vignette / inside the dream, Bukowski’s not totally dead

there's a reason I’m in San Francisco.

It’s like it used to be. It’s like they said it was.

I’m in a barroom a half-block from Bukowski’s flat.

there’s a middle-age woman sitting at the bar. she’s alone.

if she’s not drunk, she’s one step closer to the abyss.

I can tell she used to be good looking. she was young, once.

but she’s been around the block. she’s rummaging through papers

without a commitment to them. It seems they don’t belong to her.

she seems angry, as if she thought they’d be worth something.

so I mosey over like I’m going to the toilet.

when I’m close enough I peer over her shoulder

at what she’s scattered across the sticky, unforgiving bar,–– 

the bar of lost nights, lost loves, and maybe a fleeting form of happiness.

on my approach the stack of papers come into focus, like driving

out of a dense fog just before smashing into the back of the dumpster truck.

bam! they’re Bukowski's poems!

written after reading: "to the whore who took my poems"

in Bukowski's volume: "Burning In Water Drowning In Flame."