Roll the Dice
by Charles Bukowskiif you’re going to try, go all the way.
otherwise, don’t even start.if you’re going to try, go all the way.
this could mean losing girlfriends,
wives, relatives, jobs and
maybe your mind.go all the way.
it could mean not eating for 3 or 4 days.
it could mean freezing on a
park bench.
it could mean jail,
it could mean derision,
mockery,
isolation.
isolation is the gift,
all the others are a test of your
endurance, of
how much you really want to
do it.
and you’ll do it
despite rejection and the worst odds
and it will be better than
anything else
you can imagine.if you’re going to try,
go all the way.
there is no other feeling like
that.
you will be alone with the gods
and the nights will flame with fire.do it, do it, do it.
do it.all the way
all the way.you will ride life straight to
perfect laughter, its
the only good fight
there is.
[Of the poetry that I have memorized, I’ve decided to not necessarily comment on them in the order of memorization. It does seem a great way to really savor a poem so that more meaning can come out.]
Roll the Dice by Charles Bukowski
Bukowski has become one of my favorite poets recently, no surprise to a few of you. Those who knew anything about him, know him to be a womanizer and a drunk. He was those things and more. He was a poet who wrote with a blunt honesty of how things are in the real (and sometimes poetic) world.
This poem, obviously, is about Bukowski giving himself a pep-talk. You would think that a man who became as prolific as he would have had it easy. The successful poet isn’t always a success in his lifetime, thus he wrote this as encouragement.
We, as ordinary folk (or not), have aspirations in life. Some are noble, some not so. Some are completely self-serving, some are without self. Regardless, one should feel the freedom to pursue such goals. If one’s goal is not so easy to attain, this poem speaks to the dreamer of great things.
Sacrifice. This, to me, is a dirty word. I’ll explain. If a man wants to be a writer, and perhaps a successful one, he must realize that this kind of success doesn’t happen overnight. There can be troubles with relationships and financial stability. Going hungry and freezing on a bench sound like horrible things to endure. Yet, these things aren’t sacrifices, but trades. One’s goal, if valued enough, is worth all the suffering the world can throw at him.
Even noble, or so called altruistic, goals don’t involve sacrifice. Here, one is trading one’s time, energy, or resources to attain a world more to one’s liking. Such giving of resources without that actual desire to improve things is either vain or empty.
And when one achieves, how blissful that is! So many live mediocre lives, and to them, such achievers are alone with the gods. Their lives are brightly burning as an example to those who overcome.
Of the possible negative effects of pursuing something, isolation is truly a gift. Isolation allows one to pursue the goal without the interference of others. The other things, once overcome, gives one the ability to truly laugh. If one has overcome hunger, the elements, the law (there’s a can of worms), and ridicule, one can laugh at anything, everything that became inconsequential to the dreamer of great achievements
I never quite thought of it that way…sacrafice vs. trade…you given my something to chew on.
You can thank the objectivist Ayn Rand for that. If I buy jewelry for my wife, it isn’t just to have something to give her, it is to have something for ME to see her wear. I know it sort of seems counter intuitive, but it does make sense.
yes it does make sense..you feel good about making her feel good..got it..same with philanthropy..everything we do has a pay off.
“Everything for everyone, nothing for ourselves” – Zapatista slogan.
An interesting idea – not sacrifice but trade. But what of the altruistic impulse with no apparent rationale? What of the good act where the doer has not even thought about it, does it as though it were the work of an automatic muscle like the heart or lungs and, if she thinks about it afterwards she thinks about it with puzzlement and maybe shakes her head and moves on?
M
M.
So easy it is to forget the animal kingdom when one is speaking of morality. Having come out of religion and desirous of a moral code (and a reasonable one), this is the path I have taken.
I can’t deny, however, that there is altruistic behavior that is not rationalized with us, or with any of our cousins in the animal kingdom. Some of these behaviors seem genetic, as with the vampire bats that share blood with their hunt-unlucky neighbors. Others are likely learned as is the case with us and the mirror neurons in our brain. Contagious smiles and yawns are examples of behaviors learned this way. Forcing others to yawn is indeed a fun pastime. 😉 Some people are so much more prone to do so than others (you can even just say the word yawn with some!).
It is so easy to rationalize everything when it isn’t necessarily so. Thanks Marie for pointing out my omission.
Zane
I enjoyed this very much. Thank you for your effort in posting the poem and the prose.
Thanks for the stopping by and the comment, Rick!
Hi Zane
The trouble with morality is that it shifts its grounds. It comes from a Latin word for ‘custom’ and so means little more than what is acceptable at a particular time. There is no doubt, therefore, that a ‘morality’ exists in any community, society, philosophy, or school of thought. An atheist and a devot of a religion both can have a morality (I have to laugh and, more often, sigh when I see the moral me-tooism between religionist and religionist, and between religionist and atheist). If there is an absolute then perhaps it exists as a perfect template, on some metaphysical plane. Can we all be Jesus? Do we have a right not to try to be?
Your analogy of the vampire bats is interesting. In his ‘Mutual aid: a factor of evolution’ Kropotkin proposes convincingly that societal, cooperative species survive hard times better than competitive species; he regarded the competitive strain in humanity as being aberrant and something we should try to shake off if we wished to survive as a species.
M
Yeah, it sounds like a pep talk. “Go all the way” is the normal pep talk. To hear the mantra is a turn off to me. Something a bit more creative would have been nice. I am sure he has better poems.
He does have better ones, and I’d say much worse ones. That’s the thing with writing, my last letter to the editor was rather poor (I judged) by my standards. The Almighty Fraud knows that I’ve written a fair share of bad ones as well. Better next time?