getting dirty with chuck

What do you think Chuck Bukowski
would think
of all his hanging-on-every-word-groupies
out there these days?
author of the second wave beat generation,
I think the bastard's still sitting
at a bar somewhere
still swilling, forever grinning.
casting that come hither look
all his fans mistook for soft-porn living.
I've been reading him lately,
the words of a dead man
plunked on the page stark
fearless of reprisal, he didn't give a shit
he just wrote it the way it slid best.
wanton drunkenness, lewdness,
sexuality and brawling
became his calling card to the masses.
life mimicked his art -OR-
was it the other way around?

Even the shiny bastard with bad breath
hadn't gotten the best of him
as soon enough,
his son would eat him for lunch on Ham and Rye.
but he hadn't yet begun
to nibble around the edges of poetry
until he hit thirty-five
and met Janet Cooney Baker,
ten years later the drunken Baker levee would break.

Then came the Post Office,
Frances Smith licked his stamps
well enough to keep him off the streets
and long enough to conceive Marina Louise.
by then his work fucking exploded
framed within these glorious irreverent titles;

"FLOWER, FIST AND BESTIAL WAIL."

"ALL ASSHOLES IN THE WORLD AND MINE."

"EJACULATIONS, EXHIBITIONS, AND GENERAL TALES OF ORDINARY MADNESS."

"AT TERROR STREET AND AGONY WAY."

and...

"THE DAYS RUN AWAY LIKE WILD HORSES OVER THE HILL."

With success, Frances was out the door
then came a slew of younger cunts
(he'd be so proud of my word choice),
Linda King, Linda Lee Beighle.
Chuck had a thing for the lovely Linda's...
and perhaps a few more
thrown in for good measure.
in the end they would call him one of the "dirty realists"
and in 1992 they published his last book of poems
"THE LAST NIGHT OF THE EARTH POEMS."

Here's to you Charles Bukowski, dirty never read so good......

© Copyright claimed 2007, Debra Marlar