The type of memories that turns your bones to glass

* "I am not quite sure what the advantage is in having a few more dollars to spend if the air is too dirty to breathe, the water is too polluted to drink, the commuters are losing out in the struggle to get in and out of the city, the streets are filthy, the schools are so bad that the young perhaps wisely stay away, and the hoodlums roll citizens for some of the dollars they saved in the tax cut." ---John Kenneth Gailbraith

* These Things
-- by Charles Bukowski

these things that we support most well
have nothing to do with us,
and we do with them
out of boredom of fear or money
or cracked intelligence;
our circle and our candle of light
being small,
so small we cannont bear it,
we heave out with Idea
and lose the Center:
all wax without the wick,
and we see names that once meant
wisdom,
like signs in to ghost towns,
and only the graves are real.

* The Miracle
--- by Charles Bukowski

To work with an art form
does not mean to
screw off like a tape-worm
with his belly full,
nor does it justify grandeur
or greed, not at all times
seriousness, but I would guess
that it calls upon our best men
at their best times,
and when they die
and something else does not,
we have seen the miracle of immortality:
men arrived as men,
departed as gods--
gods we knew were here,
gods that now let us go on
when all else says stop.