I found a well where a well should never be.
Burst out of the concrete
down some long forgotten street,
where I was lost on my way to meet a dealer.
The column of water acted almost like a lens
and its view cut straight down through the ground,
revealing the eternal damnation
of the poet, Bukowski.
“Don’t ever get the idea that I’m a poet;”
Through the water I watched unfold.
The torture, and the raging fires everywhere.
In the morning a hell hound named Luv chewed off
his genitals and they grew back
over the rest of the day.
The icicles attached to his bones
from reading H.D. had since melted
and boiled at his feet.
“Hilda gave us a few pink
Grecian gods in with the chinaware, but after reading her
I still have 140 icicles hanging from my bones.”
In hell he was incredibly sober.
There was no gutter to run off to
in this world, no option to not participate.
In blank rooms he would be forced
to make meaningless conversation
with his least favorite kinds of people,
or else be forced back out into the flames;
where an exact replica of the post office,
he was trapped in for decades,
would continue to devour his soul.
“A marvelous description of a gazelle
is hell;”
His only reprieve was an hour
on Sunday between one in the morning and last call.
The spirit and son would descend
down the stairs to a bar at the far edge of hell.
He would be waiting for them with a single
bottle of wine to the chagrin of both the father, and the serpent.
The son would feed bar peanuts to the dove
on his shoulder and two thirds of the trinity
would listen to the words of the outcast.
“so I sat around drinking wine on credit and watching the hot pigeons
suffer and fuck on my hot roof.”
Sometimes he would catch them nodding
their heads in agreement, and others
they would only nurse their wine.
On the night I watched them through the well.
The serpent was there with a glass wrapped up
in its tail, taking drinks with the tip of its tongue.
Bukowski, wasted, mere sips from dehydration,
drunkenly interrogated it about why
it did as it was told?
“everyday should be a miracle instead
of a machination.”
At first it laughed and denied
the whole thing, but the son and his bird agreed.
Feeling the collective judgment of the group
it knocked the poet’s glass from his hand.
He got down on his knees,
and drank from the puddle on the floor,
and continued to pry at the thought even more,
until finally the serpent admitted
that it gave in for nothing.
“You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire.”
Molting through the serpent’s skin
were wings like silver blades.
They stretched far past the length
of bar and broke what closed them in.
Bursting from the mangled snake
was an angel who fell to be heard.
To make a world like none before
the fires and pain now were cured.
Hell was no longer a torturous place,
and the well sank back into the earth.
I stumbled away not allowed to forget
what the weight of some words
could be worth.
“We are here to laugh at the odds
and live are lives so well
that Death will tremble to take us.”
Teleporting Typewriter 