SINGLE MALT POEMS
SNYDER/BUKOWSKI DRINKOFF
Three days heat, after five days rain.
I slammed down my drink, then ordered another.
Lay down these words before your mind like rocks:
Solidity of barstool, rooming house or racing results;
riprap of things.
I sat in early morning darkness chanting sutra in Kyoto,
drunk before noon, face puffed with drink, gut hanging out.
Most of mankind sickens me, fat subnormal slobs
studded with deep red smooth-skinned manzanita berries.
Slanting far to the Kamo river and the distant Uji hills,
horrible faces: whores, orangutans, bastards, madmen, killers.
I pull out your blouse, warm my cold hands on your breasts,
show you some turkey neck youll remember.
Ah to be alive on a mid-September morn fording a stream,
I empty the beer bottle, throw it into the wastebasket.
Washing Kai in the sauna, kerosene lantern set on a box,
I wanted to wreck something or throw people off my porch.
Walking the spirit path in the sky, I had a drink to the bitch
with the bad mouth and the bad ass.
Checking salmon for the Fish & Game, too sick to drink,
I didnt even buy tomorrows Racing Form.
I always knew there was something wrong with me,
dark old-growth forest gone, smell of crushed ants,
the park bench is never that far away.
There was my cheap hotel: I was up on the 4th floor, feasting
on huckleberries, ass to the wind, feeding the stove with cedar.
Hugging a tree, old sow in the mud, I walked out of the room
with a new drink in my hand.
I go back down 99 to San Francisco, start swiping at rolls of
toilet paper, pulling up skirts, grabbing womens asses.
O Wave God who broke through me today, massive pink spirit,
I broke out with a huge boil on my back.
I walked into a dark hall where the landlady stood,
a shining message for all the species.
The whales turn and glisten, we drink a 5th of scotch,
because life had failed us both.
Tokyo, Friday, 05/11/07
