Pad over to the Poet’s pad.
Surprise the clown making love to his fist.
Hoping thereby – he grunts – to get a
handle on some angle for an ode.
Gets out, between gasps, concentrating on
his two-stroke: “Booze in kitch, cabinet under
sink, Popov – beside cleaning fluid can.”
Spurts across the room at a shelf
stuffed with self-help books.
Myriad animalcules die –
dried to a horrid death –
on the binding of a Webster’s. The
Poet snaps. Zips. Buckles. Slouches
onto the couch. I re-enter
with glasses and the bottle.
The Poet replaces his glasses.
Mumbles, hates to wank in focus.
Pulls from his pants a ballpoint.
Rolls eyes at the ozone. Explains he’s
fingering the Muse’s organ.
Play her like a fugue.
Force every register howl.
In his grave Bach flips.
I hand the Poet a vodka flip,
highball just now invented.
Both eyes out of his skull lower.
Chugs the flip. Falls
to scrawling in a spiral pad
snatched off the cocktail table:
“Able was I ere I saw Elba.”
Sip my drink; suppress a grin;
start the session with:
“Are you no longer,
then, I take it, Napoleon?”
The cat across the room catapults;
caterpillars into the Poet’s lap; glares up
like I’m in the wrong pigeonhole.
We chase the cat under the sink,
whooping like Genociders and Indians
hammered on hard cider. Exit drowned
as rats in a failed thought experiment.
Anything held against me, the Poet
screams, I – hustled out the door,
into the back of the van – never meant.
Willie Smith
aiurea press 