“My dear,
Find what you love and let it kill you.
Let it drain you of your all. Let it cling onto your back and weigh you down into eventual nothingness.
Let it kill you and let it devour your remains.
For all things will kill you, both slowly and fastly, but it’s much better to be killed by a lover.
~ Falsely yours”
– Charles Bukowski
I really quite like this poem. I’ve found that people who usually share poetry are suffering from “special snowflake” syndrome and think pretty highly of themselves, but never admit it.
The kind of person that thinks them self smarter and deeper than the average person; cynical for no reason other than that’s what makes you better than norm.
Maybe that’s just how I see it. And also maybe I’m just trying very hard not to be that person.
I just think these words come together very nicely and make a whole lot of sense.
I also tend to like reading analyses of poems, not only so I can fully understand what the original author was on about, but so I can get a greater understanding of how others consume poetry.
An analysis of a poem can be quite poetic in itself (and if that doesn’t sound a bit douche-y, I don’t know what does).
What I mean by that, is that each person carries with them a different set of tools that they use to understand what they read. Different words, and different constructions of those words can mean two completely different things to two different people. Ether because of their past, their beliefs, family, friends or whatever. (See, I did learn something from ‘Communication and Social Relations’ last semester).
From this poem, I gather that it’s telling you what it’s about pretty plainly.
Find what it is you love, what you enjoy and what you can’t live without. And keep at it until you’re gone, nothing, dead, cactus, worm food.
Because you’ll die anyway, so why not let what it is you love kill you. Rather than something you hate.
I found a really cool article, which explains the overall gist of the poem, and the beliefs of ol’ mate Charles. Mark Manson manages to put into words a little better than I could what I thought the poem was about in an article aptly named “Find What You Love and Let It Kill you”.
xoxo jacobwatson, you know you love me.
