Bukowski, Gazzara, Ferreri and co

Style is the answer to everything.
Fresh way to approach a dull or dangerous day.
To do a dull thing with style is preferable to doing a dangerous thing without style.
To do a dangerous thing with style, is what I call art.
Bullfighting can be an art.
Boxing can be an art.
Loving can be an art.
Opening a can of sardines can be an art.
Not many have style.
Not many can keep style.
I have seen dogs with more style than men.
Although not many dogs have style.
Cats have it with abundance.

When Hemingway put his brains to the wall with a shotgun, that was style.
For sometimes people give you style.
Joan of Arc had style.
John the Baptist.
Jesus.
Socrates.
Caesar.
García Lorca.
I have met men in jail with style.
I have met more men in jail with style than men out of jail.
Style is a difference, a way of doing, a way of being done.
Six herons standing quietly in a pool of water, or you, walking
naked out of the bathroom without seeing me.

***

Extrait du film de Marco Ferreri Tales of Ordinary Madness d'après le roman de Charles Bukowski (1920–1994).

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And the sun wields mercy but like a jet torch carried to high.

And the jets whip across its sight
and rockets leap like toads…

Peace is no longer, for some reason, precious.
Madness drifts like lily pads
on a pond circling senselessly…

The painters paint

Dipping their reds and greens and yellows
poets rhyme their loneliness
musicians starve as always

and novelists miss the mark…

But not the pelican , the gull
Pelicans dip and dive, rise,
shaking shocked half-dead
radioactive fish in their beaks…

The sky breaks red and orange

Flowers open as they always have opened

but covered with thin dust of rocket fuel

and mushrooms, poison mushrooms…

And in a million rooms, lovers lie entwined and lost and sick as peace…

Can’t we awaken?

Must we forever, dear friends, die in our sleep?

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Extrait du poème And the sun wields mercy de Charles Bukowski