"the reason I write poetry....

[revolutionrabbit]

Bukowski said, the reason I write poetry
"is not because I'm so good, it's
but because they are so damn bad"
"everything is hidden in poetry"

taken from Bukowski's look
or the horse race that always was the running metaphor
for how his writing always gamboled on the odds
how he flung crumbled up typewritten pages on the Gods

the poem has to look good, and you either
recall a poet's pet inside phrase, that magic
that was like all the times he placed a bet
on some horse called Poet's luck

when Hank began writing like
like Henry Miller,
or Picasso's brush sculptured the sky
stole around the haunts of Paris or L.A
running from the other side, I recall a line from Andre' Breton at
that place where he stood like the white flame of a street lamp
of the sea, that surrealist something about when: everything
stops being a contradiction, at that point, that is the point
where Hank began his poet life...not the poets that are so
damn bad, so damn bad, so damn bad,

the poem looks good when it recalls some line keeps coming on
like a rain drop in the poet's mind like a note of Mozart
in Bukowski's finger pecking out the last letter
like wild letters racing toward the opening gate
but something about the pet phrase, inside that luck of poets

something about the poet, about walking around at night
and women ask you that question, and you answer, "I'm a poet"
yeah Charles, "born into this" born into this...

man, I could never, drink like that, but I tried to drink F.A Nettelbeck
under the table once back in the crazy 70's,
at the wild poetry reading after party, but he won man....
I woke up under the table, and once he slapped me silly
because he was a bad poet, I mean a bad ass poet.