canadian club

god knows how many cases

of canadian club i have collected

i have traversed a thousand miles

across the darkened continent

and found no animal worth the killing

i have plunged over the brink

of my own billowing niagara

only to come bobbing with disheartening cheerfulness

to the surface:  downstream and unimpressed

i have grown moss on my north side

while waiting with a patented patience

for some heavenly sign to split the fog

and illuminate the manuscript

my fateful moving finger hath writ

only to be pissed on by passing dogs

and mistaken for a candid camera mailbox

god only knows how many cases

of canadian club i have collected

and i am left still thirsty

always on the brink of boredom

sherlockian cocaine kept close at hand

if i had taken a mathematical muse

to bed at age of twelve

instead of this damned poet’s whore

that hangs around my neck

a fat and painted, powdered albatross

or if i’d cut a chemist teeth

and singed my soul on satan’s bunsen burner

then perhaps i could afford

to ignore this none too gentle prodding

to plow unyielding paper with a poet’s pen

instead i pass my rumplestilskin days

spinning gold into these polyester poems

and gaze with eyes glazed like be-sugared donuts

in awful, fascinated boredom

on all the silly soliloquies my soul concocts

breathless:

i run the boston marathon of my mind

and panting turn to see the crowd

has grown as bored with me as i with them

and has left my sweating, adidas’ed self

to enjoy my momentary triumph

alone