If you’re expecting a poem, this isn’t it.

It might not even be prose… I don’t know.

as I write,

a combination of bourbon and rye

with a foamy Guinness finish

is lapping against the walls of my stomach;

I’m intoxicated, and I feel good…

but I digress.


I just want to share the experience.


Anyway, there I was in a Skid Row bar

enjoying my whiskey when I overheard

a conversation.


Bukowski was mentioned.


I happened to have a copy of

‘The People Look Like Flowers at Last’

in my bag, and I - already feeling light and fluffy- took it out and waved it around

as if it were the congressional medal of honor.


A man spoke up. He was a very old man;

wrinkled and hunched over,

and he wore a colorful fedora upon his

(likely) hairless head.


He claimed to have met Bukowski

in the very bar we were drinking in tonight.


I was intrigued; I bought him a drink

and he told me the whole tale.


As it goes, Bukowski was in the bar one night,

drunk and waving his name around and saying things like “oh, c’mon! I’m Charles Bukowski! The writer… the immortal poet.”

It sounded like Chinaski - and this guy

didn't look like much of a reader, so I decided

to give his story some credit.

Anyhow, the man I was speaking with was

there that night, and he had something to say.

He told Bukowski “you’re an *******!

You might be big with the colleges

and the fancy journals, but down here

you’re a drunken ***! Just drink your *****

and shut your ******* mouth!”

He seemed to become angry even as he spoke to me. I was in awe!

There I was - in Skid Row of all places -

sitting as close as I will ever sit

to my greatest influence.