Charles Bukowski
tempted me
to cut open
all my poetry
Bukowski
Charles
swimming deep
in his deep sea
fathoms of bourbon bottles
those constant tidal sips
at times suicidal gulps
griping about human drips
imbibing alcoholic drops
less bucolic than bitter sweet
twitter words in rage-a-holic poems
sometimes homeless gritty
hitting on broken home
those ranting red flags
zones of abject tokens
anti-socially spoken
making me
sit exclamation mark upright
almost ready to bolt
or jump up to dance
even sometimes fly
what the steady hell
or is it chancy heaven
poets with their
relish and pickle poetry
embellished biscuits
sometimes void of savory
seasonally no salt
or reasonable leaven
making me
want to laugh
as well as truly cry
Jack Kerouac
remade me
doing something too
a decade long journey
then forty odd years
imagining modest zen
drunk Kerouac
taking off his monastic shoes
speaking from
between his plastic knees
while all I could do
where all I could see
are callous wasps and fallace bees
still stingers stinging
pollination at its best
my regeneration poetry
speaking about watering gardens
seeking irrigating words
mostly irritatingly rooted
locked in unmitigated war
verse clambering upward
then slipping downward
through hot hell
why can't every sky
be summer blue
why did Bukowski
rip open my flummoxed brain
how did intoxicated Kerouac
coax my optic words
to poetically burrow out
finding some vellum page
to frankly call home
if a speeding meteor struck
what would I
metaphorically write about then
maybe my destructive words
would learn to rhetorically drink
gallons of hard liquor
followed by volumes of dry wine
perhaps my crying poems
would be gallant
valiantly more
theirs and yours
even more elementary tears
more than those
raging rivers of mine
but as I vie
to crazily walk
visiting lazy alien streets
running with sharp scissors
anointed with vain poetry
more train wrecks
in my self-centred dreams
I relinquish help
but inquisitively wonder
if Bukowski and Kerouac
oddly or evenly
thought about
over or even under
thought about  
starlight or grieving thunder
I suppose
desolation peak
taught Jack K
a thing or two
I suppose they
those bums drinking
inside and outback
puking hapless words
into and out of
hopeless Bukowski's
liquored up mind
I can't help but know
I'm not being kind
but my angry poems
refuse to be
anything
but hangman blind
those jittery words
a knotted noose
tightening around
every oh and eh
which I scrawl and write
most will find
garbage and pollution
are those disturbing things
littering my gritty mind
I'm not a fit naked pole dancer
that lewd thought
of being nude on stage
makes me reel and cringe
if Bukowski would see me
he'd call me a wanna-be
like greenstick saplings
wanting to be leafy trees
so you wanna be a writer
what about gaudy and contrite
just another tawdry nobody
if Kerouac were alive
he'd call me unhinged
while my poetry calls me
a total car wreck
I somehow survived
if Leonard Cohen
were standing here
reading my stature
hallelujah
my very nature
might be readily unclear
still I steadily want to think
I'm some portion
of poetic creature
while my crusty poetry tells me
when with my tie dyed words
I must finally fall down
having tried unjustly
laughing and wanting to die
my psychedelic universe
will never be expanded
even considered or ever revived

                 * * *