The Smell of Success

Bukowski burps out poems

like prednisone powered hiccups. Cigarette 

ash smears the Remington's eroded

keys. Stale beer stench,

crap gin and sweat floods his room 

hidden at the bitter end of a greasy 

hall. 

As yellowed fingers pound and drum away,

suddenly his eyes glaze, he's become

a crooning Vatican castrato. An angelic chorus

of staccatoed bliss, of tender albino flesh

re-make him. 

My bad dream is I’ll never mate a muse

as fragrant, flush with life, with sacred

intoxication, as profligate or dangerous as his....

My fear though, is I may indeed 

sniff her late one eve,

erotic heat hovering

mischievously above

my pen or keyboard,

and when and if

so ecstatically

invaded, so poetically

overtaken, who then

(I find myself pondering) 

would mow the crabgrass,

spank the brats,

scare their chums,

clip these coupons,

raise the dead, or

pay that goddamn

garbage bill?