‘About my Very Tortured Friend, Peter’ by Charles Bukowski

I think Bukowski is over rated. Though I cannot deny that I enjoy reading both his short stories and his poetry. His style is pleasant, simple and easy to take. Reading Bukowski is freeing, even therapeutic. To read him you must enter his world. He is someone who says, "I will live my way regardless of the consequences. If I feel like staying drunk for three weeks I will. If that means that I end up spending thirty days in jail for disorderly conduct, so be it." There is a part of me that wants to say and do what Bukowski did all his life. Reading his writing allows me to let off some of that negativity vicariously without suffering many of the consequences that Bukowski could not escape.
Bukowski is a sort of American cousin of François Villon, Arthur Rimbaud and Jean Genet.

16-bit Intel 8088 chip

with an Apple Macintosh
you can't run Radio Shack programs
in its disc drive.
nor can a Commodore 64
drive read a file
you have created on an
IBM Personal Computer.
both Kaypro and Osborne computers use
the CP/M operating system
but can't read each other's
handwriting
for they format (write
on) discs in different
ways.
the Tandy 2000 runs MS-DOS but
can't use most programs produced for
the IBM Personal Computer
unless certain
bits and bytes are
altered
but the wind still blows over
Savannah
and in the Spring
the turkey buzzard struts and
flounces before his
hens.

Charles Bukowski