My submissions were rejected
with pointed inferences
and a jaundiced turn of phrase.
Sneering and derisive,
as if I had just pulled out my dick
and pissed my first stanzas
across the top of that fine mahogany desk.
The idea
Of frittering away more minutes
in the company of stuffy balloon men
and rat-faced hatchet women,
gestated visions of screams
and wanton violence in my mind.
I took my leave abruptly.
“You can’t go that way,”
they cried;
“there’s no door!”
I laughed maniacally
and smashed out the window
with a brass lamp
too neo-classical to be fashionable.
Antique doesn’t mean good;
It just means old.
By now my pen is venomous.
Dry scale, viper pit wisdom
entangling with screeching attacks
from large predatory birds.
Talons tearing
weasel faced rodent flesh.
Did you know,
You can find whole skeletons
in the excrement of owls?
Driven mad by aged quackery,
No doubt raped in velvety satin smoothness,
as if Velveeta processed cheese food
lays claim to an aged camembert pedigree;
the sickly sweet perfume of larceny
and prejudice.
Perhaps,
I ought to resubmit my manuscript
under an assumed name
and send some wily old pimp
with several of his crackiest whores
in my stead.
That should give my letters
some gritty street cred;
the type lapped up so eagerly
by these tit-suckling beggars…
… perhaps not.
Maybe it isn’t worth it.
Maybe I just keep writing
and writing
and writing
and whoever reads these words
will be my benefactor;
my savior.
and my soul mate.
HG – 2017
