some big love for an old dog

From August, 2009:

Happy what would have been your 89th Birthday yesterday, Hank Bukowski...from another trashy, profane, working class shit who has no choice in the matter, either.

I recently read that in your poem, "no eulogies, please", you wrote you'd much prefer it if people didn't patronize your relative merits and worth after your death, but instead hoped that, upon your passing, one of your many ex-lovers would saunter out in a tight dress, high heels, and too much make-up and announce to the world that, "he really was a great fuck, after all." Goddamnit, Hank, you were my kind of guy.

You are inarguably the best writer to ever come out of Los Angeles -- this magnificent, fiendish place that I now call home. Make no mistake...you changed my goddamned life, you old bastard. Your words showed me that even when you hail from deplorable, felonious places like we come from, it can still be done -- and everyday I wake up and think of shitkickers like you seducing the world with your language and with your heart...and I smile to myself and just fucking get to it.

From you I learned that miracles exist everywhere, all ripe for the plucking...even for teenage brides from Fresno, California. Thank you for that.

Oh, and I'd bet my life that you were an extraordinary fuck, Mr. Bukowski; I bet you were the kind of guy who, when he fucked a woman, she stayed fucked.

For a broad like me, I can offer you no greater tribute.

Happy Birthday, old man...and requiescat in pace.




60 yard pass

by Charles Bukowski

most people don't do very well and I get discouraged with
their existence, it's such a waste: all those
bodies, all those lives
malfunctioning: lousy quarterbacks, bad waitresses, in-
competent carwash boys and presidents, cowardly
goal-keepers
inept
garage mechanics
bumbling tax accountants and
so forth

yet

now and then

I see a single performer doing something with a
natural excellence

it

can be
a waitress in some cheap cafe or a 3rd string
quarterback
coming off the bench with 24 seconds on the clock
and completing that winning
60 yard pass

which lets me believe that
the possibility of the miracle is here with us
almost every day

and I'm glad that now and then
some 3rd string quarterback
shows me the truth of that belief
whether it be in science, art, philosophy,
medicine, politics, and/or etc.

else I'd shoot all the lights out of
this fucking city
right now