Bukowski Drank Here by Scot Young

Everybody thinks they’re a goddamned poet. So whatta you write?

Bits and pieces of my life, I said.

Haikus? he belched , swirling the wine in his glass.

Yeah, sometimes, I said

Get off that shit, real poets don’t write that crap. Hell, Kerouac couldn’t even pull it off.

He gave the high sign to the bartender.

Set the kid up too, he said

From the book jackets I’d seen, he looked like Chinaski. Same slicked back hair. Same pock marked face. He toasted, clicking his glass to mine, downing it like a shot, then nodding to the bartender for another. We stared straight ahead at the rows of liquor bottles, repeating this ritual through the remainder of the Frolic Room’s happy hour.

Fuck a haiku, he said, suddenly breaking his silence.

You know, every time some sonofabitch writes a poem about me, I end up in a bar. Hell, I didn’t drink in bars—too damned expensive. Tell them to leave me the fuck alone. I’m worn out bar hoppin’—fuckin’ poets

He spun around on his stool, stood up, cigarette hanging from his lip, adjusted himself and walked out into the Hollywood night.

The bartender, walked over from the other end of the room , placed the tab beside my glass and said,

Hey bud, that’ll be $ 83.50

Scot Young herds goats with the woman of his dreams on a ridge top  farm in the Missouri Ozarks.He is widely published online and in numerous print anthologies with recent publications in  This is Poetry, and Gasconade Review 2 and 3. His first chap Brautigan Meets Bukowski is out of print with a copy archived in the Brautiagn Library. His new book, All Around Cowboy will be published by Spartan Press. He is the editor of the Rusty Truck and the publisher at Rusty Truck Press.