"unheroic" poems
To the many readers, I ****** off 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
Jan 20, 2016
Jan 20, 2016 at 4:28 AM UTC
I’m not remotely close to having control.
My fingers slip, but I don’t want to go down that hole.
Temptation at the tip of my nose
with her eyes opening up my soul.
My resolve is low, but I’m trying to make it last.
Sometimes in this race, I feel like I’m coming in last,
even though I stick to the goal, and I’m skating so fast.
I just wish to feel whole, but that’s evading my grasp.
It would be so easy to give up,
to lift up, the regret and hating the past.
Holding on is so hard, is this what
life leads to? The anger and grief bleeds through
my words, hurting him, her, and me too.
Is it sad to plead to the unknown when euphoria actually sees you
at your lowest? When you’re unheroic
and have never been stoic? When you’re unnoticed
yet devoted but you can’t keep focus
because you’ve lost all motive?
It’s sobering to deny the malice
but what if you’re too weak to avoid the chalice?
Will falling into euphoria break the chains on my talus?
Jan 11, 2021
Jan 11, 2021 at 9:11 PM UTC
there are so many of them
and there is only less
of me —
gondola in Venice,
H-bomb
and the knife of Bach;
a steady collision in Q. Ave
as the fizz of the afternoon mirage
settles with the ides,
the torn elephants of
Chiang Mai
the red blood of Golden Gates
the froth of the repeated wave
at the lip of the ocean,
city buoys lacerating
the skyscape
and your coming in here
ransacking all;
appeasements and
trivialities — there are so many
of your photographs here
and only less of me,
looking at all of you
and weeping it
later. sounds like these sounds
hanging by the edge of the bed
reducing woes to a hair-trigger.
i look outside and there
are women, cat-called by peddlers,
stopped by cabs, inside and outside
of cars with sometimes lovers
hot legs and all that,
simmering in the highway
glancing at them now
lamenting them later,
what's a dull boy to do in a dull town
with clothes dull wielding the
dull word?
meanwhile, there's so many of you
and there is only very scant of me left.
light voyeurs through the interstices
of the huddled masses,
panic screeches through the maddened
streets of Vito Cruz.
the night is all black and stark
and the heavy behemoth of existence
prods underneath where
rats, rodents and vermin run
plodding the highway with sleek varmint
demeanor. a lady passes by with a
string of fragrance dangling upon
her shoulder-blades.
what's a dull boy got to do in a dull city
with a dull heart?
there are so many of them for my
territorial hands cannot name
and there's only one of me:
unheroic
impinged
small
half-drunk and
half-believing
that there's something
a dull boy ought to do
in this dull city
with dull words but it comes
with an exorbitant outlay.
dog-leashes are expensive,
moonless hoots through opened
windows hefty with price.
moon-blooms again and again,
missing all hurt trying to repair
the ravaged — i look at young
girls, old women, fine and complete
and this thing of being me
on the market marked: sun-stifled.
there's so many of them
there's only a sum of me
that's often small and burgeoned
bringing the question
what's a dull boy to do in a dull city underneath a dull moon
within a dull crowd?
Nov 4, 2015
Nov 4, 2015 at 12:44 AM UTC
Beneath my feet
Lys green grass
A ball approaching from a distance
hesitating, thinking should I catch or ignore it but I think fast and react
just before it passes my vision
I look up and there lyes a child smiling with joy
Her mother following closly behind like a fumble at a football game
She smiles and thanks me for my unheroic deed
As she walks away my heart beggs me to ask her stay
So I reacted quickly "saying" please mistress would please join me on my lonly read in the park
She answers well I would hate to intrude but I will if you insist
She sits closely enough to where her hair brushes my face
The suns beautiful rays of sunshine brings out her beautiful eyes
Dark and brown where the color of her eyes
Her skin so soft like sleeping on air suspended by nothing but love........
Part 2 Coming soon
Aug 28, 2014
Aug 28, 2014 at 9:19 AM UTC
There's always that moment in a movie
when the hero finally triumphs;
when someone seemingly ordinary
does something exceedingly extraordinary
and the audience has a simultaneous thought,
"Maybe that could be me"
but the world is not a romantic,
we find we are not truly fearless.
We realize we don't all throw ourselves
in the way of the barrel of a gun,
don't run into the fire
instead of out.
Some of us only drop out of school
to support our family,
take off work every Wednesday
to visit a parent who doesn't remember us,
become a full time mother
to our child with Down syndrome.
Does that mean we're unheroic?
Mar 19, 2014
Mar 19, 2014 at 9:19 PM UTC
And in the morning I awoke,
sleep wearied
and bloated by experience,
to find all just as it had been but nothing the same...
The pale cast of nihilism
hung limp
over the morning's hillside
where an inconspicuous mist
had once resided.
Bless my mother's innocent
attempt to patch up my
Mind's muddied terror
with a strong tea
in her best china
by the bedside.
My boyhood mattress began
a demented laughing
in the face of brothers
with graves for beds
as I was, once again,
swamped with guilty memory
of the unheroic dead.
Those gentle youth
with minds full of
the names of wild flowers
and the rules of garden cricket
wrenched from the safe
musk of mothers
to the mud and
shrill choir of the shells.
The Air she would weep
for the loss of another pair of lungs she'd never inhabit again.
All the while, the Earth rejoiced
at the return of her creation.
That clay that once grew tall.
Outwards from the rib.
All for some fantasy and
trick of the flame.
Sep 5, 2019
Sep 5, 2019 at 6:22 PM UTC