Sunday, April 2, 2017

the devil’s collection plate


         (may i be in heaven

          a half an hour

          before the devil

          knows i’m dead

          -an irish prayer)

 

do any of my readers

remember jenny?

 

we’re still married

mother of my child

i’m running wild

on checks filled with royalties

though most of that income

goes to them

they never lack for anything

 

i stop by sometimes

my daughter cries,

“daddy!”

and runs to my arms

 

sometimes jenny even feeds me

and this proud, disdainful

poet philosophical

feels like the kind of loser

who has lost everything

by the simple act of being me

 

yet here i am again

whiskey beneath my skin

lack of meals making me thin

mastering the art of lighting

a cigarette in the santa ana winds

while walking

 

when people call me an asshole

i ask,

“have we not met?”

 

but back to the plagiarism of my soul

and the millions of law suits i could file

against all the other artists’ guile

claiming disassociation as a vocation

there is no loser like me

i lay sole claim and all copyright

on gold leaf pages, leather bound

vibrating the sound

of a world found

better by my self-destruction

until earth is eradicated

by the error of my existence

 

***

 

 

 

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