Dan Provost

Playing Grab-Ass With Bukowski’s Persona


Let’s face it; we all have been at some dive, preaching about morality, the surrealist, or Bush’s policy on Iraq while under the influence of alcohol. Anybody within earshot of our banter is usually either passed out, ignoring us while watching the Keno numbers appear, or relating a story about the jungles of Vietnam.

We all got it from Charles Bukowski.

Old Charlie would probably be rolling in his wine cellar grave if he saw all the poets who are trying to play grab-ass with his persona. He was the original; the one who, when you first read, caused you to jump from your Pro Keds and say “YES…this is the one who has me pegged”.

So we (and I include myself in this group) justify our hatred for the common by drinking beer or wine and staggering home to fulfill our observations on the computer or trusty old notebook-usually with awful results.

How many times have you awoken and see that the hack you wrote in your drunken stupor was superficial garbage, a Bukowski rip-off that Charles himself would say was a piece of shit.

Yes, I’ve done it-hundred of times and probably will do it a hundred times more.

Legends die hard, and in the world of underground poets—Charles was a hero, a god that looked into the eye of a damaged storm called life and said: “Fuck it, here I am and if you don’t like me too bad”.

Alas, Charles is gone and he ain’t coming back. His soul will not be visiting me or you or any of us trying to carry the mantle.



Never Seen


These things
Never seen

Want to be touched
But are whisked away

Into a wind of
emptiness—a spotless
Sense of road

Frowned upon
While great walls

House the terrible and the murky
Water flows down…so down

Things never seen behind
Old wood fences…mothers
Dresses held by clothes pins
On a warm October afternoon

Sun drifting fast but cannot be
Witnessed by those who will not understand.

These things never seen
Thought about, felt…
But never sighed and walked away with.

A slit in the early evening…

The tooth of an old man…

Dying after a lifetime of journeys.