On Dropping Out of College

Bukowski and I are trading punches again.
He claims I jab like a schoolgirl.

"See Boccaccio," he tells me.  "See Jeffers,
Fante, Céline . . . and get a job, kid."

Anaïs Nin telegrams from Paris.
She's had it with Henry and his whores.

"He's just a child," she writes, "and so are you."
It is a delicate affair with her.

I've been shooting William Burroughs into the vein

like a shameless junky.

His hipster cynicism floods the bloodstream

with antipathy for Freud's theories on

psychosexual development, The Ego And The Id,

The Interpretation Of Dreams.

I have recorded my dreams in which
Hemingway is a frequent visitor.

He insists I keep my elbows down and in
else that scoundrel, Dostoyevsky,

will sucker-punch me in the groin.
I have looked forward to meeting Nietzsche

and Rimbaud, but semester is beginning
and I am required to spend much time

with Wordsworth, Melville and Descartes,
the very same sons of bitches

Mark Twain cautioned not to let interfere
with my education.


**First published in Di-Verse-City anthology