the ghost of bukowski

I.

the ghost of bukowski
visited me in a dream
he was drunk
he’s always drunk
he told me to stop
wasting words

he said i was
deluding their power
he said i was
exasperating the word inflation
and making it harder
for real writers

he said that it takes
over ten thousand words
to say ‘futility’
but it used to only take
one

i just punctured
my eardrums with my pen
and kept drawing strings of letters

eventually
he stopped moaning
and rattling his chains
laid on the floor
and passed out

when he did
i got down on my knees
pulled up his shirt
and carved into his skin:

even “if [i] have to sit for hours
staring at [my] computer screen
or hunched over [my]
typewriter
searching for words”
i won’t stop

even “if [i] have to sit there and
rewrite it again and again”
i won’t stop

even “if it drive[s] [me] to madness or
suicide or murder”
i won’t stop

even if it never gets any easier

(especially if it never gets any easier)

II.

if i write for the rest of my life
and i never write anything
intelligible

at least i might learn
how to spell

if i write for the rest of my life
and i never write anything
that hasn’t been written before

at least it might seem
like i’m not alone

if i write for the rest of my life
and i never write anything
that could be called beautiful

at least i might know
what ugliness looks like

if i write for the rest of my life
and i never write anything
true

at least i will have these pages
to burn

and keep me warm