AN UNSENT LETTER TO BUKOWSKI By Brenton Booth

               

The year you died  

I was just a teenager,

cold and confused:

the fire extinguished

long ago. I would 

soon turn to the word;

Shakespeare, Nietzsche,

Blake, Plato, Socrates.

I was alone and searching:

for what? I did not know.

I had never read a school 

book, but was well 

acquainted with the 

words of those I mentioned.

I tried to understand 

their words--I had to learn:

the answers were there

I was sure, and once I 

unlocked them, my life 

that I could find nothing 

in; would certainly

change. And the years 

following: hours and hours

of Wilde, Blake, Chekhov,

T. Williams, Dost, Burroughs,

Miller, Kerouac, Brautigan, 

Rimbaud, Thompson:

my heroes were Chekhov

and Blake. I saw a little 

of myself in their words.

I was now 23 and in a

T. Williams play. Talking 

about writing to another 

actor. He said I should read 

you, our writing sounded 

very similar. I was suspicious,

though decided to look for 

one of your books. A few 

months later I found a 

whole shelf full of them at 

the now out of business 

bookstore on Pitt Street.

One by one. Line by line.

I read them all. I felt close 

to you. As if we were 

somehow related. Me, now 

a young man. Writing.

Poor. Working stupid jobs.

Rejection slips from

every magazine. The 

young man who had once 

felt completely alone. 

Now knowing he wasn’t.

Now knowing that

maybe, just maybe: he 

had a chance.

Brenton Booth lives in Sydney, Australia. Poetry of his has appeared in Gargoyle, New York Quarterly, North Dakota Quarterly, Chiron Review, Main Street Rag, Naugatuck River Review, Heavy Feather Review, and Nerve Cowboy. He has two full length collections available from Epic Rites Press.