Happy B-Day Bukowski
The old codger still inspires. We are reading him after his demise, so according to him, he succeeded.
Many poets have inspired yours truly. I’ve gone through so many phases, unadulterated addictions. From Whitman to Valery to Breton, to Berryman, to Layton, to Rexroth, to Li Po, to Faludy but always finally back to Bukowski.
The Hemmingway of verse. He just said what we all thought. You always felt he was cutting through the bullshit and being honest with you. That’s the most you can hope for in a poet - don’t get much of that from others, from the rat race.
So these few words of my own, go out to Bukowski today, his birthday.
Watch Born Into This … if you get the chance. Or just the short version for all you so busy souls. Always good, worthy. Of course, watch Barfly too.
One of the wonderful things about Bukowski was that he had no compromise button. He did what he did and that was that, was that. He had like all good poets, a great way of putting the knife in and an even better way of pulling it out (ending the poem).
Perhaps my fav. poem or the one I know by heart and which has stood the test of my own time, is his poem, I Met A Genius. I used to do many presentations to teachers and used this poem to make sure they got Bukowski’s central point.
I met a genius on the train
today
about 6 years old,
he sat beside me
and as the train
ran down along the coast
we came to the ocean
and then he looked at me
and said,
it's not pretty.
it was the first time I'd
realized
that.
I’d like to share one of my own, inspired by Bukowski or with his flavor in it. But just not sure what to share. I’m sure I even have some poems dedicated to him - but my hundreds of notebooks are all mixed up and I’m just not in the mood to rumble through that old laundry.
I did do this voiceover of a poem of his, Marvellous Lunches. For teachers, students but it works for everyone.
I left this piece for a moment and went to the shitter to do some thinking. My Bukowski was there and opened it up. And what to my delirious eyes did appear? A poem I scribbled in its margins. So I’ll leave you this poem, my own kind of tribute to the style of Bukowski - some jibberish I wrote in the back pages of his collected poems.
Long Live Bukowski. Happy B Day Chinaski.
If it's not easy
don't do it.
It must come up on you
like the spirit, a Pentecostal.
It must be something you've
no say in.
It must be something you like too.
Not that it brings a smile
but rather that warm glow
like when you ejaculate
and get close to losing your self
into something larger
but very easy
because it's
all
there
really
is.
.....
There is something in me,
something in each of us
that wants to sing.
But somehow
like the one-legged guy
on the penny bicycle
we just can't get around to it.
It's the hope that gets in the way.
A lick of your mind and
the thought of
suffices,
then it's back to toast and jam,
paychecks and pantyhose
the dark bar on the corner
next to the porno shop.
We really don't want to sing.
It's too painful.
We'd rather just think about
singing
and watch that guy on the bike
try to move around.