Buk Poem by Mark Knapik

(for Charles Bukowski)

Talent;
tell me about it
no doubt about it.
And you don’t have to be an English professor to figure it out
because if you can’t
you have no business
to be in this business
and your business
stinks.

Perhaps it’s jealously
from the many reviews
I read, perhaps
honesty
from the many words that
speak from the
artful junkie’s
individual Beat.

A rara avis likened two
a black sparrow;
that skid row kid
all too true A
laureate of lowlife
beauty without flaws
pleasures of the damned,
a real first-class man.

De mortuis nil nisi bonum
to wit or nothing at all
because Hank is gone
and there’s no use
betting on the muse
for no poetry sleeps
so off the wall
none to compare to so
Don’t Try.