DEFEND THE POET

I am so confused right now. What am I supposed to do? Defend Charles Bukowski’s gross decayed corpse from grave robbers and zombies or his point of view in Dinosauria, We and his life from critics? I’m going to go ahead and assume the latter. Although I’m not really sure why I’d want to defend this alcoholic dead man whose corpse is probably fermenting in a stone cold coffin in California, or his extremist poem that sounds like some deranged man at train stops preaching to the masses about the end of the world, I’ll try. I’ll try.

Charles Bukowski’s Dinosauria, We criticizes the way we live now, and then develops a “could be” apocalypse in the future, because of these factors now. We would create our own destruction and own extinction. Critics call it blown out of proportion, but there is some truth in Charles Bukowski’s words. If we are apathetic to the way we live now, there is nothing stopping what we create for the future. He describes all the problems in our lives today early on, but all that revolves around one large problem, apathy. The real problem is allowing these misdeeds to continue on. He views that society is ruined and while we should change it, and could to avoid the catastrophe of an apocalypse, we don’t. He views that our lives are hanging by a thread in balance, and once we go over, all hell, worse than hell, breaks loose.

We should not look at his poem for direct words, but the ideas. The ideas that what we create and our apathy, will bite us back in the end, whether through an apocalypse or some other disaster. We need to take action now to control the future.