ON BUKOWSKI (1920 – 1994)
Massive stomach
Face full of pocked marks
Red oily skin
A clown’s nose
Cigarette, unusual brand, fixed to lips.
Bottle unmistakable in hand
The wobbly drunken battleship
Of a man,
A throwback,
The ape as poet.
A Hollywood clochard,
He negotiates
The sunny sidewalks and piss- stinking watering holes of East L A
Expounding on whores and misery and booze,
And the” sissy poets” he he likes to call out.
‘They just don’t get it’ he slobbers…
This night
The poet is beacon.
Megaphone in hand
Bukowski slurs the message,
Dead eyes
Encrusted in something still human.
Sinking into the sludge,
Leaving us his suicide note in
Black and white.
But…
it is not enough.
Sadly.
It is just not sad enough.
Poems are never as sad as they should be,
Life is always worse.
Look around,
Liars,
Look around and tell me
No.