poem of the day 11.28.12

bukowski convention

i had a dream that i was at a poetry reading

that turned into a charles bukowski convention

and suddenly all of the poets there turned into white dudes

with beer bellies and facial hair

eyes that weren’t narrow and squinty suddenly became so

and all of the women there turned into twenty-three year old red heads

with great tits and tight asses

and each of the poets who got up to read

talked with a slight lisp

and they read their poems about their red headed girlfriends

with great tits and tight asses

their long legs in fishnet stocking

when they weren’t threatening to fistfight the audience

some of the poets walked around talking about

trying to get the word down

everywhere you turned it was about the word

the word

and we all worked terrible jobs

some were janitors or file clerks or factory workers or librarians

there wasn’t a college professor amongst the lot of us

which was good because we would’ve eaten a professor alive

we all had our poems on stained paper

the words we’d found while walking though the fire

our poems about fucking our red headed girlfriends

with great tits and tight asses

shooting our sperm like whales

poems about our apartments in the slums and ghettos

poems about our shitty jobs and our tyrant bosses

poems about hangovers and vomit and taking steaming beers shits

no one had a sonnet about true love or nature

but i swear there were a dozen poems about being stuck in traffic

or listening to mahler while drinking cheap wine

reading celine and fante and hemingway and hamsun

to try and stave off the madness

fighting with the wives and girlfriends

and all of the poets at this reading that turned into a convention

were stumbling around drinking cans of cheap beer

calling their women whores and bitches

in their lisping cadence

challenging each other as to who had it worse

who got the word down better

that precious word

the whole bunch of us more like playground bullies than poets

asking each other where we’d been published

talking shit and taking names

making connections

challenging each other to fights in the back alleys

fights we hoped to lose so that we could write

immortal poems about being brave yet downtrodden

wearing nametags that either said buk or hank

and there wasn’t an original soul amongst us

just a bunch of poets

doing the same tired and retreaded act

over and over and over and over and over again

until it was time for the convention to convene

for a lunch of hard boiled eggs and fried chicken gizzards

served with two bottles of german white wine

for each and every one of us hardcore, badass bards.