From The Rooming House Madrigals: Early Selected Poems, 1946-1966 (1988), Black Sparrow

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Its Not Who Lived Here, by Charles Bukowski

but who died here;

and it's not when
but how;
it's not
the known great
but the great who died unknown;
it's not
the history
of countries
but the lives of men.
fables are dreams,
not lies,
and
truth changes
as
men change,
and when truth becomes stable
men
will
become dead
and
the insect
and the fire and
the flood
will become
truth
4:30 A.M, by Charles Bukowski

the fields rattle

with red birds;
it is 4:30 in
the morning,
it is always
4:30 in the morning,
and I listen for
my friends:
the garbagemen
and the thieves,
and cats dreaming
red birds
and red birds dreaming
worms,
and worms dreaming
along the bones of
my love,
and I cannot sleep,
and soon morning will come,
the workers will rise,
and they will look for me
at the docks,
and they will say,
"he is drunk again,"
but I will be asleep,
finally,
among the bottles and
sunlight,
all darkness gone,
my arms spread like
a cross,
the red birds
flying,
flying,
roses opening in the smoke,
and
like something stabbed and
healing,
like
40 pages through a bad novel,
a smile upon
my idiot's face.