I want to make poetry
from poverty.
I eschew women.
I buy nothing.
I eat little.
I own less.
I have neither
TV nor cellphone.
This is not asceticism.
I just want
to know the bones
of life before
I become
the bones of death.
  ~mce

To the many readers, I ******* with my poem about Bukowski.

I don't loathe Bukowski. My point is that he is a cult writer. His cult seems to be made up of people who are ignorant of other much better writers of his time. If they read the Beats (in particular Gary Snyder) or others like Richard Brautigan, Jim Harrison, Wendell Berry and many others, they would see how poorly his writing stands up to comparison.

Bukowski's persona is what seems to attract people. He knew that and cultivated it. It was his meal ticket. The poor, drunken, uncouth, outsider, loser who was scorned by the literati of his time. In truth, he was a writer of pulp poetry. What he needed was a good editor. You could take all of his books of poems, cut out the rambling, self-serving, tedious, self-glorifying *******, and cut them down to maybe two books of decent poetry. His prose is better, but not that much.

Young people, lacking better poetry for comparison, are mainly attracted by this cult of personality. Young people are attracted to rebels, even bogus ones. He himself said he didn't write, he just typed. Some hero.

He portrays himself as a big, tough *** willing to fight the whole world. Actually, he was a fat drunk barely six feet tall. That's why I laughed at him when he threatened me. I was 20, just three weeks back from Vietnam. The thought of fighting an old drunk seemed pathetic to me. I could have easily killed him. Who goes to a poetry reading for that?

There was also his attitude toward women. I believe he really hated women. He saw them as receptacles for his *****, nothing more. He used his fame to **** a good many young admirers. He's not alone in having done that, but he was obsessive about it. Women were a perk, nothing more.

In the end, his cult status will remain, but he will never be taken seriously as a writer, because - by his own admission - he wasn't. There is much excellent poetry out there by better writers of his time. Do yourself a favor, read them, educate yourself. If you only read mediocre poetry, you'll only ever be a mediocre poet.

Even at his most unheroic, he is the hero of his stories and poems, always demanding the reader’s covert approval. That is why he is so easy to love, especially for novice readers with little experience of the genuine challenges of poetry; and why, for more demanding readers, he remains so hard to admire.

Please: Join in. Tell me why I am wrong or right.

Mike Essig

1 - Sweep out the International Space Station.
2 - Eat Kale every day and like it.
3 - Learn to know and like a republican.
4 - Become a Mixed Martial Arts champion.
5 - Be kind to extinct wolverines.
6 - Develop at taste for Rap music.
7 - Explore gastronomic excess with you $16 in food stamps.
8 - Teach the cat how to vacuum and dust.
9 - Find the last person under 30 without a smartphone.
10 - Figure out why God created Twitter.
11 - Solve the riddle of what women really want.

12 - Give up on all the above by Ground Hog Day.

  ~mce

(N) Everything pleasant
you can do with your tongue
that doesn't involve ***.

  ~mce

A reading at Kenneth Rexroth's bookstore,
Union Street in San Francisco, 1971.

He was incoherently drunk, slurred his poems,
insulted the host, insulted the audience,
hit on the awestricken hippie girls,
delivered every kind of obnoxious possible.

Fortunately, I had read his poems
and arrived prepared to witness his act.

I'd thought his poems were overrated,
I found his persona to be spot on.

At the reception, I drank a beer beside him.
He glanced up, called me a *****
and said he ought to kick my ***.

Three weeks back for Vietnam,
I laughed directly into his face.
He turned onto another potential victim.

Instead of some street smart poet,
I saw him as just the flip side
of the New York pretentiousness
he professed to despise.

But everybody loved the clown.
Entire younger generations still do.

Still, I'm sticking to my first impressions.
Only toddlers beg to be worshiped.

Sometimes it feels good to be the odd man out.

  ~mce

Steal the pencil sketch
god drew to design you,
erase it line by line,
uncreate your self.
What remains to say?
Only the nothing
that is and the
nothing that isn't,
two nothings that
don't make something.
  ~mce

I could never
be married
to myself.
We just aren't
that compatible.

  ~mce