Charles Bukowski

It's Ours

It's Ours - meaning Summary

Brief Private Resistances

Bukowski's poem celebrates a tiny, private pause that preserves selfhood from external intrusion. Using everyday gestures—scratching a neck, pouring water, staring at a bare branch—the speaker isolates a quiet interval "just before they get to us." That slack of attention functions as a sanctuary and a subtle act of resistance. Its value is existential: these small, unshareable moments ensure others can never completely possess or understand us.

Read Complete Analyses

There is always that space there just before they get to us that space that fine relaxer the breather while say flopping on a bed thinking of nothing or say pouring a glass of water from the spigot while entranced by nothing that gentle pure space it's worth centuries of existence say just to scratch your neck while looking out the window at a bare branch that space there before they get to us ensures that when they do they won't get it all ever.

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