So Now by Charles Bukowski

🔰The main focus of this YouTube project is to give new life to poetry but there is another aspect that goes a bit undetected behind the curtain of good music and fancy editing tricks. The vast majority of these videos are filmed in the city and country that I live in and I've been given the opportunity to record everyday life, even the ugly aspect of it. I'm showcasing in this video homelessness and other examples of social disintegration. This isn't a political statement, or an opportunity to state pretentiously that "I care", this is just documentation and all the feelings this imagery may cause you, belong to you and I welcome you to share them in the comment section.

Forever Humbled
a kid with a camera

Second channel

🔰Communities

🔰References

-The narrator is Tom O'Bedlam

-The (amazing) music is this:

🔰My equipment:
I film handheld with a Panasonic Lumix
G80
GX80
📷Olympus M.Zuiko Digital 45mm F1.8 Lens

🔰A few Charles Bukowski books
📓Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame

📓Essential Bukowski: Poetry

📓Women: A Novel

📓The Last Night of the Earth Poems

📓Ham On Rye: A Novel

📓post office: A Novel

📓You Get So Alone at Times That It Just Makes Sense

🔰So Now? by Charles Bukowski
the words have come and gone,
I sit ill.
the phone rings, the cats sleep.
Linda vacuums.
I am waiting to live,
waiting to die.
I wish I could ring in some bravery.
it's a lousy fix
but the tree outside doesn't know:
I watch it moving with the wind
in the late afternoon sun.
there's nothing to declare here,
just a waiting.
each faces it alone.
Oh, I was once young,
Oh, I was once unbelievably
young!

[axelleci]

"I am waiting to live
Waiting to die"
Exactly how I feel at this point in my life

[sasukeism]

"i am waiting to live, waiting to die / oh i was once young / oh i was once unbelievably young" i'm 17 and poems like this are nerve wrecking

[branch.incarnate]

With that voice, you could read the ingredients on a box of Cheerios and it would sound like a poem

[Janetemusic]

Here is to the twisted ones,
to helpless upside-downers.
To outcasts and the tragedies,
the rejects and the loners.

Take hope in knowing on this earth,
this little world we live in,
there's always someone just the same,
although you may not feel it.

A silent cord connects our hearts
in ways we fail to fathom.
Regardless of a thousand miles,
we're one by every atom.

Unwittingly we share our cries
and weep on each's shoulders
when worries come on rolling in
like heavy rocks and boulders.

You'll often find a friend to trust
in unacquainted stranger,
for they're no judge, for through their pain
you'll feel a bit more saner.

So tell them all about your woe,
your mishaps and your longings
and in return they'll offer you
a bittersweet belonging.

A knowing that though there's no cure
to swiftly sweep your sorrow,
the ones as twisted as are you
will always have it borrowed.


— A poem I finished a couple of days ago.
Thought I'd put it here, in case it may bring someone the much needed ease, because it surely brought me. Take care, dear twisted ones. You will get through this. We will, together. :)

[juanbotero]

“There’s nothing to declare here. Just a waiting.”

[stevecongdon]

Bukowski. To my mind the greatest poet who ever lived, you can keep your Shakespeare. He said it how it was. No flowery language, just simply and plainly. His words have sustained me when there was no one else.

[PlasticDoll.]

The "unbelievably young" sentence just made me go on a bout of crying for awhile while repeating it. Mind you I'm only 23 and already feel melancholic and life is just what it is.. be strong:)

[mr.a]

I feel sadness in his still has deep impact on me.

[DaNickKittu]

The best place YouTube ever recommended me.

[Mohabd__]

The kind of content that gets you hiped even before watching it, and after you watch it, and even after "oh i was once young, oh i was once, unbelievably young"

[roan]

These poems are important to read especially while you’re young

[miguelantonioreyes]

The combination of bukowski’s words, o’bedlam’s voice and illneas’ editing is a match made in heaven.

[sherazahmad]

The mention of the "Tree Outside" is breathtaking. As it is "alive" as well but not in it's true sense. It also "sits ill" while "the phone rings and the cats sleep". It's "Waiting to live, Waiting to die" just like the speaker.
The other goosebumps that I had are when He says that "Bravery" is a "lousy fix" and that He was once "Unbelievably young".

[AnthonyLiccione]

"I kiss her ghost, and sleep with the dust on her photograph, next to my bedside."

[resistdisinformation]

As I am currently nearing my 60th birthday, recently I have been ruminating about the meaningfulness of my life and of existence itself. Within the larger context of the unfolding climate crisis, as well as, the increasing threats to human existence due to insane human behaviour such as Russia's war in Ukraine, China's determination to take over Taiwan, North Korea's nuclear sabre rattling, overpopulation and human overconsumption of everything, increasing rates of species extinction, ocean lifeforms being replaced by plastic, the unrelenting Covid-19 pandemic, and so many other increasingly dire phenomena all around the Earth, I feel myself to be at a crossroads in my life.

I am completely overwhelmed and utterly perplexed by human existence and the "insanity of humanity."

At the same time that I feel vulnerable and my life is precious, I simultaneously feel as if I want to give up on my life and simply cease to exist due to my despair at the mind boggling alterations of the biosphere caused by human stupidity, selfishness, and avarice.

Increasingly, I struggle with maintaining a will to live any longer as I watch the Earth die at the hands of humans. I feel disconnected from most other people and even the Canadian society I reside within. I know enough, and I think that I understand enough, to be capable of comprehending the apparent reality that our species is heading toward a cliff not unlike that which the proverbial lemmings leapt from toward their demise.

How do I find a way to reclaim my "sanity" and my will to persist in an increasingly diabolical future of global breakdown while most everyone else seems to be in a self-created state of denialism?

[berserk]

Bro, I found your channel like 3 days ago and this channel has become one of my favourite YouTube channels. I had a likeness towards poetry, pressured down somewhere in me and your videos have helped me realize that and I've fallen in love with poetry. Thank you.

[makeevvd]

If there is such thing that could make Bukowski's writing even better, it is Tom Bedlam's narration and illneas' video.

Thank you so much.

[TinaSotis]

This is the saddest thing I've ever seen. I have such compassion for all the lonely and abandoned beings in this Earth. I willingly breathe in their pain and send out peace to all.

[freeghost]

There is this kind of poems, which cannot be discribed in words. 'Cause all needs to be told is there. Being there is all. With your ears, your eyes, with every inch of your skin and each cell of your body till your whole soul is shaked up, and you are becoming the poem itself. No limit, no border, no time, no poem any more. It's one.

I love Bukowski. Thank you all of the team "illneas" for your wonderful work. The pictues, the art of cut and the music ... they are just perfect.

[akankshaawasthi]

Waiting with a certainty of happening is a beautiful process
Waiting with uncertainty ...a lesson.
- love your work.