On Dropping Out of College

Bukowski and I are trading punches again.
He says 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."

She sees what others carefully conceal.

I've been mainlining William Burroughs

like a shameless junkie.

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 the 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