Alongside "All My Pretty Ones"

I draw my poetry up close, to the bow of "all my pretty ones",

knowing that the shitty things that go by the name of art,

sometimes, once upon in awhile, like a bedtime story groans,

to a halt in the telling, the good ole Vladimir Propp, comes a cropper,

the vehicle, the boat in the park, the three people, stop her,

well could be a he, the muse, the Fancy of frozen Philip Freneau,

So, I draw up to a collection, ready to board, ready to plunder,

then the confession, the truth the dead know, hits me pretty hard,

I am shaken, to know Death, has the habit of handing a deck

which from then on, you go gently, keep hold tight of the card,

I fear you, like the albatross, Anne Sexton, fear the thunder

and lightning of your darkness, fear that if I board, you would

contaminate me with depression, and my ship might sink,

So I am sailing, by myself, in uncharted waters, off the map,

like a James Cook, full of horrors of running into himself

as if it were the bluest and whitest, the sharpest iceberg

I must go away, leave the therapy to that sentimental crap

others produce like shits from constipation, at liberty,

I do not see this enterprise as a form of mental laxative,

There you have it, an insurrection, my middleclass mutiny

I will not paint by numbers or listen to the birthing whale,

I will face the music, and bury my sadness in metaphor,

There will be no exhumation of the past and my life's tale,

what I have seen has been witnessed, and told before,

instead of playing dice with bones and polishing stones,

instead of listening to a conch, to eating sushi for lunch,

I will simply return to Hart, I know we can get through

the Hell, he can be, my Virgil, though I am no Dante,

But, I am tempted by your dream, by your fantasy,

The first attempt ended in leaving one in the lurch.