Grave Robbing with Bukowski
The world is searching for medicine; I would dig up the bones of great men and women; Apologies Uncle Buk, I don’t mean to disturb you- but you’re needed much more than you could have ever imagined. Hoping that there is some left, from each great thinker, strummer, artisan. Each a philosopher, and a philanthropist in their own right. I don’t think they would mind. They all did, in fact try to share their minds. This world just doesn’t know how to take it- I know a way. I would drain their spinal fluid into a vial, and swirl it around with the virility of my own madness. Perhaps some psychedelics to help loosen the narrowness of this fragile world’s perspective. And it would be the most beautiful infection. Sprayed into the eyes of the masses with the passion of the men who wrote of Christ. And I would wait. Maybe it would only burn their eyes. Maybe I would be arrested, and locked away in some familiar cell before I got my hands around the first spine. But, there’s also some, fantastical chance- that the world would remember how to read more that 240 characters at a time. That they would love without having to be naked; Be naked without yearning for someone else’s body. We would listen to the keys of a great piano. All together. And know that the ivory was the teeth of God gnashing at our fault lines, and creating small quakes. Guiding the dirt into the places it should have been. Fixing what has been broken. And the pain wouldn’t matter. Because we’d finally be together, in the Grand Cathedral. Making music out of the strain of silence. -James Kelley 2017
