Another night at the opera

Its funny going in there
The words disappear
faster than you can type
It’s a bar and says things
like "dead writers club"
and "bukowskis tavern"
on the outside.
On the inside
there are words taken
from his works
which are pasted
on the wall.
Talking about the masses
and fist fights in empty
parking lots
There are pictures
of the old pock marked
dude back when poetry
was something that sold
a little bit better than
pantyhose.
Now its this bar and
none of the people even
give a shit.
Some south african sits
down with his blond 34
year old girl in a pink hat
and we small talk
He tells me that unlike most
americans I apparently care about
the rest of the world
just because I possess the
knowledge
his native land held
elections
yesterday.
He and his girl never
heard of the name
bukowski ornamenting
all around them.
"What does he write about?"
he asks.
Right then I decide I
want to take them
by the wrists and offer to
warm their hands outside of
hoover houses with stolen gloves
and unseasoned boots
I want to pull them by their scarves
and have them watch as i
sit under bridges
in aberdeen digesting
rotten fish
I want to rape their
children of santa claus
so they know that everything
that is not provable by fact
is nothing but superstition.
(at least, that’s what a princeton
anthropologist told me yesterday
on the radio)
I want to help these people see.
I want to help these people die well.
I want to pass rodeo drive in a
mercedes and watch the decay
of laser surgery peel faces from
the earth.
I want to watch the public executions.
I want to ring down north beach in
the 50's with leather boots
and a white t-shirt digging
dizzy in rexroths cellar. I want
to stupefy the poor with
the brilliance of their discovery
I want to sweat in
bolivia learning english so
i can work as a telemarketer
for 10 cents a day.
I want to lose all belief in a
deity-- becoming one myself
and saving faith from doubt
in the process. I want to lap
the oceans with mana.
I want to
electrocute myself during my
first excursion from a trappist
monastery in kentucky.
I want to write my greatest
poetry at 19 and then blaze out,
pouring all my creative energy
into finding the bottom of a
barrel.
I want to visit parks with
dead grass overlooking panama
and stare up at the sky wondering
if a god exists why me at all
and not so much more nothing.
I want to solve all the riddles of this
mercurial life and then bury them
with elvis at the bottom of the
ocean.
I want to glue cell phones to peoples
ears.
I want forests to be named after me then
burnt down in utter confusion.
I want to write a word better than the
First which came
Back to me in the form
of a wardrobe malfunction.
I want to know what it means
to father a junky.
I want to find doubting Thomas
and shake his hand.
I want to meet one of those
800,000 murdered
rwhandans

I want to do all these things.
But I don't want to do it alone
I want the south african
and the girl in the pink hat
to come along
with me.
So they too can know
what it was
bukowski
wrote
about.
~Boston, 06/04