POEM WRITTEN BEFORE JUMPING DOWN AN EIGHT MILE RABBIT HOLE
Drink through the eternal
Night
Bukowski you big-shot poet
Sucking your beer
Through a rose-colored
Straw
You say the beat-up losers
Identify with you
And keep you famous
The men in empty rooms
Working factory jobs
With hateful wives
And deviant children
Hopeless in their despair
Wake up Bukowski
These are not the people
Who worship at your shrine
The men who have already
Been broken
Do not read your poetry
If anything they hate you
For escaping their world
It's the young punks
Who think you're cool
You are
The ultimate idealized proto-father
Banging young snatch
Playing the poetry game
And winning
Triumphant over the reality
Of beastly labor
And boring endless decades
These children dream
That they too
Will be able to accomplish
What you have done
Bukowski
Purveyor of fantasies
Why didn't you tell them the truth?
They grow older
Sadder
And wiser
With every throb
Of the arteries
In their slowly hardening
Hearts
