Charles Bukowski - Ignis Fatuus lyrics

Ignis Fatuus

The only solitude is sleep or death
We were not clever enough
Kind to others and cruel to self
When self ask for mercy and was denied
The holiest privacy remains waiting on us
And all that was misunderstood or abandoned
Will come together
Let my failure be your fortune
This that was broken in careless error
Let it be known that to know your
Own death is to die twice once really
And then hardly at all
Let it be known that there is nothing
As ugly in all it's tangents
As the human beast
A trick set against the blood of your soul
Let it be known that solitude
Is the only mercy and the only lover
Let it be known that a man need
Not be Christ to be crucified
Let it be known that a man
Can be crucified each day each moment
Each breath
To sleep and awake and be tormented again
Let it be known that a man can die and die
And die and die and still feel the pain
And know he his dead and still feel the pain
And know there is nothing he can
Do and still feel the pain let it be known
Let it be known that the temples are nothing
And the bells are nothing
And fame is nothing and victory is nothing
And sex is nothing
And that solitude brings madness
And the crowd brings madness
And drinks and eats the body like a tiger
That there is no voice to speak with
No ear to hear
Let it be known that there will
Be other men such as I
Lifted from the lion's mouth
Burned down by false loves
Tricked by kindness misled by intellect
Dizzied by posey sacrificed for profit
Used as cheap labor
And these will be the kindest
Of happenings compared to what
Will enter the eye and ear and the brain
And seep to the innards
To begin their death-work
I pity all such brothers of mine who
Will follow me in the centuries
Unable to love because there
Is nothing to love
Unable to kill because there is nothing alive
Forever hanging and bleeding and
Dizzied by the beast-human
The walls, the gardens, the sun, the
Flowers, the kisses, the flags
The seas, the animals, the food
The liquors, the paintings, The symphonies
All uselessness
Let it be known that most men
Love when they can see
And they see each other
And they love this because
They see very little
Let it be known that I am bitter
And damned and tired and useless
Let it be known when the final hope goes
There remains but a staring at the
Dance and a watching of
The feeble intercourse of the idiots
With very little note taking
Let it be known that I am
Dead but there is no anger
Let it be known that most men
Are dead many years before burial
Let it be known that many
Men die in childhood
That many men are born dead
Although their parts move and they
Make sound and grow and
Advance into adult behavior and
Do things in civilization
Let it be known that these men never existed
And that their funerals were extreme farce
And also the dead tears for the already dead
Let it be known that the
Worms themselves were nearer
To truth in that they did not cry
Let it be known that birth is not holy
That death is not holy that life is not holy
Let it be known that I
Have bled without crowns
That I will bleed in a moment
That I will bleed forever, red, red, red
And the hawks will dance within
My bones and rejoice
Let it be known that I do
Not die for man's sins
But that I die for what man is
And for what I almost was
They too little of anything
And myself lifted enough too see the horror
To sicken and go mad and wilt

Do not take this personal what
I say about life altogether
Or man altogether unless on another plane
You consider yourself a defender
Of life and man
Which is only another natural
Weakness of the species
Like a rat guarding it's nest
And for which I cannot hold you
Totally to blame the only solitude is death
But not this death not this death
Not this death