Blowtorch On A Pig

 

I made a pact with myself to never
write anything Bukowski again

 

then comes this via the Pony Express of my computer,
“Would you like to send unpublished poetry
or-and an essay on Charles Bukowski…”

 

I never met the man

 

never got loaded with him
talked shit about women
writing or the track

 

never laughed it up at one of his
infamous Hollywood shindigs

 

never pressed that flesh

 

more than once over the years
I’d walk into Baroque Books & Red would say,
“Kid, tomorrow at Musso’s,
noon. Be there.”

 

“Okay Red, see ya then.”

 

I had nothing to offer but nerves
which of course always
got the better of me

 

did see him once in 1987
when Barbet Schroeder’s Bukowski Tapes
debuted at EZTV in West Hollywood

 

Bukowski stood before us, cased the room,
“I don’t smoke weed man. People who smoke
pot are just fucking idiots. They do nothing, they
read Zap comics & watch too much TV.
It slows you down man, takes the
edge off. It’s a dull way to go.”

 

with steady grace he raises the
green bottle in his fist & pulls on it,
“This,” he slaps it, “is something,” his face relaxing into a
generous grin that lights the room
& captures everything

 

he takes another tug,
“This shit makes the world
a better place.”

 

Bukowski chuckles
a bluebird circles overhead

 

“Makes me feel like
the gods are smiling down on me,
like maybe I’ve got half a chance
coming out of the gate.”

 

he fixes a sober gaze upon the audience
shifts his weight a bit like an old prize fighter,
“Okay, okay… I’ve talked enough.
Enjoy the movie.”

 

& he & his beer
are gone

 

22 years later & a few miles west of Santa Anita
just past the long green money
& kept lawns of San Marino
Charles Bukowski smiles
across the main exhibition hall of the
Huntington Library at
William Shakespeare
under glass

 

Hank dead center of the centuries
shoulder to shoulder with other
quiet giants of arts & letters

 

blistering wisteria drip like warm wax in the
Southern California sun

 

Jacarandas announce the lavender spring

 

as pools of splashing laughter erupt from the suburbs
as the advancing city sings a strange fire that never dies

 

as I promise you

 

this will never
happen
again

-S.A. Griffin

Years of the Modern

 

YEARS of the modern! years of the unperform’d!
Your horizon rises—I see it parting away for more august dramas;
I see not America only—I see not only Liberty’s nation, but other nations
preparing;
I see tremendous entrances and exits—I see new combinations—I see the solidarity
of
races;
I see that force advancing with irresistible power on the world’s stage;
(Have the old forces, the old wars, played their parts? are the acts suitable to them
closed?)
I see Freedom, completely arm’d, and victorious, and very haughty, with Law on one
side,
and Peace on the other,
A stupendous Trio, all issuing forth against the idea of caste;
—What historic denouements are these we so rapidly approach?
I see men marching and countermarching by swift millions;
I see the frontiers and boundaries of the old aristocracies broken;
I see the landmarks of European kings removed;
I see this day the People beginning their landmarks, (all others give way;)
—Never were such sharp questions ask’d as this day;
Never was average man, his soul, more energetic, more like a God;
Lo! how he urges and urges, leaving the masses no rest;
His daring foot is on land and sea everywhere—he colonizes the Pacific, the
archipelagoes;

 

With the steam-ship, the electric telegraph, the newspaper, the wholesale engines of war,
With these, and the world-spreading factories, he interlinks all geography, all lands;
—What whispers are these, O lands, running ahead of you, passing under the seas?
Are all nations communing? is there going to be but one heart to the globe?
Is humanity forming, en-masse?—for lo! tyrants tremble, crowns grow dim;
The earth, restive, confronts a new era, perhaps a general divine war;
No one knows what will happen next—such portents fill the days and nights;
Years prophetical! the space ahead as I walk, as I vainly try to pierce it, is full of
phantoms;
Unborn deeds, things soon to be, project their shapes around me;
This incredible rush and heat—this strange extatic fever of dreams, O years!
Your dreams, O year, how they penetrate through me! (I know not whether I sleep or wake!)
The perform’d America and Europe grow dim, retiring in shadow behind me,
The unperform’d, more gigantic than ever, advance, advance upon me.

-Walt Whitman

but the other

 

but the other
day i was passing a certain
gate rain
fell as it will

 

in spring
ropes
of silver gliding from sunny
thunder into freshness

 

as if god’s flowers were
pulling upon bells of
gold i looked
up

 

and
thought to myself death
and will You with
elaborate fingers possibly touch

 

the pink hollyhock existence whose
pansy eyes look from morning till
night into the street
unchangingly the always

 

old lady sitting in her
gentle window like
a reminiscence
partaken

 

softly at whose gate smile
always the chosen
flowers of reminding

-e.e. cummings

In Midnight Sleep

1
IN midnight sleep, of many a face of anguish,
Of the look at first of the mortally wounded—of that indescribable look;
Of the dead on their backs, with arms extended wide,
I dream, I dream, I dream.

2
Of scenes of nature, fields and mountains;
Of skies, so beauteous after a storm—and at night the moon so unearthly bright,
Shining sweetly, shining down, where we dig the trenches and gather the heaps,
I dream, I dream, I dream.

3
Long, long have they pass’d—faces and trenches and fields;
Where through the carnage I moved with a callous composure—or away from the fallen,
Onward I sped at the time—But now of their forms at night,
I dream, I dream, I dream.

-Walt Whitman