Bukowski’s poems came at him like gunslingers
but my poems drag in like broke-ass farmers
they’re cranky from fifteen-hour days in the field
they’re sweaty, smelly, grimy, and rude

the tall one waves a bill for combine parts in my face
“write me so it looks like I don’t owe this”
I don’t know how to write his debts away

the short one snarls from my Laz-Y-Boy
“write me but leave out my thing with Tammy”
“no need for the wife to read about her”
his wife’s the only thing about him I could write

the fat one with the walrus moustache growls
“write me a new John Deere and a feed truck”
I’ll be lucky to write the grain smut out of his wheat crop

and the only woman among them
a redhead with serious business in her eyes
sits at my laptop and writes herself
I give her a thumbs up when she finishes
she douses me with lithium from her grease gun

safe to say that the poetry gods aren’t smiling on you
when the gunslingers sling grease in your face