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”.
Anton Martin Smith Writer 