If you're a writer your main trade is hating yourself and
finding ways to be clever about it.
Smoke cigar and coffee-stained typewriters,
bachelor in the sixties, suicide in the seventies.
I'm just a cliché, raining cats and dogs, beating dead horses and singing
a little song about death
a little song about love
there is nothing new under the sun.
Dylan doesn't understand what you do is better than
accounting, your trade is people
like stock markets-
string them up and watch them fall
I play with hearts, you say like
a girl showing off her somersaults in the backyard.
But no one is listening.
…
…
…

So you burn your eyes out with hot wax in the living room
and swear
your name is Icarus
throw your diploma into the laundry and watch it turn into tissue paper,
taking moonlight walks down the beach and
straight into the bottom
of the ocean.

(you thought she would hit you
when you told her you wanted to write
but she only laughed...
and you were surprised
how much
it hurt.)

Your father's pride, a phone full of contacts,
seeing straight in the ******* morning and the heart
of a girl that was once foolish
enough to love nitroglycerine,
sold for
a bottle of ink and a scrap of paper
and your name in the
obituaries.
...
...
...

Tell yourself it was worth it.