Poem of the Day 01.17.23

charles bukowski…again

the twentysomething poets
are online

fighting about charles bukowski
…again

who’s trying too hard to sound like bukowski
bukowski is a misogynist
bukowski was never good to begin with

as a woman bukowski just doesn’t speak to me

there are other poets out there
instead of bukowski, you know

and i read their poems

they’re about bars and bad relationships
terrible jobs and being broke

the universality of almost all humanity
especially if you’re under thirty

but somehow if you put it in a poem
…you’re trying to be bukowski

this is an age-old argument
and a boring one

we were accusing each other
of trying to be bukowski
when i was in my twenties too

it’s good
(and bad)
to see that nothing has changed

and that no one reads poetry
except for other poets

yet all they can do is shit on each other

you’re trying to be bukowski!
no, you’re trying to be bukowski!
until they’re blue in the face

the only other good thing is the fact
these poets will get older if not a little bit wiser

some of them will drop off
and others will linger like a fart

what you sound like won’t matter as much
as the fact that no one has really read you anyway

or it at least feels like the case

you’ve been spitting useless words
out into the void for decades

whether you sound like bukowski or not

yet somewhere
in some lonely room

there goes another sixteen-year-old kid
picking up a copy of
love is a dog from hell

and getting their mind blown

writing poems
and feeling like they’ve reinvented the wheel

safe
…for now

from the vultures out there

with their own words
and delusions of grandeur

poets, for sure,
who will try to tear another’s
very art from out of their chest

and rip their fragile soul
into two.