get out and stay out

come on in!
Charles Bukowski

"These poems are part of an archive of unpublished work that Charles Bukowski left to be published after his death," the book announces--making it the ninth posthumous collection of the poetic asshole's work. The title poem introduces the bilge to follow.

welcome to my wormy hell...
plenty of room for us all,
sucker

The reader knows exactly what to expect: self-indulgent, too-clever griping disguised as blue collar angst. In "nothing but a scarf," the speaker bitches about a "facile and bright" writer with "no edge."

I thought,
Jesus Christ, if this is what they
want,
from now on
I might as well write for
the rats and the spiders
and the air and just for
myself.

which, of course, is exactly what
I did.

Utter bullshit. As Allen Ginsberg put it, "I write poetry because I want to be alone, but I want to talk to people." If it's just for yourself, keep it that way, and never publish, especially not posthumously, beyond the sting of criticism.

The speaker of many of Bukowski's poems--dare we call him Bukowski, and treat the poems autobiographically?--is bitter at the ars-gratia-fartis literary set.

in decades past
I once warned
some poet-friends
of mine
about the masturbatory
nature of poetry readings
done just
for the applause of
a handful of
idiots

The self-righteous prophet of "I'm not all-knowing but..." meets an eager up-and-comer in "form letter," amazed that he would be sent "such obvious crap...."

I myself have never mailed any
of my work to anybody but
an editor or a publisher.
despite the fact that
my own work
was rejected for
decades...

and joins forces with a bartender to denounce the pretentious in "talking about the poets."

"if I was the policeman
of the world," the barkeep
continued, moving the drink
toward me, "many a darling
poet would either be allowed to
starve or forced to get a
real job."

After a few of these jeremiads bashing those who've never ridden the bulls and drank the whiskey and slept with the whores only write about the bulls and whiskey and whores, in an imaginary land where the music is "only for me," it's difficult to take speaker-Bukowski as anything but a crank. But hey--you're welcome to try! Come on in!