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A Night at Bukowski's

Catdog McStrong sat on the barstool dominating the tiny stage of the Navelcentric Coffee House. He clutched his cheaply printed chapbook in his left hand. The microphone in his right hand obscured the bottom half of his goofy, round face which held the expression of a man perpetually anticipating a back hand across the mouth.

His entire countenance was that of a two week old snowman mottled by pollution and spotted with dog urine. He even had the threadbare clothes chosen for their railroad poet quality.

The audience were not his constituents. Bukowski was as alien to these kids as nuthugger blue jeans and Barrelhead Lager. The median age was twenty years his junior.

But still... if he could just sell a few chapbooks. Nevermind their poetic tastes veered toward Henry Rollins semi-literate rants and Jewel with her Owen Wilson nose and penchant for rhyming nipple with cripple.

And really he wouldn't have minded not moving a single chapbook so long as there was a seniorita escorting him home tonight.

He scanned the crowd for any middle-aged, broken down barflies, the rancid meat and potatoes of his sex life, and saw only black clothing, iced coffee, and creative facial hair.

Catdog still nursed the same wire brush mustache cultivated in high school.

He also thought his chances of selling a chapbook to this crowd were as realistic as the odds of him knocking off a piece of ass after the reading.

Which posed a problem. In the gloom of his study beneath the painting of Frieda, he could channel the spirit of Bukowski all night, penning glorious odes of mad alcohol consumption and the mythic conquering of beautiful senioritas the small press fell over itself to embrace. But to actually read these fantastical tales of debauchery before a crowd of young hotties who wouldn't spread their legs for him if he were the last Bukowski protégé on earth...

"This next poem is also about drinking," his voice whined from somewhere deep inside his nasal cavity.

Some wiseass kid made a beat-off gesture in the air.

"It's titled: A Night At Bukowski's."

This elicited a few sporadic groans from the audience.

"It's a work in progress."


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