Born Into This

By: Charles Bukowski

Published in The Last Night of the Earth Poems (1992), Bukowski’s final major poetry collection issued during his lifetime, “Dinosauria, We”, one of my favorite poems of his, depicts a decaying society, a society where the supermarket bag boy holds a college degree, prisons overflow while mental institutions shut down, fistfights escalate into shootings and stabbings, and the masses exalt fools as wealthy idols.

His apocalyptic vision feels even more prescient and plausible today than when he wrote it. Seems like the old beer-drunk poet had a knack for seeing the future.

I hope you enjoy this remarkable poem.

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Born like this
Into this
As the chalk faces smile
As Mrs. Death laughs
As the elevators break
As political landscapes dissolve
As the supermarket bag boy holds a college degree
As the oily fish spit out their oily prey
As the sun is masked

We are
Born like this
Into this
Into these carefully mad wars
Into the sight of broken factory windows of emptiness
Into bars where people no longer speak to each other
Into fist fights that end as shootings and knifings

Born into this
Into hospitals which are so expensive that it’s cheaper to die
Into lawyers who charge so much it’s cheaper to plead guilty
Into a country where the jails are full and the madhouses closed
Into a place where the masses elevate fools into rich heroes

Born into this
Walking and living through this
Dying because of this
Muted because of this
Castrated
Debauched
Disinherited

Because of this
Fooled by this
Used by this
Pissed on by this
Made crazy and sick by this
Made violent
Made inhuman
By this

The heart is blackened
The fingers reach for the throat
The gun
The knife
The bomb
The fingers reach toward an unresponsive god

The fingers reach for the bottle
The pill
The powder

We are born into this sorrowful deadliness
We are born into a government 60 years in debt
That soon will be unable to even pay the interest on that debt
And the banks will burn
Money will be useless
There will be open and unpunished murder in the streets
It will be guns and roving mobs
Land will be useless
Food will become a diminishing return
Nuclear power will be taken over by the many
Explosions will continually shake the earth

Radiated robot men will stalk each other
The rich and the chosen will watch from space platforms
Dante’s Inferno will be made to look like a children’s playground

The sun will not be seen and it will always be night
Trees will die
All vegetation will die
Radiated men will eat the flesh of radiated men
The sea will be poisoned
The lakes and rivers will vanish
Rain will be the new gold

The rotting bodies of men and animals will stink in the dark wind

The last few survivors will be overtaken by new and hideous diseases
And the space platforms will be destroyed by attrition
The petering out of supplies
The natural effect of general decay

And there will be the most beautiful silence never heard

Born out of that.

The sun still hidden there
Awaiting the next chapter.

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