On Dear Charles

I have always wanted to write like Bukowski.

The irony is how much he would have hated that.

He had nothing but contempt for wannabes who wanted to be other writers.

Want to write like me? Here's how: don't, he would have said.

Get your own f*cking pain, he would have said.

A bluebird cannot steal a sparrow's song, he would have said, slamming a verse out on his battered Royal KMM typewriter.

Then silence. Just the sound of his ghost laughing at all of us corporate zombies in our pressed shirts and 501s, writing with hollow pens and stumbling through borrowed pain.

But here I am

still,

soft hands,

clean shoes, decent job,

trying to write

like I've seen the bottom

of everything

when all I've seen is

the bottom of my coffee cup

at noon,

my credit card statement and

my reflection

in the office bathroom,

pretending to be

hungry.

What a fraud.

What a comfortable

goddamn

fraud.