TO CHARLES BUKOWSKI IN HEAVEN

Hank you old dog.

You wanted to be Jesus

of the drinking, fucking and playing the horses crowd.

I’m glad you wrote it down.

Like seeing Venus fading into dawn

till the sky gets blasted with the sandpaper light of day,

the tortured romantic, cynical, hard and soft,

distilled, etherlike, the gin of street poets.

You must be surprised to find yourself in heaven.

Your crazy daemon, if ever it should return to this

green earth, I pray it will listen for the horses

running so very hard in its heart.