You were the best teacher
I ever had
Cleverer than clever
A traveling medicine man
Up there on your dais
Peddling your snake oil
So charming
You could have sold
Sand to the Arabs
And rain to the Irish
And they would have thanked you
For robbing them.



You made your selfishness
Seem like generosity
And your meanness
Like felicity
And you did it all
With a smile
That left me feeling
So defeated
I could have put my head
In the toilet
To flush my thoughts
Away.



You were so fond
Of laughing at me
You’re so smart
You would say
But you lack streets
Let me protect you
And you dangled
Your dancing marionette
Against the cave wall
And in the sepic light
The shadow loomed
Like an Aztec devil
So I clung to you in fear
And handed you my gun.



No - you weren’t good
For what ailed me
Death by a zillion
Stinging hairs
So crazy from the small
Bullshit
That I couldn’t see the con
In the big picture


And my friends
Odin’s ravens
Circled the periphery
With sympathy
But no empathy.
Doctors that tempted
To treat the twinge
Without prior knowledge
Of the ache.


How could you be
So deceived
They asked
And I couldn’t answer
And when I did
They couldn’t understand.
Hard to see things
In black and white
When you're trapped
In the interstices
Between the pixels.