Bukowski

A Chip Off the Old Block


He was not my father,
but he should have been;

he was the one who showed me
that words don’t have to be flowery and sweet,
that sometimes they can be rough and real;
that rules can be broken;
that life sucks and it’s ok to talk about it;
that shit happens and sometimes
there’s not a goddamn thing you can do about it;
that dreams die,
but you keep on living;
that friends come and go,
but a good shot of whiskey
will never let you down;
that dogs may be loyal,
but women are really man’s best friend;
that you can sit on your ass all day
waiting for the end to come,
or you can run headlong to meet it,
sticking up your middle finger and
screaming profanities at the top of your lungs
the whole way;

that you can write poetry and
still be a man;

yeah he wasn’t my father,
but he taught me all the things
that a father should teach a son
so sometimes I feel like maybe he was,
and deep down inside I know
that every word I write is done
seeking his approval;

I only hope that someday
I can become as big a bastard
as he was;
a chip off the old block;

thanks dad.
___________________

Bad Asses

“I was glad I wasn’t in love, that I wasn’t happy with the world. I like being at odds with everything. People in love often become edgy, dangerous. They lose their sense of perspective. They lose their sense of humor. They become nervous, psychotic bores. They even become killers.” (Henry Chinaski) ‘Women’ –Charles Bukowski

“I’ve reached the point
where I want to throw out
all the shit, all the things
which aren’t important,
I think for the first time
I want to try and
be happy” I told her.

She held my hand,
“It’s much easier
to be miserable in life
than to be happy,
to be happy requires
an effort, it requires
hard work” she said;

“it requires that you
take a risk.”

And I knew she was right,
all the things
she had been through
as a child
had taught her this
better than I,
or any teacher
ever could.

There are enough
bad asses in the world,
enough cruelty and darkness;

I am tired of
trying to be one.
_________________________

Not Bad Chinaski

My god,
they’re still making money
off his old buffalo ass of a hide,
he’s been dead for what now,
three, no four years?
Christ, he’s becoming a regular
Jimi Hendrix of the literature world.

They’ll be digging up his manuals
for the next thirty years,
there’ll be books coming out about:

the early years,
the final years,
the in between years,
the lost journals,
the never before published journals,
the secret diaries;

it’s almost enough
to make you want to puke,
especially when you know
the old bastard is
laughing his fat ass off somewhere
and thinking to himself;

not bad Chinaski,
not bad at all.
____________________________

Thanks Hank

The squirrels become playful in September,
running to and fro,
chasing each other up and down trees
and telephone poles,
it makes me wonder what they know
that I don’t.

They drive Petey, my Jack Russell terrier bonkers,
he whines and pulls at his leash,
dying to sink his sharp little teeth
into fresh killed squirrel hide;

life is easy in September.

I have been recovering from spinal surgery
for almost two months now,
I’ve learned if I sit very still
the pain running down my leg isn’t so bad,
I thought the pain would be gone by now
but I guess it is not to be,
sometimes I think it is for the best,
we need a little pain in life
to keep it all in perspective,
a gentle reminder,
a little thorn in the flesh
as the apostle Paul would say.

I picked up another Bukowski book the other day,
it was the first time in years,
I read one called ’35 seconds’ in the store
and it made me laugh out loud,
so I bought it,

“and that’s how
I hurt my
arm” – 35 Seconds, Charles Bukowski

I guess you had to be there
to really get it.

He truly was a literary genius,
despite what the main stream
poetry world might think,
you have to read him very closely
to understand the depth of his pain,
and you have to read him even closer
to grasp the inner humor
that carried him through it,
most never get that close.

For most it is more
than they can bear,
they want their poetry
just like they want their life,
clean and sterile,
full of fantasy and fluff,
fresh from the minds
of those who never venture
outside their keyboards,
with freshly printed MFA degrees
hanging on the ‘studio’ wall,
minimizing and dismissing
anything that is uncomfortable
or real, calling it sloppy,
searching for technical and grammatical
correctness within words that are
empty and dead,
of course they don’t see it this way,
they would tell you just the opposite,
but their words give them away;

thank goodness he lived it for us,
so we wouldn’t have to.

As I read him,
I wondered if he ever got the chance
to know the Lord,
not the one pushed by religion
or other man-made institutions,
but the real One,
the One who heals,
the One who saves,
the One who forgives,
the One who softly whispers
in the middle of the night:

“Don’t be afraid, just believe.”

the friend who sticks closer
than a brother,
my King,
my Everything.

I feel I know him well enough
(Bukowski that is),
that if he ever had the opportunity
like I did,
he would have seen the truth,
he would have understood the message,
his eyes would have been blind no more;

but I guess I’ll never know.

I think about how nice it would be
when I finally do enter the world
prepared for those who belong to the Lord
if I saw him there,
his dead pan, unassuming face,
quietly watching,
silently observing,
finally at peace,
completely healed.

How great it would be
if I could thank him
for exploring the parts
of the darkness I never could,
the parts that I would never
have survived,
the parts that would have destroyed me
forever,
then for writing it down
so I didn’t have to,
for helping me along this journey
when no one else could.

“Thanks Hank.”