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.