Rommel
Swallows Cyanide
no
one comes to visit
me:
wonder how long
I
would lie, dead
inside
this a.p.t.?
The
landlord would miss
his
rent in a month;
mail
would slowly build
in
the box;
people
at work might
call
the cops:
Richard
Brautigan, who was getting
50-grand
a
book
while
he was hot,
lay
for a headless month
on
the 2nd floor
of
his house
while
flies and
maggots
visited.
October
21st
the
day of Kerouac's death;
he
went and
planted
himself in the
railroad
earth: should
have
stuck to AA, Jack
and
become grand old
man
of letters; of course
had
you "stuck" you
would
have had to become
some
other
maybe
a Norman Podhoretz
type,
or
Robert
Giroux (remember how they
shit
on you? Of course you do.)
I
guess you were fated to
leave
this mortal-ed coil
at
age 47: to croak in
unchangeableness
and
become
legend.
Vein
cannot
drink any more coffee
because
I am
coffee-ed
out, like
Balzac
in
his shack
good-to-the-last-drop
java
in
my veins
even
the one they took
out
of my leg and
sewed
onto my
heart,
that
flaccid
bag
occupying
space in the
chambers
of my
conception,
and
me
still
conceiving,
and
almost as
well
as I ever have.
The Scary War
hand-to-hand
combat
with
bayonets
in
the trenches;
mini-balls
to tear
your
arms off;
and
if gut-shot, you
died--
a
rifle heavy as
a
pick ax, a suit of
wool
baked
in the
Southern
sun;
must
have been fun
though,
riding on the
train
roof, camping
beneath
stars; taking
whatever
you needed
when
you needed it--
ripping
the guts out
the
Secesch.
Secrets
of
mumbled childhood
hidden
in locked drawers and
pocketbooks
with clasps--
in
scrapbooks with iron
covers;
in wash rooms of
cellars
and underground with
skeletons
in boxes, and
behind
altars where
god
lived in shadows, like
on a
dark country road
without
houses, just
trees
that said
"schussh!"
whenever
the wind
blew.
Wayne F. Burke's poetry has been widely published in print and online (including in Lothlorien Poetry Journal). He is author of 8 published poetry collections, a short story collection, and a nonfiction title HENRY MILLER Spirit & Flesh (Cyberwit.net.,2022),
He
was nominated for a Pushcart in 2022 and Best of the Net 2021, 2020. He lives
in Vermont (USA).
Fine poems Wayne! Cliff Wedgbury,
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