Leave it
to the white-
haired philosophers out there—
to hold out hope
for some ennobling soul
to come
flittering
along on wings of gold—
and lightly
reimburse the body.
God damn his finicky
black guts—the true poet
must
simply despise his
entire anatomy.
Cramped and manacled
by hunger and
weakness and lust, he must
make his living thus:
he works
with fiendish purpose
to correct one
deformity—such that, dependably, another
one—will
go funny.
