when i met bukowski

Sometimes as an intellectual
and I use the term loosely
you get into a habit
Whether you mean to or not
of disliking things that the herd
and God yes they earned the name
tend to like, perhaps for spite or
perhaps for a real reason but
the end result is identical

A punk with a hemp courier bag
and a shaggy ass mohawk started in
on me about the Beat poets and the
power they commanded over the spoken word
How they re-invented tonal meaning and
introduced a harmonic revolution of words
"I thought rap did that." I said
We stopped talking
Pfft, white guys...

Since then me and Beat weren't on speaking terms
and floating around in the tenement of my mind
Bukowski equaled Beat
Maybe some asshole English professor gave me
reason for this causal link or
maybe I wasn't paying attention as I
scanned the poetry section at a second-hand bookstore
Perhaps as I leaned in to the bottom shelf
trying to find Anais Nin and wishing
women like her still existed, (If they ever did...)
and I glanced over a hand-written shelf marker
BEAT
And there he was, the German bastard

In any case
I didn't read him and
like any jerk who judges that which
he does not know, I questioned the
merit of those who did
Mind you, I read Beat
Plenty of it
And if I could get that precious time back
I'd spend it drinking
It wasn't until I got a smattering of
Hank's prose shoved in my face
that I shut up
A girl from a Philosophy class
She followed me out and started
snapping photos of me walking
Now as gorgeous as I think I am
a mugging ham who prances amongst
the bulb flashes I ain't
On the other hand, I ain't no
Ludite camera-smashing Sinatra type either
Always more a Dean Martin man myself,
So I let her play at being paparazzi and
afterward had a chat
She had a volume of Hank jutting out of
her backpack, and offered me a read
I politley ordered two coffees,
handed her one and
accepted the offer

Never had I read such hard nosed wisdom
boiled down truth
revelry in self-destruction
no, self-destruction framed as a virtue
and goddamn it is sure is!
Profane irreverence
depression spoke of as a reality as
opposed to a temporary state and
the cold joy of isolation
Celebration of violence and failure
hatred of the cant, the sycophants
the hangers-on, the gutless suit and tie set
the intelligencia, the holier than thou and
the acknowledgement that love is a ghost
often best left undiscovered lest
we be haunted while we sip on our third Old-fashioned
and that life at its best are the minute moments
that on the surface mean nothing but
mean everything in our minds

After our introduction, I had another coffee
thanked the girl, and went home
I felt like a jackass at first
Having allowed my assumptions to keep
me from reading those words
But then I felt sort of like a down and out
prospector, finally having hit paydirt
I went outside, chicken salad sandwich in one hand
a coffee in the other and
a volume of Hank under my arm and
as the sunlight played amber streaks through my drink
I said out loud
"Now that is a fucking writer."