Another fuckwit drops into the dustbin
of history, just as we’re finishing our coffee.
Some of us are meant to burn out, is that
right? Like roman candles, across the night sky.
I want to go up like a tree, not a rocket,
I’d like to get drunk disgracefully
with a favorite niece, and grow old
among an amplitude of footnotes.
Pour another Pernod, Famous Poet, and
tell me again about the doomstruck literati,
those dropouts immortalized in ink—your
thirst, your secret greed: your mausoleum.