A.D. Winans		POEM FOR ALL THE KIDS WHO COULDN'T GET ENOUGH OF BUKOWSKI These kids could never Get enough of him Not in books or magazines Or on rare occasions in person They wrote poems for And about him They bemoaned the fact that He hadn't been accepted By the Academics As if this were somehow a liability They flailed away At the establishment Supposedly on his behalf But I suspect that Getting their names in print Had more than a little To do with it. A few chastised him for Not using semicolons But were quick to forgive him Because he was a genius And a genius can do Whatever he wants to do To his credit When fame discovered him He quit writing hate poems To those who had once Befriended him And if success did this To him Then she can't be half The whore they make her out To be For a man who lived alone For most of his life He did remarkably well And if he conned the small Press editors and publishers It was only because He had the stamps to do it And selling your soul To the post office All those years Was no easy trip Believe me I know I've been there And the readings never Came easy for him Puking his guts out Behind stage On in some bar bathroom Or on that one occasion In San Francisco On the side of Ferlinghetti's van But fate was kind to him It gave him Linda Lee and A new lease on life and A home in San Pedro and How many years She tacked on to his life We'll never know He would be the first to admit He was an asshole and He was And so are you and I Sometimes more and Sometimes less Depending on the circumstances He wouldn’t deny He was a hustler and A con man and He was both But he did it with style Which is more Than you can say For most of us What he wouldn't tell All those young kids Was what they wanted To hear most That yes they were Poets That yes their work Was dynamite That they too could Make it If they flooded the small magazines With their work For the next 10 or 20 years And the fates were kind to them Failing that There is always suicide Or getting a job At the post office Amen Rest in peace. ----------------------- previously published in: The Holy Grail: Charles Bukowski and the Second Coming Revolution