he's not my favourite writer as such,
in terms of his poetry, no finer antagonist
for his two virtues: honesty and poignant
vulgarity, and as a "drinking buddy,"
i treat him as an antagonist, you'll see why
when i write the following:
he came to america aged 2,
so obviously, knowing how immigration
works, and how adult migrants
are politely told to integrate, which
includes forgetting the mother tongue,
i came to england aged 8.
aged 4 my father emigrated to england
because the once budding steelworks
in my humble town of birth shut down,
over 10,000 out of work,
then other trades buckled under
the weight of enemy propaganda:
levis, coca cola, john paul ii, you name it.
a vague memory of my father was
impressed into me, the 1994 world cup
is my best guess on t.v.
my mother left when i was 6,
she left me a present, a dobermann pinscher
i named axel (after axl rose from guns 'n' roses),
mad *******, bit everyone
and almost took my eye out after i whipped
him for attacking my grandparent's dog,
an alsatian. so technically the earliest
cognitive developments were done
with my grandparents as my surrogates:
grandfather was high-up in society,
was a manager of one of the steelwork
conveyor belt warehouses that produced
train springs and produced the steel columns
for the 1998 world cup in france (stade de france),
but he drank, came with the job,
broke my grandmothers hand,
when i was five i marched him drunk
from his mother's birthday party through
the entire city - but i guess things happen
in your childhood that you can't alter:
his father left for america (spoke 7 languages,
so obviously not a serf), and when he wanted
to make contact his brothers lied about my
grandfather being a rascal of sorts: thief,
hooligan, so so they could get their grubby
hands on the family estate, which, rumour
was it, was rather large; and maybe seeing
the red army invade (boys who slept in barns
in hay with goats), and the ss-man in black
uniform giving him sweets (herr, bite bonbon,
although he says it like the man's name was,
yep, herr bitebonbon - child's word association,
mr. who-gives-sweets), then seeing the ss-men
in rags fleeing from the hammer and sickle dragon;
not to mention his stepfather beating him,
being a miner in the newly integrated lands of
silesia, and many more details i guess.
so anyway, they were my surrogates for some time,
i came to england aged 8 without any knowledge
of the language, learnt it pretty quick, self-taught
mostly, brain still a sponge.
father laid the foundations of dockland's light railway
at the time, but then had a chance to become a roofer.
poland was not in the european union at the time
i had to depart when i started high school,
figure out the reasons sherlock:
spent an autistic year in poland, split by not having
learned the language to a satisfactory point
and forced back to relearn a tongue i was slowly forgetting.
after a year came back to england, plan was to go
to argentina and then america the first time - alas...
but i came with a resolve to never part with my roots,
TO NEVER, EVER, FORGET MY MOTHER TONGUE.
took to studying under grandfather's motto:
matematyka, fizyka i sport / ucz sie, ucz sie, ucz sie.
so i did, went to university to study the sciences,
i could have gone to the russell group bristol or
warwick, but for the budding in me romance to have
started writing ****** poetry, i chose edinburgh.
stayed 3 years, failed french in first year after a brief
losing-my-virginity relationship with a french exchange
student of psychology, failed chemistry 2nd year,
retook exam, no summer fun, 3rd year failed chemistry,
summer in st. petersburg, retook exam and got the ******
degree: immigrants pride and pinnacle i guess.
some horrific **** after, got reduced to working in lidl
for a day, got the job, came in drunk, shoved a bunch
of pickle jars on the shop floor, cut my hand open and
left (politicians are now saying - graduate jobs for graduates,
well, evidently not). but in my 3rd year i met my love,
philosophy - took to it like fish to water, i can't lie,
this is where my antagonist comes handy - he's
being pompous and rightly so at being critical of the
poetry scene, of people studying literature to only
create more literature - i get that, but that's hardly an
attack on learning, or the sheer love of it;
and based on reading an academic work on him,
i gather he has sympathisers behind the enemy lines -
but i too don't like poetry to convey naiveness and
innocence to the world, a dreamworld where everything
comes true because of the way you think of it
a priori, since i guess when the world proves otherwise,
there is no original output of idealism, no cute puppies,
but lynched dancing bears and overworked horses
and the fear soaked eyes of cows in slaughter houses,
this *a posteriori situation leaves most former poets
crushed... crrrrrushed... they either stop writing,
continue writing lies to children, or wise-up,
become as cruel as the world, although a hermit's
cruelty - 'world, on my terms, and with whom and when
you will know that i am still here.'
but it's like that - one invents, the other gets all the credit
and the most famous one of the three doesn't know
the first one when talked about by critics and admirers,
e.g.? tristan tzara, cabaret voltaire, dada anti-war movement
of 1914, invention? cut-up. w. burroughs "perfected"
the method, and thirdly bowie used it too -
critic on television while dirges and epitaphs came:
burroughs' burroughs' burroughs'.
this world has become horrid - all those wars on paper,
all the et tu brute et tu brute et tu brutus?!
all that fame - but ask any banker about infinitesimal
calculus and he will be like... huh what?! what for?!
investments in wars, rocket projections, that kind of thing.
and about that - the horrid nature of the argument:
what came first, leibniz or newton? chicken and egg debate.
both at the same time i guess.
and it's this pervasive first in line, i want to be first in line
incomprehensibility in me -
which means there are only a few famous people
everyone's agreed on, and they're anonymous -
the man who discovered the fermentation process,
and the shaman with ***** who sifted through amazonian
poisons to find a hallucinogenic,
to name but a few of the truly famous ancients.
in conclusion - had bukowski been taught german,
or had been old enough to remember some german,
his writing might have looked something like this;
i too with acne, chernobyl birthmark,
heart condition, and a forcefully induced
****** scheme sophistication brain haemorrhage,
resulting in wrong diagnosis of schizophrenia,
fuelling my subsequent splashing money on
psychiatry books and beating about 5 psychiatrists
at their own game: given my stature of 6ft2
and 253pounds... they were worried i might do
something grotesque - hard to get a discharge,
but got one after 7 years of wrong treatment;
that's like prison, worse, you are living in a society
that tries to pacify you, seeing all the pleasures
of society with people enjoying them, dangling like
a treat, and you're told you're "sick."
i'd rather have spent 7 years with those deservedly
locked up: at least a feeling of solidarity for god's sake:
so as you can imagine, my investment in an internet
presence or the internet's appreciation of it
is about as important to me as yesteryear's snowfall.
