Part-poems that snagged ten grand (twice) and the pages
that hauled in a Creative Writing Fellowship from the NEA
and caused twenty grand to be wired to a bank in Ohio—
those pages are out drinking beer, whoring around,
celebrating having meant something to someone once.
They’re not stupid, my poems; they live in Florida.
They belly up to a tiki bar, as loud and belligerent
and self-centered as fraternity men on tabs of ecstasy.
And the love poems that brought the beloved to life—
those build bridges to other hearts, the fickle bastards.
They want to be bedded by a flight attendant who can lie,
and does, convincingly, that they’re the best she’s had.
They want her to leave voice mails, madly passionate
declarations that other lovers will get pissed to hear.
The political poems of heartbreak and disappointment—
they’ll likely have nothing to do with the love poems,
forgetting the one country where our dreams prevail.
Maybe a few benefit from facts surrounding my death,
the timing coinciding with a cataclysm in the cosmos,
the death of a star birthing displays of some magnitude
in a dark corner of Heaven. Maybe one shakes hands
with Barack Obama on the cover of Rolling Stone.
The pages that won a grant from the Sunshine State—
maybe these throw a party for Peter Schmitt’s poems
at some Miami nightspot, and they buy all the drinks.
Maybe they dress in gaudy Florida shirts in our honor.
Maybe one of my poems and one of Peter’s get jailed
for hopping a red-eye from Miami to D.C. and taking
a long slow piss on the Capitol steps, the piss stream
shouting truth to power without benefit of words.