The Black Poets (Live)

There are also black poets
And yellow poets
And green poets
And drunk poets
And sober poets
And uh, well this one's about the black poets

The black poets young, come to my door
"You Bukowski?"
"Yeah, come in."
They sit and look around at the destroyed room and at me
They hand me their poems, I read them
"No." I say, and hand them back
"You don't like them?"
"No."
"Roy Jordan came down to see us at our workshop."
I hate they say workshops
"Leroy Jones, Ray Bradbury, lots of big boys, they said this stuff was good!"
"It's bad poetry man, they're powdering your ass."
"There's this big film writer too, he started a whole live theater; 'Watt's Writers Workshop'"
"Oh god, don't you see they're tickling your assholes? You should have burned down the whole damn town while you were at it."
"You just don't understand the poems."
"I do, they are rhymers full of platitude, you write bad poetry."
"Look motherfucka' I've been on the radio, I've been printed in the L.A. Times."
"Oh?"
"Well that happen to you?"
"No."
"Okay motherfucka you ain't seen the last of me."
I suppose I haven't
And it's useless to tell you that I'm not anti-black
Because somehow that's when the whole subject becomes sickening