I saw a tramp last nightthe way the old dog walkedwith dotted, tired furdown nobody’s alleybeing nobody’s dog . . .past the empty vodka bottlespast the peanut butter jars,with wires full of electricityand the birds asleep somewhere,down the alley he went—nobody’s dogmoving through it all,brave as any army.In the literary pantheon, Charles Bukowski remains a counterculture icon, a writer and poet of sublime talent who, as Leonard Cohen aptly remarked, “brought everybody down to earth, even the angels.” A hard-drinking wild man of literature, a stubborn outsider to the poetry world, he has struck a chord with generations of readers, writing raw, tough poetry about booze, work, and women that speaks to his fans as being “real” and, like the work of the Beats, even dangerous. The Continual Condition demonstrates once again this uncompromising commentator’s fierce ability to capture the heartbreaking pain and dark beauty of our world.
