Buk’s Last Laugh

He brought everyone down to earth,
even the angels —
made them smoke cheap cigars,
lose their wings in a poker game,
crawl through gutters
just to catch a whiff
of what real living felt like.

And Buk,
you had the last laugh, didn’t you?
You kept rolling out words,
one after another —
sharper, better, more broken,
yet more whole.

Even after you cashed in,
the poems still came,
spitting blood and bourbon,
fire and tenderness —
your ghost thumbing its nose
at the petty critics
who believed death might silence
your unstoppable rhythm.

But in a perfect Bukowskian twist,
they took your lines
and dressed them up,
scrubbed off the dirt,
poked their manicured fingers
where they didn’t belong.
They thought they could leash you,
but stripped or altered,
the bones of your work
still stood unshaken.

Then the real pages surfaced —
untamed, unshaven,
teeth-baring originals.
It was there, as plain
as a final drink:
you were good till the end,
and better than they knew.

Not even death could stop
your poems from getting better
like wild horses over the hills
running on empty.