The Laughing Heart

Your life is your life,
don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.
Be on the watch.
There are ways out.
There is a light somewhere.
It may not be much light but
It beats the darkness.
Be on the watch.
The gods will offer you chances.
Know them.
Take them.
You can’t beat death but
You can beat death in life, sometimes.
And the more often you learn to do it,
The more light there will be.
Your life is your life.
Know it while you have it.
You are marvelous
The gods wait to delight in you.

First published in 1993 in Prairie Schooner, The Laughing Heart is probably one of Bukowsky final works. It is truly amazing how he changed from the disbeliever who questions everything, a man who once wrote "detestable spiritual qualities" had come to admit there's a bigger source of power larger than man.

Love that he uses "gods"... just another brilliant Bukowsky touch.

Found this clip on youtube with Tom Waits reciting "The Laughing Heart" and Bono reciting "Roll The Dice", which shd be clippings from Born Into This, the biographical documentary of Bukowsky that I have yet to watch!



Roll The Dice is another classic display of Mr B's balls. Reminds me of his famous quote - "I have one of two choices -- stay in the post office and go crazy ... or stay out here and play a writer and starve. I have decided to starve." He was 49 back then. Still can't quite figure out if his balls were really that big or it was simply becos he had nothing to lose, at all.

The Laughing Heart was included in Betting On The Muse.