I've Been Out Drinking With Bukowski, Again
One NonProfit, 12 months, and 6,000 Subscribers Later...
A year ago this week, I posted my first poem here—I’ve Been Out Drinking With Bukowski, Again—without much of a plan beyond the need to put something honest into the world. I didn’t know who would read it, or whether anyone would stay. I only knew the voice felt true, and that felt like enough to begin.
Fifty-two weeks later, this space has grown into something I could not have predicted: more than 6,000 of you reading alongside me; a body of work taking shape in public; the founding of Ink & Ribbon Press as a nonprofit press devoted to poetry and permanence; a year marked by risk, discipline, generosity, and the slow, quiet accumulation of trust.
Looking back, that first poem already contained the questions that have carried me through this year - about success, doubt, mortality, and the strange relief of admitting we don’t have answers.
So today, rather than rush forward, I want to return to the beginning. To reread that first poem not as an origin myth, but as a mirror. Because in many ways, I am still asking the same questions. The difference now is that I’m asking them in company.
I’ve Been Out Drinking With Bukowski, Again.
I’m uncertain
if success
really means all that much
whether
the removal of doubt
would change
me.
Consciousness dilated:
white, white,
pure white.
I’m uncertain
if death
really means all that much
whether
the removal of thought
would change
me.
Consciousness dilated:
white, white,
pure white.
I’ve been out drinking with Bukowski, again.
It’s been a while old friend.
There is one certainty we agreed upon:
success and death,
my love,
are nothing more
than pretty words.



Wow. 6,000 subscribers in a year is crazy. Well I guess considering I’m at 66 and almost at a year. 😂 Still worth sharing my poetry again even if I don’t have a lot of people reading. Thank you for sharing poetry with the world.
I recently discovered your work through your newly launched Ink & Ribbon Press and I feel so at home. Fabulous work on this piece, I can see why you'd want to share and revisit it. I recently did the same with a series of poems and poetic prose I published a year ago at the start of my substack journey. It's nice to see the resonance in other creators doing the same 🙏🏼