by Anton Martin Smith antonmartinsmithwrites.com or Martinantonsmith@gmail.com

I called out a fellow Buk fan & I was ‘blocked’.

This fellow Antipodean Poet also loves Buk.

Like me he mentions him all the time.

Sidebar:You can love Bukowski AND not like some of his bad drunken behavior.

That’s cool.

I applaud him for recognizing Buk’s literary genius.

BUT he ruins it all by doing this:

He tells his audience that he’s essentially ‘just like Buk’.

BUT

He has a patchy at best work record.

More holes in his CV than swiss cheese.

His dole check to work week ratio cannot have more than two-fifths MAX.

YET

He implies to his audience that he’s been working “thirty years straight in shit jobs just like Buk”.

Look, my Antipodean-warmer-climes-fellow-GenX-Pal,

Poetry is supposed to be about Truth.

Poets are supposed to be Truthful above all else.

None of this ‘Stolen Work Record Valor’ OK?

Oh did I mention?

In between the holes he was a ‘Marketing Man’.

Marketing Men love to lie to get results.

So what I would say to you oh ‘Fake Antipodean Buk’ is this:

If your were a true Poet,

Bernaysian Chicanery wouldn’t rule your tongue.

The Truth would.

Deep down I think you know this,

And are wondering about the sword of Damocles.

Or should I saw ‘The sword of Buk’?

Huh?

Riddle me that oh you Poetic antipodean hybrid of Bernays & Goebels.

But I am a reasonable man,

I am willing to throw you this crumb:

Perhaps I’ve got it wrong,

For there has always been scammy poets.

Who don’t give a rats about the Truth.

So perhaps you are a ‘poet’.

With a ‘small p’.

I implore you to capitalize your P forthwith – by admitting you were lazy with real world jobs.

And that’s why you hardly worked at all.

After all that is no sin to admit – in fact that’s honorable.

A ‘Big P Poet’ would definitely do this.

They might even wear it as a ‘badge of honor”.

But you lie about it, and suggest you grind-worked every day from age twenty to fifty –

‘Just like Buk did’.

That’s called intellectual dishonesty my friend.

And no Cap P Poet ever does this treasonous act.

And I’m sure BUK would agree.

He would say this:

“Be the hero in and of your own story YES – but don’t dare write about someone else pal”.