Reveille
I won’t argue the recollection
that in my youth my emotional
intelligence had left much
to be desired, dancing drunk
with delusions and coupling
scraps of vagabond verbiage
with vocal cords lubed by spit
and vibrating like a jackhammer
screaming out pseudo poetic
punk anthems woefully off key.
Young and dumb with a mouth
set to high volume and seduced
by the rock and roll sirens of lust
but time and energy not spent on
craft but the pop art of the pose.
Living in wanton excess in hopes
it hides the lack of talent with
the silver lining that a poet’s death
comes with the cheap publicity
of a cool photo in the coffin.
Time, though, ushers in an urgent
sobriety whetting the wallet’s
desire for sustenance while dulling
an artist’s sense of appreciation,
and the words blur till they can
no longer find the space to dance
on the page, and while duty houses
its own rewards, the once audacious
evenings now lit with only the lonely
memory of muses dying in vain.
Still, there was always a heartbeat
within the feral words, planting
seeds to stop the bleeding,
even now as hunters of creativity
with their algorithms of artificiality
set traps to rid the world of poetry,
persuading me to once again wrap
myself in Don Quixote armor to fight
off malignant windmills with all
the fight left in my shriveled lungs.
