Boulevard of Broken Dreams (ROUND 2)

Let's workshop this poem that depicts the life of a boozing whoremaster poeting through the chaos of urban decay, where he often finds a sense of solace and Bukowskian pride

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Boulevard of Broken Dreams

That he could cradle all his belongings in gaunt arms
galvanized him, fetaled tight on anti-sleep park benches
of unforgiving alloys, or on spring-exposed mattresses
in derelictions gutted of their copper. It summoned up 
a private thrill within him to snap into consciousness, 
at the clink-clatter of a coin on cracked tile, hungover
in the bathroom of some seedy motel and yet still—
despite brown piss and blood spit, the missing molar
and the side profile of Jefferson imprinted on a cheek 
suddenly old (as if in Kubrick’s stargate sequence)—
knowing as himself the creature in the hazy mirror
nosing together the prior night through nicotine fingers
fouled by vaginal grease (present too on Gideon pages 
blood-glued to his glasserated feet). It summoned up
a sense of adventure, tempest-eye tranquil, to awaken
to dawn sirens on the cool concrete of pigeon shit
and bottle shards, the dumpster air of restaurant rot
still an outdoor air—fresh, then, like an ocean roiling
even Chinese packets of duck sauce and hot mustard. 

He was hooked on fires. Bad times enlivened him—
and his writing. Only they really kindled that fervor, 
but of inner-poise, of which he could not get enough. 
Only they blasted him with the reality, unknown 
he figured to those so fearful in their sheltered lives, 
that it all works out. In county jail, the trash of others—
bologna sandwiches and hard apples and pretzel stales,
hydrogenated peanut butter and hydrogenated cheese—
rose to the worthiness of being whispered to in love.
Stomped out by whores (not the lipstick-smeared kind
high-heeled against lampposts in temptress fishnets,
but crack whores), dogpiled by these wildebeest moms
of rock-chucking assailants cooped in project housing
(after a cheap shot with what in the ensuant La La Land
he pictured was a d-battery sock mace)—that numbness 
known to gazelles throat-clenched by a callous lioness
slung him up in a dream-float redolent of the womb, 
the presence of pain upon reawakening phantomed,
by the good-lookin’-out of evolution or the goodwill
of God, throughout the back alley and up its brick 
rather than concentrated in the borders of his flesh.

And if the bleachy shelters were full for winter lows, 
there were options to consider in the half-dead neon
of twenty-four-hour diners, which he fantasized 
really were once as sleek as in Hopper’s Nighthawks.
There were always options: like the hospital, even if 
that meant a course or two of antipsychotic meds. 

And who had his luxury to appreciate the city’s statues 
of icons long forgotten, or the saxman’s serenades 
on the corner, or the skilled graffiti—waking up to it 
and scrutinizing it in the protracted voids of boredom, 
more closely than regulars of shame would ever get?  

But despite a long honeymoon walking through fires,
he did mail that SOS letter to his childhood home. 
Regret while waiting never crept up no matter the tales
of his exploits recounted in fleeting shows of respect 
by hollow-cheeked hoochers, vein-collapsed lowlifes,
with an agenda (if only for a sip or a drag or change).
The bottle-smash danger that surrounded these men,
their untrustworthiness (apologies; a split-second later,
throat lunges; a split-second later, apologies), now—
as with his cherished freedom from the unsunned flab
of routine meals and shelter, from the stockpiles 
of unappreciated books and records and knickknacks
worthy of U-Hauls, from the unremitting responsibility 
to others—made him feel malaise instead of animation.

Did this mean that he was not the boozing whoremaster,
the bar brawler, he prided himself to be? He wondered.
Like a poet who would stop writing on a desert island
had he no audience, had he been just a tourist (however 
many years spent in the underbellies of vagabondage)?
Or was that asking too much of the poet, and himself?

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This poem is unpublished

Photo: rlewisreports.com/happy-birthday-charles-bukowski-the-greatest-writer-who-ever-lived/