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Samuel Adams Brewhouse, Philadelphia, PA.  Yeah, toss down a few pints of freshly brewed ales.  See how much it takes to get a good buzz going.  It costs too much money.  I don’t get paid until next week.  Ah, Hell, we’re doing it in honor of Charles Bukowski—the late great Charles Bukowski.

That’s a good excuse to tie one on.  One of the immortals has succumbed to mortality.  Ain’t that the way it always goes?  I guess we’ll have to adjust.  I’ll try to break on such a clean line.  Don’t know if I’m up to the effort.  Try harder, Mr. Schaefer!  You do not want to let down your fellow German brother.

Have a drink on me.  Now is the time to let it all get ripped out.  My guts and brains need to be shattered and splattered all over the city.  Throw down another brew in this slow dance of death.

Somehow we’ll get over it.  Gotta learn to take these things in stride.  No more dirty old man.  No more skid row poet.  Half of my monologues on Buk will have to be revised.  Seems like the old ticker just stopped kicking.  The lion’s heart attack struck out its last despondent chord.

This moment is almost an afterthought.  Everything is without meaning.  All the words are dressed up in their Sunday finery but they still seem pretty plain and ordinary.  An eerie void begins to fill the room.

Take another swallow on the brew.  Listen to a discussion on Burroughs and Metallica. I wanna just scream it out, “You fools! Don’t you realize Bukowski is dead?  How can you be so callous at a moment like this?”

No wonder the Buk always drank alone.  He wanted to avoid fools like these.  But perhaps I am being too harsh on all these people.  I’ll open up my City Paper while I slurp my beer.  I get head on my mustache.  I ignore the other bar patrons including the one I came into the bar with.  I wipe the foam off my mustache.  I don’t need them to be a writer.  I never did.

All I need is my own heart and imagination.  All I need is the savage rushing insanity of my own madness.  I don’t need any other person’s neurosis.  I certainly have enough of my own personal insanities.

Let it all well to the surface.  They may be warts and pimples but they are my warts and pimples.  They are the blemishes and scars that make me human and unique.  I have every right to exploit them to the fullest.  I would be a fool if I didn’t take advantage of it.  Find out all the secrets and then make a good expose.

I wanna rip my heart out and drip all the blood onto the page.  That would be a start—or puke up my guts on the bar.  That would show a bit of earnestness on my part.  I have to convince everyone that I am not fooling around anymore.  I am ready to lay naked on the page.

All in the public bathrooms and train stations lie the secrets to this thang called life.  It is hopeful that someone else will interpret the mess.  That is someone else’s task anyway.   I can’t be wallowing in shit like that.  If I did, people might suggest I was a poet.  But Bukowski is dead and he never threw a beer in my face or told me to fuck off.  Now I’m left here in this bar alone but not alone.

Talking to myself even though I came in with a friend.  I am having an intimate conversation with the bottom of my glass.  The sparkle of the ale’s bubbles instills in me a shot of courage.  I need to get thru all this shit in one piece. 

“No it’s all too much to handle.  I was just getting over the Zappa thing.”

“Deal with it.  It’s life.”

I guess that is a reality that I have been trying to skirt my way around.  I will have to bring myself to getting over this.  There’s no way for one to just lay around and pretend.  This is a reality that is stark and harsh but I must open my arms and embrace it with all my energy.

Forget about all the motifs of gloom and pain.  I am still alive with the freedom to exalt in my own vision.  I am fully free to be my own person.  That is something that they can not take away from me.  I will not let them take that away from me.  A peppered ale crosses my consciousness and my taste buds as I fail to find a memorial for Buk in the City Paper.  I’ll have to try the Village Voice.  New Yorkers are often a bit more on top of literary events.

Can’t focus on the printed page anymore.  This is not a very good sign.  Try harder.  I’m sure it’ll all come to me in a moment.  There, that’s better.  I feel a little more focused now.  I can rad the newspaper.  See if it has anything I need.

No!  This is all useless information.  No one has written a proper obituary for Bukowski.  I guess that’s really appropriate.  Hie eulogies were written while he was still alive.  I guess they thought it would be redundant to write one for him now that all the rumors of his death have become fact.

I, for one, feel the loss.  Perhaps it wasn’t really supposed to be this way but I’m sure Buk was pretty satisfied with his life.  Guess he managed to write as much as he could.  Might not have won a lot of literary awards but they are worthless anyway.  No one needs them around.

But I guess this is just a part of the deal.  Eventually we all must return to dust.  All the life will be sucked from our bodies.  I imagine that it would be a very pleasant experience.  I just have to let all that sink in.

It is over.  One man’s dementia has ended.  We are left with mere memories of a man—a man who lived out of control; a man who was one or two steps away from going over the edge.  The man who blew it all on beer and horses.  That may not be the role model that we so desire.  He is not the patron saint of self-righteous behavior.

We are all human.  None of us has shit that don’t stink.  Our farts are all nasty—and often too frequent.  This is a point that is a little difficult to take.  All of us have armpits that sweat and stink to high Hell.

We just go on in a state of denial.  McDonald’s has us convinced otherwise.  But all the marketing in the world doesn’t change one very simple reality:  that this is all just life.  It is all something we must endure.  We have to stand tall in the saddle when the shit hits the fan.  And we must all realize that the shit will always find the fan.

But this philosophy stuff is depressing.  The shock of it all is still settling in.  The newness of it is still hard to handle.  Bukowski is dead.  The great living poet has now joined the great dead poets.  My hands sweat with nervous anticipation as I take the torch into my own hand and start running.  I run as hard as I possibly can.  The dogs of Hell are now hot on my trail and I recognize the fact of my own mortality.

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