for decades beer-sick and typing heroic
in a creaking Hollywood tenement
making odd-meter’d music of his
broken self
decades and cigar-smoke years
railing against a
stillborn universe
and old fashioned ennui
the voice I hear in his letters and poems
sometimes reaches Wagnerian crescendos
and it's like magic:
all the big things that seem threatening
and all the shiny things that beguile us
lose their power and wither
under his besotted gaze
this was his gift
and provided great comfort
to the uncomfortable
and consolation
to the inconsolable
he was born unlucky
to unhappy parents
walked and drove cars
across the acne-scarred face of
the poor parts of Los Angeles
and somehow managed to die
far luckier than he was born
all the while
the sad circus of our mechanized civilization
rolling on
like a blind and battle-bleary
Sherman tank
bloated with arrogance and
smeared with cheap glitter