F Scott Fitzgerald led ‘em
off to jazz-bled hours & a
club to sip on his dream –
cocktails’ll cling for hours
Never run up a bill at your
local jewellery store – was
advice Frank handed out –
fools feed at tables laid by
men [he spoke his prizes]
Cole Porter undid songs –
meeting in words – Kate’s
kiss did him in/ Never slip
a carat-fat brooch as love
or lust’s oiling – Frank said
& don’t work to an openin’
of thighs [not without first
gauging your cost of gold]
& your old trading position
P.S. Nelson Algren has disappeared
Kurt V’s postscript lay four lines on
after his enquiry about sex with his
[K.V.’s] wife in another letter home –
I awake at 5.30, work until 8.00 – our
writers – our sires of factual wipes –
live dull lives – but Nelson could not
Also on Medium
The sea hates a coward!
Eugene O’Neill, Mourning Becomes Electra
This is my sketchbook –
it is my weapon [of first
choice] & my therapist –
It does not exist [as you
guessed!] A poltroon is
a person who sits alone
writing off scored hours
[or until fears of outings
& being met fully fades]
This is my looking glass
[focus on what she said]
Here is my volatile focal
point between light theft
by clouds – it fastens at a
height held over words &
will blacken a surface /
We persecuted insects &
revelled in our mastery of
magnified nuclear fusion
This is my targeted bomb
Also Medium
Night is when
my best is said –
quietly – to no one
My orgy of clients
has rolled from my hands
There were too many to love
My light-fingered art
is now copied out
multiple times
by bent-to silent monks
re-daubed
by Christ’s forgers
in long-dried blood
and pushed into gilt frames
To be sold as seen
It requires –
wrote an author –
a total abdication
of intellect
It does not offer
easy balances –
less so under
a tightened blindfold
It kills your craft –
a single bullet
spat through
a silencer’s hollow
It is every other
compromise
which nuncupates
slyly exclude
It explores you
with a soft tongue
turning your voice
into foolish gasps
It demands stupidity
and subjugation
Do not confuse them –
love and wet sex
