This post includes affiliate links. If you purchase something through one of these links we will get a commission, which helps us maintain the site, at no extra cost to you.

The poem “memory” is published in the Charles Bukowski poetry collection “What Matters Most is How Well You Walk Through the Fire.” In addition to being one of Bukowski’s best named books, and he had some great titles, it is also one of his best overall collections.

The poem begins with an impossible claim that suggests we could be reading a “brag” poem, before striking out into much different territory, with the mention of lost opportunities and loves. What follows is a list of memories big and small, great and awful. It leads the reader to wonder how one could manage to remember all of life’s indignities and triumphs without going mad, and by the end we see the writer probably feels similarly.

“memory” by Charles Bukowski

I’ve memorized all the fish in the sea
I’ve memorized each opportunity strangled
and
I remember awakening one morning
and finding everything smeared with the color of
forgotten love
and I’ve memorized
that too.

 

I’ve memorized green rooms in
St. Louis and New Orleans
where I wept because I knew that by myself I
could not overcome
the terror of them and it.

 

I’ve memorized all the unfaithful years
(and the faithful ones too)
I’ve memorized each cigarette that I’ve rolled.
I’ve memorized Beethoven and New York City
I’ve memorized
riding up escalators, I’ve memorized
Chicago and cottage cheese, and the mouths of
some of the ladies and the legs of
some of the ladies
I’ve known
and the way the rain came down hard.
I’ve memorized the face of my father in his coffin,
I’ve memorized all the cars I have driven
and each of their sad deaths,
I’ve memorized each jail cell,
the face of each new president
and the faces of some of the assassins;
I’ve even memorized the arguments I’ve had with
some of the women
I’ve loved.

 

best of all
I’ve memorized tonight and now and the way the
light falls across my fingers,
specks and smears on the wall,
shades down behind orange curtains;
I light a rolled cigarette and then laugh a little,
yes, I’ve memorized it all.

 

the courage of my memory.

The Charles Bukowski poem “memory” appears in the collection What Matters Most is How Well You Walk Through the Fire. Click on the image for more information.

Comments

comments