Bukowski

[_honorentheos]

I stumbled across the poetry of Charles Bukowski by accident. In part, it was because of his last name.

He reminds me of when I first read Henry James years and years ago.

A personal favorite is this one. Maybe his last name taints my reading and when I read it I picture an old professional philosopher curmudgeon like Rorty. Who knows?

The Secret of My Endurance

I still get letters in the mail, mostly from cracked-up
men in tiny rooms with factory jobs or no jobs who are
living with whores or no woman at all, no hope, just
booze and madness.
I get most of their letters on lined paper
written with an unsharpened pencil or in ink
in tiny handwritings that slants to the left

and the paper is most often torn
usually halfway up the middle
and they say they like my stuff,
I’ve written from where it’s at,
they recognize it truly, I’ve given them some
chance, some recognition of where it's at.

it’s true, I was there, even worse off than most of them.
but I wonder if they realize where their letter arrives?
well, it's dropped into a box on a wire fence
behind a six-foot hedge and a long driveway
to a two car garage, rose garden, fruit trees,
animals, a beautiful woman, mortgage about half
paid after a years residence, a new car-
two cars,
fireplace and a green rug two-inches deep
with a young boy to write my stuff now,
I keep him in a ten-foot square cage with a
typewriter, feed him whiskey and raw whores,
belt buckle him pretty good three or four times a week.
I’m 60 years old now and the critics say
my stuff is getting better than ever.

[_mfbukowski]

I do love his stuff, but I admit loved it more in my bad old days.

I met him once at a reading and he was a total jerk. He would not believe I was "Bukowski" even when I showed him my driver's license. "There is only ONE Bukowski"!

Pffft.

I also met Salvador Dali once. I took out a dollar bill and signed it and gave it to him.

I thought that was somehow appropriate.

Once I when I lived in New York, I was looking into a shop window and stepped backwards suddenly and bumped hard into someone walking past much too quickly.

I turned to excuse myself but he was already gone- but I caught a profile of Yoko Ono as she went on.

Somebody said "Hey, man, you just smashed into John Lennon!" I never saw him.

I could go on and on.

My kids think I am the real Forrest Gump, and they're not too far off.