I used to eat in an Italian restaurant with sawdust on the floor
until I was let go after a difficult breakup with my girlfriend
sad and brokenhearted, taunted by a couple of former co-workers,
entertaining for their mean-spirited natures, who also felt the door
decidedly shut tight after bankruptcy closed the music store for good
to say they got payback is an understatement, since no one could defend
ordinary people, simple Americans, from the arms of bankers
entering and taking away their livelihood, spoiled California brats,
angry at the world, dressed in black, in their twenties, average, dull, rotten wood,
taking up space inside their brains, really, not worth mentioning how unkind,
intelligent morons insist their kind must act, stupid, banal, hopeless,
not an ounce of wisdom, vindictive in spirit, spitefulness made them blind,
as other co-workers were decent and moral, sheepish, but not thoughtless,
needless to say, they felt sympathy for pain, unlike demonic cats.
Inside the restaurant, I found refuge to write poems based on my life,
though my experience was limited, I wrote about what I then knew,
as I grew in my art from hunger and sorrow, I learned my way through craft,
listening to others read their own poetry, I made the Muse my wife,
if I took up the pen after selling my kit, the drummer still played beats,
as words took on rhythms and lines formed out of rhymes, the nocturnal moth flew
not towards the candle, but toward the new moon, no matter how plum daft
ridiculous that sounds, but the moth plumbed the depths of my sorrows, the pain
eclipsed by the shadow, hidden inside my past, endless stream of defeats,
simply beaten down, time and again took its toll, no one knew how badly
time could trip up a child when they don't get the rules printed in the playbook,
as time wore on, I made my own rules by writing poems sometimes madly,
under the influence of alcohol or drugs, even sober, the hook
ran through my veins, to write, my addiction to words overwhelmed my young brain,
at twenty, I went mad, locked up for ten days in a sanatorium,
nothing deflects stigma in the eyes of others, my parents brought me home
to Germantown, outside Memphis, where I began to recover my sense
within the suffering, though it took thirty years, my past delirium
inside the stigmata of post-adolescent insanity, my hands
took to writing in blood, the horrors of childhood, trapped underneath the dome,
however high the sky, unless as astronauts, we can fly past the dense
skein of atmospheric pressure, the peer pressure I felt would not subside,
after I quit drinking and doing drugs, my mind, like desert sands,
winnowed its way past neck to bulb tumbling, after a fashion, down to rest,
drinking and drugs, crutches for broken discipline, makes cripples of the weak,
under the influence, I had no perspective to put things in context,
simmering on the stove to boil, it took a while before I learned to seek
the real as genuine experience, my past, my childhood could not hide,
over the years, I learned to clean the dirt and grime off the jewel of conscience,
non-judgmental study of myself and others allowed me to regard
the future and the past with unconditional positive regard, love
however misguided a mission was my goal, I sought noncompliance
each day to overturn the rules in the playbook, a shy boy finds his gun,
failure to obey wins the war inside my mind, the decision was hard,
little does an artist know, as a child, to fight, or find a cove,
only revolution wins wars, as rebellion ends in defeat, no fun
only to lose, rebel foot soldier of the arts, my Muse tells me to win,
resolve global crises with the pen, with these words, cleanse my childhood of sin.
