I Get It By Jeff Weddle

So you don’t like Bukowski —

I get it. He doesn’t speak your language 

and is so crude. 

You’d never catch him in a Starbucks 

and he didn’t even have the grace 

to live in a time when Starbucks 

was a thing. 

I get it.

You don’t like him because he was a man 

and wrote like not just any man, 

but like himself and only himself. I get it.  

Everyone must get with the program

if they are to matter,

and Bukowski threw up on the program 

then set it on fire. 

He wasn’t woke the way you have decreed 

we must all be woke these days.

 

I get it. 

You don’t like Bukowski 

because you read a few poems 

and decided he didn’t like women. 

I get it. 

Did you get to the point 

where he didn’t like men, either? 

Or that he was generally sad 

about the shitty world 

that finally destroys all of us? 

Or that, really, he generally loved humanity 

but was too broken to admit it very often?

Or that the butt of most all of his stuff 

is himself? 

It was probably too much to ask of you 

to read him broadly and deeply. 

Who has the time? One must get to the gym 

and Starbucks 

before the popular shows 

come on TV. 

Starbucks is so good. 

I get it. 

Someone told you he was bad. 

That saved you bunches of time. 

Probably they didn’t read him, either. 

A poem or two, maybe. A story. 

Somebody probably told that person 

they weren’t supposed to like him, too. 

I get it. 

What was your name again? 

What is it you’ve done? Not much? 

Maybe a YouTube video 

or an article 

in some respected journal? 

Good for you. 

I get it. 

Do you get it? 

Yeah. Sure you do.

Jeff Weddle is a poet and writer living in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. He won the 2007 Welty Prize for Bohemian New Orleans: The Story of the Outsider and Loujon Press, and has also received honors for his fiction and poetry. Jeff teaches in the School of Library and Information Studies at the University of Alabama.