Charles Bukowski died on March 9th, 1994. Which, as of the writing of this article, was last week.

Except, twenty-seven years ago.

He was a deeply flawed man –– a man you wouldn’t want to marry, a man you wouldn’t want to marry your daughter, a man you wouldn’t want your son to emulate.

However, despite this, the world can applaud him for something and that something is that Bukowski was a brutally honest writer, even in the moments where his brutal honesty worked to his own detriment.

One such example of where his brutal honesty might be perceived as brash and just downright disgusting is in this piece where he describes, in painful detail, the worst blow job of his life.

But, his brutal honesty also has had moments where it inspired an entire generation to give themselves, all of themselves, to something.

Still to this day, his piece on going all the way is something I return to again and again when I need a match to light a fire underneath my ass.

Bukowski’s ghost never comes up short for me.

In the face of death, this legendary writer continued to lean into this brutal honesty, a leaning in that can be seen in the following piece. Or, excerpt, rather…

*Charles Bukowski is typing now*

“There’s nothing to mourn about death any more than there is to mourn about the growing of a flower.

What is terrible is not death but the lives people live or don’t live up until their death.

They don’t honor their own lives, they piss on their lives. They shit them away. Dumb fuckers.

They concentrate too much on fucking, movies, money, family, fucking. Their minds are full of cotton.

They swallow God without thinking, they swallow country without thinking. Soon they forget how to think, they let others think for them. Their brains are stuffed with cotton.

They look ugly, they talk ugly, they walk ugly.

Play them the great music of the centuries and they can’t hear it. Most people’s deaths are a sham.

There’s nothing left to die.”

By Cole Schafer (but mostly Charles Bukowski).