for Charles Bukowski (1920-1994)


I just wrote a poem
and I’m afraid
Bukowski
might have written it


(well, it walked
like him
and the punch line
had the same knuckles)


The sonofabitch
wrote about
12,000
poems


and most of them
stick in your head.
they come back later
when you’re on the crapper


or writing, like
I was then.


Then you go for
your Bukowskis
and try to find the
damn poem


that he wrote then
that you just wrote now.
Fuck, the guy
(unlike Shakespeare)


has no concordance
and his fucking poems
are like galaxies
of stars


in the bloody night.
it’s like trying to
remember
each second


of the minute you were born,
married, divorced, arrested
so you don’t have to
repeat a moment of it again.


Hank, Hank,
you ain’t dead,
you’re sitting here
typing now,


and I sure as shit
don’t want to plagarize
you, but damn it,
Hank,


the line’s blurred
between my
unoriginal composition
and your’n.


sobriety tests are easy
but plagiarism . . .


there’s no bottles, no stagger,
no dented bumper
and no fucking concordance


you overly prolific,
infectious,
venereal,
sonofabitch.