork salt, in bad verse, in soggy love.

— Charles Bukowski, O, We Are The Outcasts

hellovagina:

babywolf:

digitalbath:

devface:

all theories
like clichés
shot to hell,
all these small faces
looking up
beautiful and believing;
I wish to weep
but sorrow is
stupid.
I wish to believe
but belief is a
graveyard.
we have narrowed it down to
the butcherknife and the
mockingbird.
wish us
luck.