Beer With Bukowski by Scot Young

It was three in the afternoon and we were the only two in the Frolic Room on Hollywood Boulevard. I sat two stools down from him and studied his face in the back bar mirror through the bottles of tequila and whiskey. He nodded toward the mirror, held up a High-Life, downed it in one Chianski gulp , slammed it down and said, Another.

I whispered to the bartender, who looked like every other actor waiting to be discovered,
tell him I’m a poet.
Bukowski emptied another one, tapped it twice and went to the john. I leaned in,

What’d he say?
The bartender stood polishing wet rings on the bar and sounding like Cagney,

He said Who the hell ain’t?

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.