Bluebird
Bluebird By Charles Bukowski
There's a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out but I'm too tough for him,
I say, stay in there, I'm not going to let anybody see you.
There's a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out but I pour whiskey on him and inhale cigarette smoke
and the whores and the bartenders and the grocery clerks never know that
he's in there.
There's a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say, stay down, do you want to mess me up?
you want to screw up the works?
you want to blow my book sales in Europe?
There's a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out
but I'm too clever, I only let him out at night sometimes when everybody's asleep.
I say, I know that you're there, so don't be sad.
Then I put him back,
but he's singing a little in there,
I haven't quite let him die
and we sleep together like that with our secret pact
and it's nice enough to make a man weep,
but I don't weep,
do you?
Analyse
While reading the poem Bluebird, one encounters the structure, or rather the lack of, that is typical for Bukowskis poetry and indeed some of his novels. The flow is easy, relaxed and close to what most people would count as a short story rather than poetry. In reality, what holds them apart is a matter for discourse. However, it being vague and to some extent metaphorical makes is closer to a poem rather than anything else.
Bukowski himself seemed like the sort of man who believed in being honest and real with his writing and thus form, in poems and other texts, was lacking, because to him this was redundant to the idea and/or the feeling being expressed. This idea of form reveals itself in another small poem, merely two lines in length, in which he writes, "As the spirit wanes, the form appears.", explaining his view on form. Any type of writer who is in lack on inspiration or anything that made him or her decide on writing poetry, lack in spirit, as Bukowski called it, might try to conceal this by focusing on form. Writing on verse, using rhymes and counting lines to make the words fit together. This was, according to Bukowski, not honest.
The poem Bluebird contains, basically, one word that is open to discussion and is in need of explanation. That would be the bluebird, the main idea the poem revolves around. Already in the first line one get the notion of Bukowski using the bluebird as a feeling. The bluebird, he writes, is inside his heart, the very metaphorical center for emotion, and the color blue is often used as an emotion, to feel blue is to be depressed .
In the poem he explains how he fights to keep the bluebird out of sight by various means, alcohol and cigarettes, and it seems he does not want anyone to know there is something inside him, yearning to come out. This would, he writes, destroy his writing in some way. Perhaps he considered himself a person using black humor in his books and poems, leaving little room for other emotions. In the poem he talks about his book sales in Europe, so this was written in that time of his life when he had become a well published writer, having made an icon of himself. Being a heavy drinker and a bad boy writer of sorts, one might guess he had to maintain this image of himself, this myth around his name, not being emotional. Thus he has to contain some emotions deep inside himself. Only letting them out when he is alone, as he writes in the poem.
In the poems last lines he describes his relationship with the bluebird to be "nice enough to make a man weep", and then, with the poems last two words, direct a question to the reader, "do you?". This is a powerful tool, making the reader a part of the poem, asking the reader if there might be any similarities between Bukowskis emotions and the readers.
