Poetry Thursday - Air and Light and Time and Space by Charles Bukowski

See the rest of the illustrated version (by Gavin Aung Thang of Zen Pencils) here

AIR AND LIGHT AND TIME AND SPACE

”– you know, I’ve either had a family, a job,
something has always been in the
way
but now
I’ve sold my house, I’ve found this
place, a large studio, you should see the space and
the light.
for the first time in my life I’m going to have
a place and the time to
create.”

no baby, if you’re going to create
you’re going to create whether you work
16 hours a day in a coal mine
or
you’re going to create in a small room with 3 children
while you’re on
welfare,
you’re going to create with part of your mind and your body blown
away,
you’re going to create blind
crippled
demented,
you’re going to create with a cat crawling up your
back while
the whole city trembles in earthquake, bombardment,
flood and fire.

baby, air and light and time and space
have nothing to do with it
and don’t create anything
except maybe a longer life to find
new excuses
for.

- Charles Bukowski (via)

Charles Bukowski (1920-1994) wrote quite a few poems about the artist's life, both visual artists and writers, and on the myths of creativity, as above. He himself was given a "salary" of $100 a month to enable him to quit the day job and focus on writing, aged 49; you can read what happened next here, but you've already guessed that the boy done good.

The admirable "Brain Pickings" blog has quite a few posts about Bukowski, and more of his poems - find them all here.