Last night
I wrote myself a hero.
My pen
dropped forty pounds from my body,
re-grew the hair on my head.
I wrote myself
a stunning Irish girlfriend
and fat bank account;
artistic friends
and a mercenary’s history.
My sloppy penmanship
did little to diminish my power
as Imam of Chinatown,
Grand-Poobah of the Masons,
Patriarch of Violent Fiction, and
Samurai of Ozone Park.
So much better than the poor soul
who fell asleep on the A-Train,
a hopeful dreamer there
to take my place-
alone, out of money,
a dead ringer for the poet.
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POP!
12 years ago
2 comments:
Love it, Matt -- a great advertisement for Poems for Toiling in Obscurity. Incredible how vivid the images are, despite an economy of words.
The only thing I got a little confused on was the persona in the last stanza. I get that the poet is speaking, but is the hero or the poet the "hopeful dreamer?" Or is the hopeful dreamer a third persona entirely?
I like the desire for a dangerous and mysterious past expressed as "a mercenary's history." It seems to me like one of those things that a lot of men feel, but only the more self-aware ones realize is both melodramatic and authentic at the same time.
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