Smell of Success

Bukowski burps out poems

like prednisone hiccups. Cigarette 

ash smears the Remington's worn

out keys. Stench of stale beer, 

crap gin and sweat floods his room 

hidden at the bitter end of a greasy 

hall. 

Yellowed fingers pound and drum away;

suddenly he's become a crooning 

Vatican castrato as angels of 

staccatoed bliss re-make him. 

My bad dream is I'll not be taken by,

never mate a muse, as fragrant, flush

with life, profligate or dangerous 

as his....

My fear is I may indeed 

sniff her late one eve hovering 

mischievously above my pen 

and if so ecstatically invaded, 

who then 

will raise the dead, 

mow the crabgrass,

spank the brats,

scare their friends, or

pay the goddamn garbage bill?