Bukowski and the Rose

[Dora]

Yea, its one of my favorite Buk lines, and thats an interesting idea i never thought of that. However, In researching its meaning i found a very well thought out interpretation that i can't take credit for. A bukowski fan on the yahoo forum said:

"Picture for a moment a man trying to sell roses to dead people.
The man knows that a rose equivocates love and he knows that the dead aren't buying it.
To be alive and in love with the peaceful oblivion of death is the quandary Bukowski finds himself in.
He is comfortable knowing he has afforded himself the luxury of embracing death almost from his birth and he realizes that grief is not an emotion, it is the fiber that weaves itself through everything in his life up to this epiphany: He has a purpose that only he can see and appreciate."

Thanks for sharing this, but honestly, I just came back from teaching 14 loud 6-year old kids, and this stuff only worsened my headache.
Of course the rainbow video was the nail in the coffin.

Another quote to finish: "I was born for dying!". Who wrote that? METALLICA!!:die:

 

[bospress.net]

someone needs to scale back the peyote..

 

[Black Swan]

from the poem the old girl

as the horses broke from the
gate
hustled by the crouching jocks
in their silks
orange, blue, yellow, shocking pink,
green, chartreuse, a
stampeding rainbow of controlled
fury,
the sun shot through the
screaming
and I suddenly knew that
we are all caught forever in the
self-same trap
and I instantly forgave that old
girl
for belonging.

 

[mjp]

"I was born for dying!"

Is there an analysis of that line anywhere? I'm trying to figure out what it means.

 

[Erik]

"Destroying Beauty" from The Roominghouse Madrigals has Buk/Chinaski pulling apart a rose in his garage.
Not exactly a good reason for getting a rose-tattoo though...

 

[the only good poet]

Not to be a prick but...ah forget it.

 

[Bukfan]

That's some orgasm!

 

[aquarius]

My interpretation of ... I was born to hustle roses down the avenues of the dead... Means he has accepted his lot in life. It is the boring same old existence without much love. He can keep trying to sell roses to the dead but they will not buy because they are dead. He has tried many times to find happiness and love but it never works. He settles with a little bit of love and the few moments of joy that he gets here and there remembering those times fondly.