Bukowski

In October 1976 I'd just come back to Tucson from being a logger in the White Mountains I could of stayed all winter, been a substitute teacher but would have had to live w/this creepy family that now owned the lodge I worked at so it is back to the desert the town I'd left fleeing a drug charge they dropped in July now I am back having drunk all my money away back to my old place my roommate Melody, pregnant gone to live w/her folks back in Wisconsin so I have a new roommate, Stan, he is just divorced, a respiratory therapist, hospital people, what a wild bunch one night Sara stole a whole tank of nitrous oxide we all take turns hitting it up like alarm bells ringing inside your head Glenn did too much his lungs seized Paul has to give him mouth to mouth Glenn probably did this on purpose he always sezs if any us guys are really hard up he gives the best blow job in Tucson no one of us that hard up least not me Glenn always getting us & himself in trouble like in Puerto Penasco when he, tripped out, takes off all his clothes, wraps himself in sea weed, & proclaims himself King Neptune, this in the center of town a few tense moments w/the Mexican police Stan would rave about some guy named Bukowski he gives me a book of his "Erections, Ejaculations & other tales of Exhibitionary Madness" it is a revelation like finding a new writer always is - at the University of Arizona - a Poetry Center - a tiny cottage I find his poems so much power I'm impressed can go for years listening to pap even the old stuff goes to pap then again someone comes to renew the language to make it all fresh we talk endlessly about him have massive drinking bouts & Stan would pick up the ugliest most depraved women this wasn't for me although the others, he could go through a half dozen a week, they weren't bad he introduces me to a nurse sez she's afraid of pregnancy, only does oral sex & practice makes perfect well, that is a strange two year ride I join a poetry class at Pima College the teacher has a huge mustache & a wide shiny smile that cries COCAINE! you can almost see the crystals twinkling around his nostrils we get together & read our poems I seem to be the only one who has written anything recent but no one likes them poems about doing mushrooms at 11,000 ft poems about jacking off in the forest about walking around w/a dead woman's hand on my cock stuff like that a woman there sez my poems aren't modern don't know what that means there is this guy he is a postman he writes noble poems about noble postmen about getting the mail on time about how he delivers I read to the class "And love will die the hairy hairy fist" but he's offended by Bukowski about Buk's portrait of the Post Office profession about his portrayal of work in general the whine of a slave yes he just can't see what all this glorification of drugs & drinking has to do w/poetry it being a noble uplifting profession like mail service blah blah blah Buk a triple crown winner poetry, short stories - "The Great Zen Wedding" a masterpiece - thirdly novels he has the blood I get disgusted leave the poetry group go back to hanging sheet rock I remember my first day I'm standing in the early morning light at a bus stop on Stone Avenue waiting for a bus to take me north I have a white plastic five gallon paint bucket w/my tools in it & I'm thinking "Shit, here we go again" then some indian in a car drives up to me, hands me a dollar, smiles & drives away the teacher still teaching now 25 years later still a legend of drug abuse Buk's dead but he wrote till the end the postman never heard from again people still don' t like my poetry guess I'm not modern whatever that means ...