Joey Cloudy online

The Science of Poetry

I 

Einstein’s incendiary ideas 

words arranged in an  idea of order 

mathematical sequencing 

it is the intellectual alchemy 

of the dead watchmaker thoughts boiled in time 

reduced in a nanosecond of synaptic flash 

to the ashen essence of humanity 

the pure black symmetry of silhouette in shadow 

tarot cards tossed into uncertainties 

principally chaotic winds 

ten land face up 

six are reversed 

one perfectly horizontal to another 

binary vocabulary of zeros and ones 

the electric language of machines 

II 

Bukowski was a beat poet. 

Bukowski was not a Beat poet. 

ya know what I’m saying? 

he’s on the short list 

of guys who never fucked DiPrima or Ginsberg 

and you can’t really be a Beat 

if you never fucked one of them 

or fucked somebody who fucked one of them. 

Di Prima is too young to be a Beat 

but she was kind once and fucked old Kerouac. 

III 

I only heard two Bukowski poems 

before my girlfriend bought 

the 1997 poetry east ABC 

at the Lakewood branch of the public library 

for fifty cents I only read the about the authors first 

Cormons introduction is nothing less than extraordinary 

(why) Kerouac did not want to be a Beat 

but then there was that mutual masturbation incident 

with Ginsberg in college.

 

IV

 

I’m talking about Charles Bukowski 

my girlfriend gave me another one of his poems 

to read. I don’t think I liked the poem as much as she did, 

actually, I don’t think I cared for that last poem at all. 

she says he was a Beat and I don’t argue with women 

what’s the point 

yesterday she showed me 

a grainy black and white photograph 

of the late mister Bukowski 

on the last page of ‘Burning In Water Drowning In Flames’ 

and I swear I smelled Old Grand Dad on his breath.