Go to Tibet.Ride a camel.Read the bible.Dye your shoes blue.Grow your beard.Circle the world in a paper canoe.Subscribe to the Saturday Evening Post.Chew on the left side of you mouth only.Marry a woman with one leg and shave with a straight razor.And carve your name in her arm.Brush your teeth with gasoline.Sleep all day and climb trees at night.Be a monk and drink buckshot and beer.Hold you head under the water and play violin.Do a belly dance before pink candles.Kill you dog.Run for mayor.Live in a barrel.Break your head with a hatchet.Plant tulips in the rain.But don't write poetry.-Charles Bukowski.

if it doesn't come bursting out of youin spite of everything,don't do it.unless it comes unasked out of yourheart and your mind and your mouthand your gut,don't do it.if you have to sit for hoursstaring at your computer screenor hunched over yourtypewritersearching for words,don't do it.if you're doing it for money orfame,don't do it.if you're doing it because you wantwomen in your bed,don't do it.if you have to sit there andrewrite it again and again,don't do it.if it's hard work just thinking about doing it,don't do it.if you're trying to write like somebodyelse,forget about it.if you have to wait for it to roar out ofyou,then wait patiently.if it never does roar out of you,do something else.if you first have to read it to your wifeor your girlfriend or your boyfriendor your parents or to anybody at all,you're not ready.don't be like so many writers,don't be like so many thousands ofpeople who call themselves writers,don't be dull and boring andpretentious, don't be consumed with self-love.the libraries of the world haveyawned themselves tosleepover your kind.don't add to that.don't do it.unless it comes out ofyour soul like a rocket,unless being still woulddrive you to madness orsuicide or murder,don't do it.unless the sun inside you isburning your gut,don't do it.when it is truly time,and if you have been chosen,it will do it byitself and it will keep on doing ituntil you die or it dies in you.there is no other way.and there never was.-Charles Bukowski.

you've got to fuck a great many womenbeautiful womenand write a few decent love poems.and don't worry about ageand/or freshly-arrived talents.just drink more beermore and more beerand attend the racetrack at least once aweekand winif possiblelearning to win is hard -any slob can be a good loser.and don't forget your Brahmsand your Bach and yourbeer.don't overexercise.sleep until moon.avoid paying credit cardsor paying for anything ontime.remember that there isn't a piece of assin this world over $50(in 1977).and if you have the ability to lovelove yourself firstbut always be aware of the possibility oftotal defeatwhether the reason for that defeatseems right or wrong -an early taste of death is not necessarilya bad thing.stay out of churches and bars and museums, and like the spider bepatient -time is everybody's cross, plusexiledefeat treacheryall that dross.stay with the beer.beer is continuous blood.a continuous lover.get a large typewriterand as the footsteps go up and downoutside your windowhit that thinghit it hardmake it a heavyweight fightmake it the bull when he first charges inand remember the old dogswho fought so well: Hemingway, Celine, Dostoevsky, Hamsun.If you think they didn't go crazyin tiny roomsjust like you're doing nowwithout womenwithout foodwithout hopethen you're not ready.drink more beer. there's time. and if there's notthat's all righttoo.-Charles Bukowski.