The Perfect Publisher Poem by Doug Lane

Oh how I envy
Bukowski.
He may
or may not
have ever
found himself,
but he found his voice,
his rasping snarling voice,
andfound himself
the perfect publisher
for that voice.
John Martin
of Black Sparrow Press,
who printed
CB's stuff
in those hefty paperbacks
with the nubbled covers,
so delicious to the touch,
and made Bukowski
a mint
after a lifetime
of grinding poverty.

Yes, it's also true
Bukowski's father
beat him
like a drum
and he was an acne covered
pariah at Fairfax High
and for decades after,
and he ground out a life
as a drunk, and bar fighter,
and impoverished postman

before he
and his wonderful stories
and poems
became the books
most likely
to be stolen
from your local branch library.

But it's not the before,
the obscurity, the poverty,
the ponies, the beer, and the acne,
that I envy
Bukowski
for.

It's the after,
when he,
with his rotten liver,
and croaking, rasping, voice,
and beer farts,
and imprecations and epithets
against
a malign universe,
found himself
the perfect publisher,
something a poet
and short story writer
almost
never does.

And,
sometimes it seems,
never will
again.