Natural Freedom

This page includes the full poems that I've included extracts of, in the video series Bukowski and Woman. These poems demonstrate the character of Woman as described by Bukowski (with some elucidation on my part), and can be categorised for convenience in three main themes:

Woman's lies: Her sexual enticements and teasing seem to mean she is personally interested in him, him as a unique individual; furthermore, when she starts to look after his bodily concerns in trivial, mundane ways (what Bukowski calls the 'extras' in prayer in bad weather), he falls into the belief that she actually loves him. But it is an illusion, because she only pretends to love him (but this truly is what she calls love): when he has fallen for her, she can easily manipulate him into supporting her financially, emotionally, intellectually, psychologically, maybe even spiritually (?). Both of them believe their love is 'mutual' (but they won't say 'equal'). But how can he truly love an actress, who will not be honest about her true intentions or her true self? How can she love him, who is nothing but the role she desires him to play, at least, in her eyes? She pretends to be Woman by the use of symbols and props which support the illusion, but only his imagination and desire for love magicks her into the dream Woman.

Woman's superficiality: Her need to mold him to her desires shows how superficial, helpless, dependent, and passive she is - but if he is molded, then he too becomes superficial, helpless, dependent, and passive owing to fulfilling her shallow imagination. While she is already unconscious, he must sacrifice consciousness to merge with her. This is why relationships are always more deeply agonising for men, since men lose more. Women are always lost in emotion, so to become upset and tearful or agitated with despair is no loss to a woman. Emotionality is life for a woman, a place where she flourishes like a dolphin splashing in the sea (or a pig in mud), and a woman in a relationship is never at a loss.

Why men are attracted to woman: Woman's superficiality, simple needs, and worldliness result in creating a world that appears blissfully easy to the average man. She wants food, shelter, clothes, children, a car, and gifts. It is not difficult to solve such a problem, but only requires work. But it is not meeting those needs that attracts him; rather, it is her mentality that this is all that life is about. Her simple-minded worldview entrances him. He would kill for such a secure mindstate. So when she embraces him with apparent love and acceptance, demonstrating concern for his welfare by looking after his body and other mundane needs, he perceives an escape from the harsh reality of being a slave to society, daily grinding his brain or body to solve social problems, like blocked drains or polluted water or new housing and all the steps he must facilitate to get the problems fixed. Woman is unconsciousness to man: the prize of relief and rest from the burden of having a worrying brain. In effect, woman's love means: safety and escape from society. And women are not hesitant to manipulate his exhausted need for relief; women prey on the desperation and confused anger of men, and their need for rest and recreation — lulling them into the false assumption that they have found a sanctuary. But it comes at a significant price: that he becomes her slave, again a slave to her. Thus woman and society are one. Oh, what a fool man is!

Truly, whoever enters the philosophical life, must abandon woman and her deceptions, and not falter on realising that abandoning woman is precisely the same as being abandoned by society. Who is willing to enter this gate, where all the signs say, wrong way, go back, back, back?

His writing was influenced by the social, cultural and economic ambience of his home city of Los Angeles. It is marked by an emphasis on the ordinary lives of poor Americans, the act of writing, alcohol, relationships with women and the drudgery of work