Bukowski Bench to Bed
/Edward Burke
He parkt his bones atop some city’s bench,
a sport for cats and grave somnambulists,
his empty bottles tuckt into the grass,
his sleep adjusted to his latitude.
His teeth would not crawl off into the night
but sleep inside his bottle-thirsty jaws.
Depending on location, temp’ratures,
the mercies of the elements and winds,
he might grab nineteen winks before a dawn,
another day for gravity to weigh
his calloused spine, abraded vertebrae,
the force of Down to measure neck and knees,
no matter posture or the style of bench.
He passt from beatnik roads to beatnik streets
into his beatnik house with beatnik bed
(where Desolate Jack found not one night his sleep):
responsible for no one but himself,
he’d earned his house and bed with Hank’s own guts
and rested his abrasions with his work
and cared for all the cats who came to call.
Author's Note: As to comments regarding this piece: The first Bukowski collection I read was one of the most recently published, On Cats (2015/2017). Having been that slow in getting around to Bukowski, I found some bio documentaries online, whose I cannot say, but that exposure helped give me a feel for Hank beyond what that first volume did. With respect to the estimable tradition of the Beats, I made sure to allude to Kerouac with whom I was better acquainted.
Edward Burke, under the anonym “strannikov”, has written flash fiction (absurdism, science satire, noir humor) and essays since 2011 and verse since 2016, with work appearing both online and in print. In February 2024 he was the guest of the “Translating the World” podcast with Rainer Schulte, director and founder of the Center for Translation Studies, University of Texas at Dallas.
